THEATRE REVIEWS

2. Sophia (1886) to Clarissa (1890)

Sophia from The Times (14 April, 1886 - p.4)

VAUDEVILLE THEATRE.

     “First nights” at the Vaudeville having of late been more or less disastrous to the management, the new piece which has been prepared for this theatre by Mr. Robert Buchanan in the shape of an adaptation of Fielding’s novel of “Tom Jones,” was on Monday put forward in a purely tentative fashion at a matinée. The precaution proved, as it happened, to be uncalled for. The piece was in every respect successful, and would undoubtedly have met with a cordial welcome at the hands of the ordinary first night audience, whose so-called organized opposition to certain new plays is, we are convinced, purely a managerial fantasy. Mr. Robert Buchanan calls his adaptation Sophia. Why it should not have been called Tom Jones it is hard to say, for Tom Jones is as much the hero of the play as of the novel. Various as have been Mr. Robert Buchanan’s contributions to the stage, there can be little doubt but that this is his happiest effort in play writing. It is rare indeed that we find a purely English comedy so wholesome, so stirring, so interesting, and so full of human nature as Sophia. In dealing with Fielding’s romance, the author’s plan of action has been to set forth succinctly and consistently the love-story of Tom Jones and Sophia Western as complicated by the perfidies of Blifil and Lady Bellaston. Every incident not directly bearing upon this has been omitted, the result being four acts of highly dramatic material, tending towards a definite and, indeed, an inevitable dénouement—namely, the union of Tom Jones and Sophia and the discomfiture of their enemies. Mr. Robert Buchanan has wisely refrained from taking liberties with his author except on one or two minor points. In the play Square is a very estimable gentleman, whose only fault is susceptibility to the mature charms of Squire Western’s sister; it is Blifil who conducts the illicit amour with Molly Seagrim of which Tom Jones for a time incurs the odium, while Lady Bellaston’s overtures to the hero are only such as to entitle her to be described as an impressionable lady. Mr. Robert Buchanan in a playbill note claims credit for having eliminated every offensive element from the story, and not only may the claim be allowed, but it may be added that he has at the same time done full justice to his author’s genius so far as concerns the delineation of character and the conflict of the generous and the sordid motives of human nature. The weak point of the play, as presented at the Vaudeville, is that it affords but small opportunity for the display of Mr. Thomas Thorne’s comic powers as Partridge, the barber, who is rather an excrescence upon the action than otherwise. On the other hand, that excellent young actress, Miss Kate Rorke, has never been seen to better advantage than in the part of Sophia Western, who in the play as in the novel is perhaps the most lovable type of womanhood ever depicted in fiction. Her scenes with Mr. Glenney, as Tom Jones, are delightfully true and refreshing. Mr. Glenney might look the character better, but he plays with adequate manliness and vigour. Miss Larkin contributes with Mr. Thorne to the humours of the story in her own inimitable fashion by combining girlish artlessness with the mature charms of spinsterhood; Blifil’s hypocrisy is cleverly brought out by Mr. Carleton; Mr. Fred Thorne is a sufficiently vulgar, though perhaps somewhat too noisy representative of Squire Western; Mr. Gilbert Farquhar makes a smug Mr. Allworthy; and Miss Helen Forsyth plays picturesquely and intelligently as Molly Seagrim. In the minor parts of Seagrim and Square, Mr. Mellish and Mr. Akhurst are also deserving of commendation. The piece, in short, is admirably played and mounted, and placed in the evening bill, it will no doubt effectually revive the languishing fortunes of the theatre.

___

Sophia from The New York Times (26 July, 1886)

     I cannot say that I was carried away by “Sophia,” which is close upon its one hundredth performance at the Vaudeville Theatre—the theatre of long “runs,” where “our Boys” ran I forget how many years, and pieces that are withdrawn less than six months after production are regarded as having died in their infancy. The Vaudeville, nevertheless, is filled nightly by people anxious to see “Sophia,” and as the taste of English-speaking audiences the world over is not vastly dissimilar, I presume that the piece, which is soon to be exported to America—like “Jim the Penman,” by the way—will prove as remunerative across the Atlantic as it is here. “Sophia” is founded upon Fielding’s “Tom Jones,” and Mr. Robert Buchanan, the author of the play, gives credit to the English author for the parentage of the work. I have heard some English writers declare that Mr. Buchanan was unwise in acknowledging his indebtedness to Fielding, on the ground that his achievement was sufficiently “strong” to require no assistance. I beg to differ from these gentlemen, and to express the belief that Mr. Buchanan acted with praiseworthy shrewdness as well as with honesty in placing under the protection of a great literary memory a number of characters and incidents that a modern audience would often be tempted to weary of and laugh at. There is no little of what Mr. Daly would call human interest in “Sophia,” and women will sympathize with the much-persecuted hero, and wait to see how he will escape from the sea of troubles whose waves he buffets for a pretty long evening, but the goody-goody personages, the old-fashioned garrulity, and the wildly improbable episodes are tolerably trying to an auditor that does not promptly get into the atmosphere and spirit of the piece. The name of Fielding, however, covers a multitude of sins, and he that cares to read “Tom Jones” may experience a kindred enjoyment in witnessing “Sophia.” The rôle of Tom Jones is sustained at the Vaudeville, in a simple and manly fashion, by Mr. Charles Glenny. I learn that it is to be intrusted in the United States to Mr. Kyrle Bellew. I should have mentioned that “Sophia” is intended for Wallack’s Theatre. Mr. Bellew’s craving for female sympathy, inordinate though it may be, is likely to be sated by the character’s multitudinous woes. Sophia finds a comely interpreter in Miss Sophie Larkin, and the “fine lady” of the olden time, with her airs and graces, and her brocade gowns and diminutive blackamoor, is pictured with delightful fidelity to the accepted type by Miss Rose Leclercq. The comic rôle of the piece, which has been more or less felicitously “written up” to meet the requirements of Mr. Thomas Thorne, the popular comedian and manager of the Vaudeville, is that of a barber that sticks to Tom Jones through thick and thin, and winds up his bachelor’s life by wooing and winning Honor, Sophia’s maid, and the dea ex machina, whose story rights all wrongs ere the final curtain falls.

___

Sophia from The New York Times (5 November, 1886)

AMUSEMENTS.

“SOPHIA” AT WALLACK’S

     When Mr. Robert Buchanan first conceived the idea of making a play out of “Tom Jones” he had undoubtedly read the book. The malicious insinuations to the contrary that found their way recently into English newspapers do not deserve consideration. The play called “Sophia” bears several marks of relationship to Fielding’s master work. Most of the characters bear names to be found in the novel, and the framework of the plot is very similar in both works. Tom Jones, in both, is a foundling befriended by Allworthy, loved by Sophia, wronged by Blifil, persecuted by Lady Bellaston, served by Partridge. But if Mr. Buchanan had seen fit to provide other names for his characters he would have given no offense, and might even have escaped a measure of critical censure. For besides the framework of the plot, which is not strikingly ingenious, and the names of the characters, there is little enough of Fielding in the play; not only is the frank indelicacy of that great genius very properly avoided, but the truth, the humor, and the humanity of “Tom Jones” are very faintly reflected in the play, so that Mr. Buchanan’s announcement of his indebtedness to Fielding might suggest, to a cynical person, that he sought to bolster up his own literary reputation by coupling it with the immortal Fielding’s.
     At any rate the statement that “Sophia” was a new version of “Tom Jones” sent people to Wallack’s Theatre last evening with anticipations that were not fulfilled. They went thinking of Fielding; wondering what sort of a person Squire Western would be on the stage; expecting a perpetual flow of unstrained merriment from Partridge,—and they left the theatre disappointed because the Squire turned out to be such a commonplace old bully, and Partridge was not Partridge at all. Now, on the other hand, if Mr. Buchanan had laid less stress upon his debt to Fielding he would not have thrown his own work into comparison with Fielding’s, an unwise thing for any writer to do, and quite as dangerous an action as for Mr. Boucicault, for instance, to compare himself with Shakespeare. With the shade of Fielding uplifted from its surface “Sophia” would have been recognized as a laboriously constructed four-act piece, in which the persons and manners of English life in the eighteenth century are depicted in a style copied after the dramatists of that century—a play with a little sentiment in it, a touch of pathos, a trifle of mild fun, and a great deal of dreary commonplace. In other words, Mr. Buchanan, having in the past tried his hand at modern comedy without distinguished success, has now taken a hack at old comedy and produced what would be termed, in the choice speech of this era, a “back number,” with a surprisingly antique flavor. Thus placing himself among the writers of old English comedy Mr. Buchanan probably expects to be criticised according to the standard of criticism applied to Goldsmith and Sheridan; but we really have neither time nor space this morning to gratify his wish.
     Such examination as there is time to bestow upon “Sophia” will disclose the fact that the heroine is a weak and colorless character, with little of the matchless charm of the old Squire’s daughter, with whom Fielding himself was so much in love; that partridge is the low comedy serving man of a hundred comedies; that Western is the fox-hunting gentleman of every writer of comedies from Congreve to Boucicault; that Molly Seagrim, Black George, and Philosopher Square, strong characters in the novel, are personages of little account in the play; that Allworthy is an insignificant “second old man,” and that Lady Bellaston, one of the most remarkable creations in English fiction, is treated in the play in a way which only Squire Western (Fielding’s Squire) could appropriately describe. Tom Jones, purified and changed into a passive victim, makes a good enough sort of a hero, and Blifil, though an evident villain from the start, fills his position well enough in a dramatic sense. There are some pretty passages in “Sophia,” and some amusing ones, and in the hands of Mr. Wallack’s actors it will fill out a part of the season agreeably; but it is not a strong play, or a continuously interesting one.
     Mr. Charles Groves, a new member of the company, was seen last evening for the first time. His character was Partridge. He is an easy and natural actor, with a fund of humor of his own, plenty of vivacity, and an agreeable presence. His features are expressive and his movements graceful. Miss Kate Bartlett distinguished herself as the pert serving woman, Honour, a loquacious personage very familiar on the stage. Miss Katherine Rogers’s conception of Lady Bellaston was worse than Mr. Buchanan’s, and her execution was worse than her conception. The cast also included Miss Robe as Sophia, Mme. Ponisi as her aunt, Mr. Edwards as Western, Miss Coote as Molly Seagrim, Mr. Henley as Blifil, and Mr. Kyrie Bellew as Tom Jones. The scenery was very pretty, and the entire performance smooth and intelligent.

___

Sophia from The New York Times (19 December, 1886)

ROBERT BUCHANAN’S OPPORTUNITY.
From the Pall Mall Gazette.

     It appears that the English cemetery at Lisbon is in a state of disgraceful neglect. Here, as every one knows, Henry Fielding is buried, and here, as every one does not know, “cart-loads of the bones of British soldiers,” collected from the battlefields of the Peninsular war, were deposited after 1810. The tomb of Fielding, so a recent visitor writes to the Times, is entirely overgrown, and even the inscription is in places obliterated. This is certainly not as it should be, and if the English residents in Lisbon have not sufficient patriotic piety to tend Fielding’s tomb it devolves on literary England to see that it be rescued from its present state of neglect. Might not Mr. Robert Buchanan at once advertise “Sophia” and express his gratitude toward Fielding by trimming and whitewashing his monument as he has trimmed and whitewashed “Tom Jones”? It would be a graceful act of expiation.

___

Sophia from The Times (7 June, 1892 - p.8)

VAUDEVILLE THEATRE.

     In default of fresher attractions, Sophia has once more found its way into the Vaudeville programme. The revival comes, no doubt, a little earlier than would have been the case had fortune smiled upon Mr. Thomas Thorne’s recent experiments with new plays; but there can be no question as to the enduring qualities of this version of “Tom Jones,” in which Mr. Robert Buchanan is certainly seen at his best as an adapter. Sophia is one of the very few modern plays which can be seen again and again with pleasure, and in the present instance it is favoured with an exceptionally good cast. Mr. Charles Warner takes up the part of the brilliant scapegrace who yet with all faults, is so much more lovable than the immaculate heroes of modern melodrama. It is a part eminently suited to the actor’s robust and vigorous method, and although Mr. Warner could do with a little more verge and scope than is furnished by one of the smallest stages in London, he succeeds in winning a full measure of sympathy for his character. Miss Maude Millett brings her sympathetic manner to bear with excellent effect upon the engaging personality of Miss Sophia Western, while Mr. Fred Thorne and Miss Vane re-appear with undiminished success as the bluff Squire Western and the heartless woman of fashion, Lady Bellaston. Mr. Thomas Thorne is of course at home in his old part of Partridge.

Back to the Bibliography or the Plays

[Programme for the 350th performance of Sophia on Wednesday, June 15th, 1887, with opinions of the play from W. E. Gladstone and Henry Irving on the front page.]

_____

A Dark Night’s Bridal from The Times (11 April, 1887 - p.8)

     As a lever de rideau to Sophia there was produced at the Vaudeville on Saturday night a short one act piece in blank verse by Mr. Robert Buchanan, called A Dark Night’s Bridal. For the story of this the author confesses himself indebted to a “prose sketch” by Mr. R. L. Stevenson. The acknowledgment is well-meant, but, unfortunately, it associates a probably innocent writer with a very incoherent, not to say nonsensical, piece of work. The scene is laid at the Castle Chasseloup, in Burgundy in the 15th century, and the personages are three—Le Sire de Chasseloup (who is nameless), his niece Blanche, and a casual visitor, Henri de St. Valery. Le Sire de Chasseloup has intercepted some amorous correspondence between his niece and a certain captain of archers, who, it appears, has arranged a secret meeting with the young lady. As luck has it, Henri de St. Valery, a total stranger to the household, enters the castle about the time appointed for the rendezvous to seek shelter from a storm, and is mistaken by the irate châtelain for his niece’s lover. Explanations and protests are unavailing; Blanche’s uncle has resolved that she shall wed the intruder then and there, an altar and a priest being provided for the occasion, and the visitor is given a quarter of an hour to decide whether he shall marry the young lady or be hanged. After some haggling, the match is agreed upon and the curtain falls. There is not a glimmer of truth or common sense in the story, the absurdity of which, as here told, is accentuated by the conscientious and careful acting of Mr. Royce Carleton as the châtelain, and Miss Kate Rorke and Mr. Fuller Mellish as the lovers.

Back to the Bibliography or the Plays

_____

The Blue Bells of Scotland from The Penny Illustrated Paper (3 September, 1887 - p.2)

     The Novelty being one of the few London playhouses demanding a low and moderate rent, I fancy the little theatre in Great Queen-street should now pay—with good management. Anyway, the clever and versatile new Directress has my best wishes for her success. To begin with, the lady has in Mr. Howard Paul secured a most genial and experiences Manager. As for Mr. Robert Buchanan’s new play, I hear, on trustworthy authority, that “Miss Harriett Jay, in casting ‘The Blue Bells of Scotland,’ has been particular in filling the smallest parts with the greatest care, so that a perfect ensemble may be obtained. Three weeks of incessant rehearsal, under the practised eye of the author and Mr. Henry Neville, ought to enable the drama to work well at the première, on Sept. 7. In act i. the action occurs in the Highlands; in act ii. there is a bustling fair scene. A tableau representing Shaftesbury-avenue by night occurs in the third act; a jungle in Burmah is given in the fourth; and the last scene of the play will be a marvel of scenic art representing a village by the sea. Mr. Henry Neville plays a young Highlander, Graham Macdonald; and Miss Fortescue enacts his sister, Mina, a part presenting great possibilities for emotional acting.”

___

The Blue Bells of Scotland from The Times (13 September, 1887 - p.9)

NOVELTY THEATRE.

     The elegant and handsomely-appointed theatre which was erected a few years ago in Great Queen-street without sufficient regard, it would seem, to the fact that that is no thoroughfare for the playgoing public, has been put to various uses. For some time past it has been placed at the disposal of amateurs. It has now, however, reverted to its original condition as a public theatre, being reopened by Miss Harriett Jay with a new drama by Mr. Robert Buchanan called The Blue Bells of Scotland. That success will attend this experiment is by no means certain, for on the fall of the curtain last night the attitude of the house was hardly such as to inspire a belief in the capacity of the new play to attract the public to an unfamiliar neighbourhood. Mr. Robert Buchanan has broken fresh ground in laying the hardships of the crofter or fishing population of the Highlands under contribution for dramatic purposes, but this subject is treated rather in an incidental fashion, his main theme being the old, old story of the betrayal of a simple country maiden by a smooth-tongued aristocrat, who assumes a lowly station the better to serve his wicked ends. Lord Arranmore, the villain of the play, is an absentee Highland landlord, who allows a hard-hearted “factor” or agent to oppress the simple-minded population owning his sway. Evictions are the order of the day, although the poor people find a warm sympathizer in the next-of-kin to the noble lord, the Highland chieftain Graham Macdonald. In these circumstances it occurs to Lord Arranmore, who is young and unmarried, but engaged to Lady Ethel Gordon, a young English lady, to visit his Highland estates in disguise as an English tourist, and the scheme brings him into relations with Mina Macdonald, Graham’s sister, whose beauty stirs his worst passions into activity. Mina Macdonald is in reality his cousin, but that circumstance does not deter Lord Arranmore from boldly abducting her in his yacht and carrying her off to a gilded cage in St. John’s-wood, after appeasing her homely scruples by a mock marriage. All this is set forth in the first and second acts, and the remainder of the play is devoted to a scheme of retribution in which Graham Macdonald and Lord Arranmore’s fiancée take part. In this somewhat conventional development of the story the author has been at pains to couple his characters with an event so recent as the campaign in Burmah. Lord Arranmore is colonel of a Highland regiment, and on deserting his victim in London, goes on active service in Burmah, whither he is followed by his avenging clansman in the capacity of a private soldier. The hostile meeting between the men occurs in a Burmah jungle, but at the moment of its threatening to have a fatal issue for the seducer, the natives attack the English detachment, and the enemies subordinate their personal quarrel to the defence of the English flag. When next the thread of the story is taken up in England we learn that Lord Arranmore has died penitent on the homeward passage, and that Macdonald has returned with the Victoria Cross and prestige enough as a soldier to secure him the hand and heart of Lady Ethel Gordon, after which the now Lord of Arranmore betakes himself to his Highland home with his English bride to console the sorrowing Mina and end the career of the tyrannical “factor.”
     Although not free from disturbing improbabilities, the play it will be seen is fresh in tone and well conceived. It suffers pictorally from being presented upon a small stage, but the Highland scenes, including village dances as well as evictions, and the jungle fighting are in their way stirring enough. Miss Fortescue plays the Highland girl, Mina Macdonald, with much winning simplicity and sweetness, and to this character, who is more picturesque in a tartan plaid than in the “braw” attire of a St. John’s-wood belle, Miss Harriett Jay offers an admirable foil as the English lady. Than Mr. Henry Neville no more robustious a representative of Macdonald could be desired. The part suits this actor to perfection. Most of the male characters are addicted to the kilt, and Scotch enters largely into the dialogue. At the close of the performance the author was called, but a certain tenuity in the plot, coupled with a too frequent use of “tableau curtains,” which cut up the play into fragments, will probably debar The Blue Bells of Scotland from becoming a popular success.

Back to the Bibliography or the Plays or Harriett Jay Reviews

_____

Fascination from The Times (8 October, 1887 - p.4)

THE NOVELTY THEATRE.

     Fascination is the title of a three-act piece, written by Harriett Jay and Robert Buchanan, which was produced on Thursday for the first time in London at a matinée at the Novelty Theatre. It is described as “a new and improbable comedy,” and although unquestionably possessing considerable merit, it cannot be denied that the piece certainly deserves the latter epithet. Briefly told the story is that of two lovers, Lord Islay and Lady Madge Slashton, who tread the uneven paths proverbially pursued by true affection. Lady Madge, a charming but rather “slangy” girl, is devoted to her lover; but her jealousy is aroused by a foreign gentleman masquerading in society under the title of the Comte de la Grange. This gentleman persuades her that her lover, Lord Islay, has fallen a victim to the fascinations of a beautiful widow of doubtful reputation and antecedents, named Mrs. Delamere. Maddened by her suspicions, Lady Madge decides to play a bold and dangerous part, in which she is aided by her brother. Attired in male costume she obtains an introduction to Mrs. Delamere, at whose house she meets Lord Islay, and is a witness of his flirtations. Determined to find out the truth concerning his relations with the widow, Lady Madge makes desperate love to Mrs. Delamere, who is quickly smitten by the rich young gentleman “from Jamaica.” Mrs. Delamere is the creature of the Comte de la Grange, who, in his turn, aspires to the hand of Lady Madge. In order to further his suit he insists that Mrs. Delamere shall obtain from Lord Islay a signet ring given to him by Lady Madge. A dinner party takes place at the house of the widow, and after dinner the gentlemen play cards in the drawing-room. While they are playing Lord Islay takes advantage of the opportunity for a tête-à-tête with Mrs. Delamere, who borrows his signet ring, and when he redemands it declares that he had given it to her. High words ensue, and Lady Madge, who had witnessed the incident from the card-table, declares that she saw Lord Islay give the ring, accuses him of cowardice, and strikes him, having previously bought from the Comte Lord Islay’s “paper” for the money lost to the former at play. This closes the second act with a powerful tableau. During all this time the secret of Lady Madge’s disguise has been safely kept, and the third act, which takes place in a morning-room in Berkeley-square, is one of explanation. For the rest it is sufficient to say that Lord Islay is forgiven when it transpires that he has been guilty of nothing worse than folly and indiscretion. The rascality of the Comte de la Grange, who is a swindler and a card-sharper, is duly demonstrated, and all ends happily. Fascination is a well-written piece, but the first act, the scene of which is laid at Hurlingham-lodge, Sunbury-on-Thames, is inferior to the second and third acts, both of which go smartly and well. Miss Harriett Jay, as Lady Madge Slashton, had a difficult rôle to sustain, and one which in less competent hands might easily have degenerated into vulgarity. Fortunately, however, it was played with intelligence and spirit and was a clever piece of acting. The part of Lord Islay was Played by Mr. Henry Neville, that of Mrs. Delamere by Miss Alice Yorke, and that of the Comte de la Grange by Mr. George Canninge. Mr. Edward Righton was amusing as the Rev. Mr. Colley, a curate, but on the whole the cast was not a strong one. The piece was very favourably received.

___

Fascination from The Times (20 January, 1888 - p.9)

VAUDEVILLE THEATRE.

     Miss Harriett Jay and Mr. Robert Buchanan’s comedy of Fascination, which was produced at a matinée at the Novelty Theatre a few months ago, was transferred last night to the Vaudeville, where, despite its avowedly “improbable” character, for so it is described by the authors, it met with a generally favourable reception. The improbability of Fascination is supposed to lie in the fact that a young lady of society, Lady Madge Slashton, believing her lover, Lord Islay, to be faithless, puts on male attire and follows him into certain haunts of dissipation in Mayfair without being recognized. Such a motive is frequently employed in old comedy, to say nothing of As You Like It, with excellent effect, but in applying it to the conditions of modern society Miss Jay and Mr. Buchanan have rightly assumed that they trench upon the limits of the acceptable. Modern audiences, encouraged by the realistic stage manager, who assures them that every button on his costumes is correct, and that every article of stage furniture is guaranteed by some eminent cabinet maker, scrutinize very closely the proceedings of the dramatis personæ, and are apt to condemn anything that does not happen to be reconcilable with the experience of everyday life. It is true that there is nothing more inherently improbable than a love story which, beginning, sat, at 9 p.m., culminates in marriage long before midnight, and is moreover repeated nightly for an entire season; but if this is to be objected to, upon logical grounds, there is of course an end of the drama altogether. The public, somewhat illogically, direct their attention to smaller matters. To bring forward a third party to overhear some important conversation on the assumption that while visible to the house he is invisible to his fellow characters, is a device which the boldest dramatic author now hesitates to resort to. “Asides,” another time-honoured conventionality, are all but banished from modern dialogue, the prosaic auditor being of opinion that they are as likely to be heard by the characters on the stage as by the public; and, generally speaking, an actor is expected to demean himself pretty much as he would in the street or in a private house.
     In these circumstances it certainly needed some degree of courage on the part of the authors of Fascination to put their heroine into the dress-coat of the present day and to allow her under that transparent disguise to meet her lover with impunity in a London drawing-room, but the experiment has happily been successful. There is hope for the drama when we find that, while so many conventionalities of the stage are being abandoned under stress of the matter-of-fact spirit of the age, the playgoing public accept, almost without a murmur, one of the boldest devices of the old dramatists. No doubt if Fascination were a better constructed piece than it is, the slight disposition shown by the first-night public to find fault with the author’s dramatic scheme would not have been manifested at all. On the other hand, it may be observed that a more plausible representative of the heroine in her dual capacity could hardly be found than Miss Harriett Jay. In her most feminine moments this versatile actress is never quite free from a suspicion of mannishness, and she wears a coat and trousers as though to the manner born. The piece owes much, therefore, to the presence of Miss Harriett Jay in the cast. Whether without her aid or that of some actress of similar physique the public would accept a modern Hippolyta or Rosalind is a question. In other respects the cast has been changed since the matinée performance. Mr. Thomas Thorne finds a congenial part in the amorously disposed but somewhat bashful clergyman; the adventuress, Mrs. Delamere, is strikingly impersonated by Miss Vane, who has to fill the trying rôle of a “fashionable beauty;” and Mr. Conway plays with sufficient sincerity the purblind Lord Islay. Miss Barton makes a graceful ingénue; and there is quite a galaxy of beauty in the demi-mondain drawing-room, redolent of patchouli, where the principal incidents of the story are enacted.

___

Fascination from The Penny Illustrated Paper (28 January, 1888 - p.10)

     Mr. Thomas Thorne had in the character of the surreptitiously married butler a part that suited him “down to the ground.” So much so that I wonder at his withdrawing Mr. Henry A. Jones’s “Heart of Hearts” in favour of the “improbable comedy” of “Fascination,” by Mr. Robert Buchanan and Miss Harriet Jay. This talented and good-looking authoress assumes in “Fascination” both skirts and unmentionables. She is Lady Mable Slashton. In love with, and loved by, a young officer in the Guards, Lady Madge is jealous of Mrs. Delamere, a siren with whom her lover is entangled; and her Ladyship dons male attire in order to be able to watch gallant Lord Islay’s flirtation with this attractive woman at an evening party. Her father, the Duke, and his attendant Curate, also attend this party. There are other “improbabilities,” which deprived the piece of interest. The Curate, enacted by Mr. Thomas Thorne, was very shadowy. The senile Duke of Mr. Fred Thorne was an impossible peer. Mr. H. B. Conway, on the other hand, made a manly Lord Islay; Mr. Royce Carleton was a good Count De Lagrange; and Miss Harriet Jay, Mrs. Canninge, Miss Vane, and Mr. S. Buist and Miss Warden played their parts very well, Miss Vane imparting considerable strength to the part of seductive Mrs. Delamere, “a fine figger of a woman,” as Joe Gargery put it.

___

Reviews and other items relating to the American productions of Fascination are available on the Alone in London in America page.

Back to the Bibliography or the Plays or Harriett Jay Reviews

_____

Partners from The New York Times (8 December, 1887)

     The new piece written by Robert Buchanan for the Haymarket will be called “Partners.” The play, which was to have been produced on Saturday, will not be brought out until Jan. 5. In addition to the regular company of the Haymarket the services of Misses le Thiere and Kingston have been secured. The latter lady is a well-known professional beauty who has had some experience in the provinces. She will be intrusted with an important rôle. The story of the play is as follows: An old German merchant is possessed of a beautiful wife, with whom his partner falls desperately in love. The German trusts both man and woman implicitly, despite the warnings of friends and enemies. During her husband’s absence on the Continent the wife has a passionate love scene with the partner, in which she confesses her love. He urges her to flee with him, which she is about to do, when the voice of her child is heard calling her from an adjoining room. This brings her back to her proper self, and she refuses to betray her husband. This is an excellent scene, and although the idea has been used before Buchanan’s treatment of it is forcible. The husband returns after being ruined by the failure of a Continental firm. From a conservatory he sees the two together and hears the woman avow her love for Charles, but he does not hear her avow that gratitude and respect preclude her from wronging her husband, even if the motherly love stirred by the voice of her child was not sufficient. Further, he is poor now, and her duty compels her to remain. The husband’s eyes are at last opened, and in a strong scene he drives her from his house without listening to her story. In the fifth act it is Christmas, with its sacred and peaceful associations. The old man’s heart, touched by the gladness around him, breathes forgiveness on his wife and partner, and the curtain falls on a holly-decked apartment in which once more reign domestic peace, happiness, and love.

___

Partners from The Times (6 January, 1888 - p.9)

HAYMARKET THEATRE.

     In a note appended to the bill of his new play of Partners, which was produced at the Haymarket Theatre last night, Mr. Robert Buchanan intimates that the principal character, Heinrich Borgfeldt, is “founded upon that of Risler in M. Alphonse Daudet’s novel of ‘Fromont Jeune et Risler Ainé,’ but that, while numerous suggestions have been taken from the book, the leading situations and most of the dramatis personæ are radically different.” It would be easy to join issue with Mr. Robert Buchanan upon the question of his alleged independence of M. Daudet’s novel, but this would be a needless as well as an ungracious task. We quote his acknowledgment of the source of his inspiration in connexion with Partners not for the purpose of proving, what is already well known, that an adapter is apt to develop something of a foster-mother’s fondness for the little foundling under his charge, but because it explains certain of the imperfections of the piece, which the first-night public noted with their accustomed frankness. “Fromont Jeune et Risler Ainé” is unsuited to dramatization. M. Daudet himself has attempted the task and failed. Mr. Robert Buchanan has no doubt been wise, therefore, in endeavouring to shake himself free of the trammels of the novel; but the charm of that intensely realistic book has evidently pursued him throughout his undertaking to the extent of crippling the imaginativeness and the apt observation of character of which on other occasions he has given abundant proof. Regarded as an adaptation, Partners is a work of skill; the only question it raises is whether Mr. Robert Buchanan has not unduly handicapped himself in transplanting to London a story and a set of characters essentially Parisian in their growth, and governed by a code of morals which the Lord Chamberlain has not yet seen his way to accept.
     The character of Heinrich Borgfeldt, which is taken by Mr. Beerbohm Tree, retains the German habits of thought and speech, the uncouthness, the goodheartedness, and the crowning domestic sorrow of Risler. He has, however, ceased to be a designer of wall-papers and become a partner in what appears to be a financial house in the City—a circumstance which it must be confessed is somewhat incompatible with the childish simplicity of his nature. Nor does the actor help materially to explain the part, which suffers in an unusual degree from the difficulties of adaptation. It would not be easy, we fancy, for Mr. Beerbohm Tree or Mr. Robert Buchanan to discover at the head of a great City firm an elderly German combining with the most primitive tastes the appearance of an impecunious music teacher, and incapable, after 20 or 30 years’ residence in this country, to speak English without a plentiful intermixture of such expressions as “nein,” “ja wohl,” “mit mein wife,” and “auf Wiedersehen.” These are small matters no doubt, and Mr. Tree or Mr. Buchanan might urge with some show of reason that the German attributes of the character require to be accentuated upon the stage. Still, such manifest exaggerations are apt to detract from the value of a study of character, or at best to lessen one’s faith in the truthfulness of the actor’s or the author’s observation. In addition to Risler, we discover in the cast, under the name of Charles Derwentwater, the younger Fromont, who endeavours, as in the book, but without the same success, to detach the young and flighty Madame Risler from her wifely duties. We meet also with the faithful cashier, M. Planus, renamed Mr. Parr, and with the “illustrious Delobelle,” the tragedian out of employment, who reappears as Mr. Algernon Bellair. Sidonie, the Madame Risler of the original, is a thoroughly corrupt creature, vicious by instinct, and impossible as a type of character in an English play. Mr. Buchanan has changed her into a weak, undecided, but on the whole well-meaning woman, who allows herself to be drawn into a somewhat serious flirtation and to inspire her friends, including an ingénue sister, with the dread that their friendly offices to save her from the effects of her indiscretion may be “too late.” Such hybrid types are seldom acceptable to a theatrical audience, who demand, above all things, clearness of outline, alike in character and situation; but it is obvious that the adapter having taken M. Daudet’s story for better or worse was unable to help himself. The character of Madame Risler in the new version owes much to Miss Marion Terry, who invests it with a certain amount of charm and even plausibility. Among the personages of Mr. Buchanan’s creating are Gretchen, a child of the Rislers, who helps to bring about the inevitable reconciliation between husband and wife, and who is played by Miss Minnie Terry, a juvenile débutante of the well-known theatrical family of that name; Alice, a younger sister of Madame Risler’s,; and Mrs. Harkaway, a wicked “woman of the world,” very distantly suggested by the Madame Dobson of the book, who leads the unsophisticated heroine into temptation. Alice is gracefully embodied by Miss Achurch, while Mrs. Harkaway is drawn with the necessary degree of viciousness by Miss Gertrude Kingston. Mr. Brookfield gives an amusing sketch of the impecunious tragedian, and Mr. Laurence Cautley and Mr. Kemble as the “gentlemanly partner” and the sober, staid cashier, are excellent representatives of their parts. But the interest of the play centres after all in the character of Borgfeldt, which is drawn by Mr. Tree with all his graphic detail and picturesqueness. It is another finished portrait of a somewhat eccentric cast to be added to Mr. Tree’s already well stocked gallery.

___

Partners from The New York Times (6 January, 1888)

     Robert Buchanan’s new play, “Partners,” was produced at the Haymarket Theatre to-night in the presence of one of the most brilliant audiences of the season. In an author’s note on the programme it was stated that the character of Dorgfeldt was partly founded on that of Risler in “Fromont Jeune,” by Daudet, but that the leading situations and most of the dramatis personæ were radically different. If by this Buchanan means that the names of the characters being changed and the wife white-washed makes the play radically different, it is so; but in fact it is in the main identical, and the resemblance to Daudet’s play is complete. It can be considered but an adaptation from the French author. The one string which is played upon is too fine to sustain the tension put upon it by the adapter, and what is considered the great scene of the play is lengthened by one-third more than was necessary or advisable. In its English shape the play is the old story of a confiding husband and a wife weak to the verge of guilt, except that the man who tempts her to dishonor her husband is his trusted partner. The usual misunderstandings produce a separation, which of course terminates as soon as one word of explanation is given. The play has some strong situations and many anti-climaxes, and is far from faultless in construction. It was respectfully listened to on account of the superb acting of Beerbohm Tree, who saved it from an early doom, although at the fall of the curtain hisses and applause were pretty fairly divided. If the piece ever succeeds it will require a great deal of compression and many alterations.

___

Partners from The Penny Illustrated Paper (14 January, 1888 - p.10)

MR. H. BEERBOHM TREE bids fair to do for Comedy what Mr. Henry Irving has done for Tragedy. This clever young actor had already made his mark as a delineator of character unsurpassed for power of individualising, as witness his totally opposite creations, sketched above, of the original comic Curate in “The Private Secretary” and Macari, the cold-blooded villain in the weird drama of “Called Back.” Since Mr. Tree has had the good fortune to succeed to the managership of Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft’s handsome house in the Haymarket he has well sustained the finish and truth to nature of his own personal representations, and has placed on the stage the new pieces intrusted to him with a care and a magnificence which well entitle him to rank with Mr. Irving for artistic excellence. These distinguishing merits are conspicuous in Mr. Robert Buchanan’s new comedy-drama, “Partners,” which does not appear to have escaped hissing on the first night, but which on a subsequent evening, the piece having been judiciously compressed, went admirably. The central character and backbone of the play are derived from M. Daudet’s powerful romance, “Fromont Jeune et Risler Aîné.” Heinrich Borgefeldt, the character in question, is a middle-aged German, whose probity has won for him the senior partnership of his firm, a position which has gained for him also a fair young wife, Claire. But Claire evidently finds the attentions of the junior partner, Charles Derwentwater, congenial. Hence the tears of the German, who returns from his travels to find his firm ruined by Charles’s extravagances on behalf of Claire, and to imagine, on what appears to be good evidence, that his wife is about to elope with his seductive young partner. An old unopened letter convinces him of his error, and it is the means of reconciling Heinrich and Claire Borgefeldt in a touching Christmas scene. Heinrich Borgefeldt is one of Mr. Tree’s most artistic assumptions, and will tell the more when he infuses a spark of fire into the acting here and there. Mr. Laurence Cautley makes a fervid lover; and Miss Marion Terry a charmingly-graceful and natural Claire; while the Mrs. Harkaway of Miss Gertrude Kingston is decidedly clever, the Lady Silverdale of Miss Le Thiere is capital, and nothing could be more winsome than Miss Achurch’s Alice Bellair (whom the author ought to have given a sweetheart), little Minnie Terry’s Gretchen, or Miss Emilie Grattan’s Mary. Mr. H. Kemble is admirable as the confidential head clerk, Mr. Parr. Much laughter is occasioned by Mr. Chas. Brookfield’s humorous and true portrait of an old-school tragedian, Mr. Algernon Bellair; and justice is done to minor low-comedy parts by Mr. Eric Lewis and Mr. C. Allan.

___

Partners from The New York Times (1 April, 1888)

     Mr. Alexander Salvini will have the character sustained in London by Mr. Beerbohm Tree in “Partners” at the Madison-Square Theatre tomorrow night. The man is an elderly German, Henry Borgfeldt, a wealthy manufacturer, the husband of a young, vain wife, and the partner in business of a vain and foolish young man. The character is founded on Daudet’s Risler in “Fromont Jeune et Risler Aine,” and Mr. Robert Buchanan’s play is merely a new stage version of that famous romance which had already been put on the stage—in France with notable success—before Mr. Buchanan took up the subject. A dramatic version of Daudet’s story under the title of “Sidonie” was tried at the Fifth-Avenue Theatre in this city during the Winter of 1877-8. Mr. Buchanan has changed the scene from Paris to London, given new names to the people, and modified the story so as to avoid the tragic but entirely natural ending of the original. But many of the essential components of “Fromont jeune et Risler aine” will be recognized in “Partners.” The faithful bookkeeper of the firm has a counterpart in Parr, the character intrusted to Mr. J. H. Stoddart and the retired comedian is reproduced in Algernon Bellair, to be acted by Mr. E. M. Holland. The cast, otherwise, will be as follows: Charles Derwentwater, Walden Ramsey; Mrs. Harkaway’s husband, Herbert Ayling; Dr. Somerville, William Davidge; Dickinson, C. P. Flockton; Boker, John Findlay; Smith, W. H. Pope; Servant, George S. Stevens; Claire, Marie Burroughs; Alice Bellair, May Robson; Gretchen, Gertie Homan; Mary Derwentwater, Kate Malony; Lady Silverdale, Mrs. Phillips, and Mrs. Harkaway, Mathilde Madison.

___

Partners from The New York Times (3 April, 1888)

“PARTNERS:” MR. SALVINI’S NEW CHARACTER.

     It was a night of triumph at the Madison-Square Theatre. Robert Buchanan’s play, a palpable imitation of “Fromont jeune et Risler aine,” though it cannot be strictly called a dramatization of Daudet’s romance, was well received from the beginning. The acting of Mr. Alexander Salvini was uncommonly moving and forcible; his associates were generally efficient, and two of them at least, Mr. Stoddart and Mr. E. M. Holland, achieved distinguished success. The audience was large, friendly, and demonstrative. As the evening wore on the demonstrations increased in vigor and effusiveness. The fourth act of the drama ends with a passage of words between a husband and wife touching their social relation in its most serious point and involving a strong display of emotion and passion. When the curtain had fallen upon this scene the actors were thrice recalled, and the tumult did not subside until Mr. A. M. Palmer had appeared on the stage to acknowledge the tribute bestowed upon his theatre and his company.
     “Partners” is in five acts, and it pleases Mr. Buchanan to describe it as a comedy-drama. The story of the play resembles Daudet’s famous romance except in one important particular. The character of Sidonie is displaced by a weak-minded, vain woman, who does not wholly succumb to temptation, and whose love for her child helps her to maintain her wifely honor. In the height of the domestic tempest, when Henry Borgfeldt sees commercial ruin and personal disgrace before him, when he casts his wife from him and sacrifices all to preserve the honor of his firm, the spectator knows that the storm clouds will pass away and Borgfeldt’s romance will have a happy ending. To be sure, the character of Claire Borgfeldt is not to be compared, as a study of human nature with Daudet’s Sidonie, that strong, repellant, yet fascinating, study of total depravity. Claire is merely a pretty, ill-bred simpleton, who loves her child, and will be very fond of her husband after a little sad experience. Mr. Buchanan has kept close to Daudet in choosing other essential materials for his play; in the viciousness of the young partner, in the sagacity and faithfulness of the old bookkeeper, and in the harmless pretentiousness of the retired actor, the story of “Fromont jeune et Risler aine” is strictly adhered to. The rest of the play is Buchanan’s own, and a very fair amount of skill is displayed in the development of the plot and in the employment of theatrical device.
     Henry Borgfeldt, a German, was a workman employed by a firm of manufacturers. The head of the firm encouraged him and in time he became a partner. When the play begins Borgfeldt is the senior partner and Charles Derwentwater, husband of his old employer’s daughter, is the junior partner. Borgfeldt regards Mr. Charles and Mr. Charles’s wife almost with reverence; his 5-year-old daughter he simply worships; his wife, Claire, he blindly adores. He is rough, lusty, frank, unsuspicious, and affectionate. The splendor of his new home worries him somewhat, and the dignified butler, who always addresses him as “me lud” from force of “’abit” makes him very uncomfortable, but he bears it all for the sake of Claire. Charles Derwentwater loves Claire; a fashionable coquette whom he has piqued endeavors to cause his ruin and Claire’s by way of revenge. Parr, Borgfeldt’s head clerk, warns him from impending ruin, but he will not heed the warning. Returning from a business trip abroad, however, he finds that Parr’s predictions are verified. Derwentwater is a defaulter; the firm is on the verge of bankruptcy, and his wife’s guilt seems to be plain. He tears her diamonds from her neck to increase the assets of the firm and drives her from the house. He compels Charles to return to his own wife, his old master’s daughter, who must be protected from disgrace, and, giving up all his property, retires from the partnership and returns to his old place as a workman. In time his wife’s innocence is manifested and the unusual virtue of Borgfeldt gets its reward.
     It will be seen that Borgfeldt is not quite so reasonable a person as Risler. His blind adoration of Claire is changed to brutal hate too quickly; he does not wait for proofs of his wife’s guilt before he accuses her. His fierce passion after the disclosures is as unreasonable as his complacency and contentment before he knows the truth. But if such men as Borgfeldt are not common, yet the character can scarcely be called an impossible one. In the person of Mr. Salvini last evening the identity of the man was clearly established. A more potent and effective example of acting has not lately been seen on our stage. His strong individuality dominated the whole play, and the ardor and vehemence with which the character was endowed by the actor carried the sympathies of the spectators as with the force of a whirlwind. A gentler touch of some passages, a bit of delicate shading here and there would have improved the performance, but there is no ground for cavil. The wholesome vigor of Mr. Salvéni is not to be lightly regarded in these days of theatrical feebleness. His strong dramatic instinct, his sense of the picturesque were denoted in everything he did. His make-up was a remarkable disguise, and he looked the character to the life.
     Of the others we must speak very briefly. Mr. Stoddart had a congenial rôle as Parr. This was an admirable study, full of dignity and pathos. In the scene of the revelation Parr seems to be playing Iago to his employer’s Othello, and the honest contempt the old clerk feels for Borgfeldt’s sentimental weakness gives a twist to his utterances that makes the likeness stronger. A droll bit of quiet caricature was contributed by Mr. E. M. Holland, as Algernon Bellair, a retired actor with a profound regard for himself, Claire’s father, and a pensioner of Borgfeldt. Miss May Robson gave just the right tone to the few words spoken by Alice Bellair, Claire’s sister, a character remotely suggested by the lame girl of Daudet. Miss Robson’s acting had the effect of absolute sincerity. Miss Marie Burroughs was sweet and pretty as Claire, but lacking in force. Mr. Flockton was the dreadfully dignified butler; Miss Mathilde Madison, in gorgeous robes, the tiresome, intriguing woman of fashion; Mrs. Phillips, a good old lady with plenty of common sense, and Gertie Homan, a cunning little girl, appeared as Gretchen, Borgfeldt’s child.

Back to the Bibliography or the Plays

__

The E. J. Phillips website provides some information regarding the American reception of “Partners”.

_____

Joseph’s Sweetheart from The Times (9 March, 1888 - p.10)

THE THEATRES.

VAUDEVILLE.

     Mr. Robert Buchanan’s second adaptation of Fielding, Joseph’s Sweetheart, was brought out at the Vaudeville yesterday afternoon and proved to be a worthy pendant to Sophia, whose success, in all probability, it will rival. As Sophia was a version of “Tom Jones,” so the present play tells the story of “Joseph Andrews,” with improvements suggested by the conditions of dramatic effect and also, we may add, by the improved tone of polite conversation. To quote an “author’s note” on the playbill, Joseph’s Sweetheart is “rather a play utilizing some of Fielding’s characters than a dramatization of Fielding’s story.” It is Mr. Robert Buchanan’s good fortune to have perceived great dramatic potentialities in a novel hitherto disdained by the adapter; and a more wholesome, more vigorous, more interesting, more enjoyable play than he has fashioned out of it the public could not wish to see. The success of yesterday’s performance was unequivocal. That fielding is no longer read by the masses is not a matter likely to affect the popularity of Joseph’s Sweetheart in the smallest degree. The spectator is not called upon to brush up his knowledge of the original in order to understand either the adapter’s characters or his situations. Clear and straightforward in construction, the play tells its own story, and its pulse, so to speak, beats throughout with a steady, healthy throb. As his mainspring of action Mr. Buchanan has given prominence to the jealous vindictiveness of Lady Booby toward Joseph Andrews and his rustic sweetheart, Fanny Goodwill, whose abduction by the scented dandy and libertine, Lord Fellamar, is planned and carried out at her instigation. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” Lady Booby gives a pointed illustration of the axiom. Her passion for her erstwhile lackey, who is subsequently found to be of aristocratic birth and who has spurned her advances, turns into a hate that knows no bounds. Her project of revenge being foiled, for the innocent Fanny is rescued from her ravisher’s clutches at a night fête in Ranelagh-gardens, she declines to accept the inevitable, and at the close of the fifth act, when the happiness of the lovers is assured, she leaves the stage cursing them. It is a terrible picture which is thus drawn of a jealous woman’s fury and implacability, and Miss Vane, who plays Lady Booby, does the fullest justice to it, aided as she is by a handsome and imposing presence. Lest invidious comparisons should be drawn, let us hasten to say that the play has been no less fortunate in obtaining the support of Mr. H. B. Conway as Joseph and Miss Kate Rorke as the persecuted Fanny. They make a noble pair of lovers, whose varying fortunes are followed with the most sympathetic interest. How little the theatrical public care, after all, for that alloy of the goodness of human nature so much affected by naturaliste writers! Joseph Andrews is all that is upright, brave, and loyal, Fanny Goodwill all that is faithful and devoted, and the spectacle of so much virtue sends the house into raptures.
     The character of Parson Adams, one of the best known in the whole range of the 18th century fiction, stands in the relation of an accessory to Mr. Buchanan’s dramatic scheme, but it is so closely interwoven with the action, and so admirably embodied by Mr. Thomas Thorne, as to be the most prominent of all. The quaint figure of the rustic, simple-minded cleric who is passing rich on something less than £40 a year is met with at every turn, and one of the prettiest scenes of the piece is a representation of his humble cottage with a glimpse of its domestic life. Parson Adams preaches peace, but the wrongs of the world cause him to brandish menacingly at frequent intervals the stout-knotted stick that he always carries. This character is one of Mr. Thorne’s most delightful creations, far superior in point of interest and artistic truth to his Partridge. The habit of the pulpit is strong upon the venerable divine, but under his clerical manner human nature peeps forth with the most refreshing effect. Among other characters entitled to rank as flesh and blood are Lord Fellamar by Mr. Cyril Maude, Mrs. Adams by Miss Gladys Homfrey, Gipsy Jim by Mr. J. S. Blythe, Sir George Wilson, father of the long-lost Joseph, by Mr. William Rignold, Fellamar’s Welsh factotum Llewellyn ap Griffith by Mr. F. Thorne, and Mrs. Slipslop by Miss Eliza Johnstone. Most of the characters of the piece, indeed, exhibit a genuine kinship with humanity. It is curious to note that Mrs. Slipslop is the undoubted parent of Mrs. Malaprop, although her “derangement of epitaphs” is not perhaps quite so amusing. Considering the smallness of the stage of the Vaudeville wonders have been done in the way of scenic effect, particularly as regards the view of Ranelagh-gardens by night, where, by the way, the austere cleric falls into the hands of a bevy of enchanting damsels, greatly to his perplexity and alarm. Joseph’s Sweetheart is, on the whole, a stronger and better play than Sophia; it may suffer a little, however, in public estimation from being second in order.

Back to the Bibliography or the Plays

[Programme for Joseph’s Sweetheart at the Vaudeville Theatre, 1888.
There is a picture of William Rignold from this production on John Culme’s Footlight Notes]

_____

That Doctor Cupid from The Times (15 January, 1889 - p.7)

VAUDEVILLE THEATRE.

     The Faust legend has employed many pens and has been adapted to the stage in many forms, of which the most successful have been the purely burlesque. Mr. Irving’s Faust was not so much an adaptation as a reproduction of the dramatic elements of Goethe’s poem, with all its diablerie and other supernatural effects; but even that play was more dependent upon stage carpentry than any of its fellows at the Lyceum. Of the difficulties attending a dramatic adaptation, properly so-called, of the Faust legend, a more cogent example was furnished a few years ago by Mr. Herman Merivale’s play, The Cynic, in which a modern Faust and Mephistopheles figured in London society, the Satanic personage being a certain foreign gentleman of Iago-like propensities, named Count Lestrange. Despite its clever writing, The Cynic failed to win popularity, and pointed clearly to the inadvisability of mixing up any suggestion of the supernatural with the ordinary affairs of human life, so far as the stage is concerned. With the results of this and kindred experiments before his eyes, Mr. Robert Buchanan, writing for the Vaudeville Theatre, has not hesitated to revert once more to “Faust” for inspiration, “Faust” being unquestionably the basis of the “new and fantastic comedy in three acts,” entitled That Doctor Cupid, which was tentatively produced by Mr. Thomas Thorne and his company yesterday afternoon. We say the “basis” only, for between “Faust” and That Doctor Cupid there is but little superficial resemblance. The supernatural personage called forth in Mr. Buchanan’s comedy is not Mephistopheles, but Cupid—Cupid no longer the winged little cherub of the ancients, but the god of love grown old and rheumatic, although still provided with his bow and arrow as an ornamental pendant to his watch chain. At the same time this novel character may very fairly be described as a benevolent Mephistopheles; in the functions assigned to him in the play there is certainly a great deal that recalls his Satanic prototype.
     Mr. Buchanan fixes the period of his story in the beginning of the present century, and his hero, Harry Racket, when we first make his acquaintance, is a student at Cambridge. Harry Racket is in difficulties, his irascible uncle, Sir Timothy, hearing of his idleness and frivolity, has cut him off with a shilling, and he is consequently unable to marry his pretty cousin, Kate Constant, with whom he is in love and who is an heiress. In these distressing circumstances he anathematizes some old curios that have come into his possession, and one of them, a bottle containing what seems to him to be an indiarubber doll, he flings into the fireplace. The stage suddenly darkens, there is a peal of thunder, and a moment after Dr. Cupid, in the person of Mr. Thomas Thorne, is discovered squatting in the fireplace, from which, with a smiling good-natured face, he presently emerges to stretch his aching limbs, and to inquire of the astonished student what he can do for him. A few words of explanation put Harry Racket at his ease. Cupid explains that he has been shut up in the bottle by magic arts from the time of Queen Elizabeth, and that he is now at the service of his liberator in affairs of the heart. The youth speedily puts his strange visitor au courant of the situation. Cupid, who assumes the position of tutor to the young man, with the style and title of doctor, immediately suggests an aerial journey to Bath, where Sir Timothy and Miss Constant then are, and the new Faust and Mephistopheles begin their flight by a leap into space from the window sill. This is the end of the first act; the remainder of the story is concerned with the adventures of Dr. Cupid and his protégé at the fashionable resort of the day, where we may say at once the various personages, after a game of cross purposes, are reconciled to each other and made happy in their several ways. Dr. Cupid commits the blunder of making all the beauties of Bath become enamoured of his hero, and this estranges Kate Constant from her lover, besides setting other couples by the ears; but the evil is easily remedied, inasmuch as the benignant god has only to pretend to launch an arrow from an imaginary bow at any given couple in order to make them fall into each other’s arms. Mr. Frank Gillmore plays Harry Racket with the fire and spirit of a genuine hero of old comedy; as the testy Sir Timothy with a gouty leg, Mr. Frederick Thorne acts up to the same classical standard; and Miss Winifred Emery as the lovable Kate, Mr. Cyril Maude and Miss Marion Lea as a couple of lovers, Mr. Scott Buist as an aristocratic beau, and other members of the company make a brave show in the high-collared, cut-away coats, and ruffles, and the high-waisted frocks of the period. The piece is admirably acted indeed upon the lines of old comedy, so far as the general members of the company are concerned, none of them, except the hero, being supposed to be aware of the supernatural character of the strangely frivolous doctor. In particular, Mr. Cyril Maude and Miss Marion Lea may be commended for the spirit and piquancy of their performance, the one as a bashful and stuttering dandy, the other as a coquettish young widow.
     Profiting by the errors of some of his predecessors, the author has taken care not to give too serious an aspect to his story, and in this he is cleverly seconded by Mr. Thomas Thorne, who, whenever the action seems about to rise into the region of comedy, brings it back to the level of farce with his amusing but impossible antics as an elderly Cupid; it is as a farce, consequently, that the piece must be judged. On this lower range the extravagance of the action becomes theoretically acceptable, although it may not be entirely satisfactory to those who look for that genuine humour of which Mr. Thomas Thorne is often so happy an exponent. The difficulties of the theme, regarded from any point of view, are considerable, not the least of them being the danger that the public may feel their intelligence to be trifled with by the introduction of a live and active Cupid among a set of characters who are not even as far removed from modern life as those of The School for Scandal. It was not announced that the piece would forthwith be put into the evening bill.

Back to the Bibliography or the Plays

[Programme for That Doctor Cupid at the Vaudeville Theatre, 1889.]

_____

The Old Home from The Times (20 June, 1889 - p.5)

THE THEATRES.

VAUDEVILLE.

     The new comedy by Mr. Robert Buchanan tried yesterday at the Vaudeville, under the title of The Old Home, is not remarkably original, either in plot or in treatment. To the scores of matinée plays that are yearly produced and forgotten it bears what may be called a family resemblance. It is neither good nor bad; if it has no shining merits, it has no conspicuous defects. In a word, it is commonplace. The experienced playgoer who sees the story begun will have no difficulty in guessing its development and its conclusion, together with the various distractions to be encountered en route. The course over which the author takes us is one where every hurdle and hedgerow are familiar enough to be cleared at a bound with ease and assurance. Septimus Porter, an old “Colonial,” and his daughter have returned to England with a fortune; and for the sake of her money the lady has been married by a young baronet of “fast” habits and associations, Sir Charles Fenton. Among his friends Sir Charles numbers a disreputable major, who betrays and abandons a country girl. As this unhappy young person seeks an interview with Sir Charles, Lady Fenton and her father assume that he is the seducer, a suggestion to that effect being made by the major, who hopes thereby to ingratiate himself with his friend’s wife. Domestic trouble ensues. The baronet, if innocent of the graver charge whispered against him, is indubitably guilty of flirting too much with Mrs. Waldegrave, a lady whom he has met in society. But in the end the author’s house of cards so carefully constructed is blown over by a breath of commonsense, and the inevitable reconciliation between the young couple is effected just as Lady Fenton and her father, disgusted with London life, are on the point of returning to Australia. This story is too obviously insincere to arouse much interest, and the types of character it presents are mostly conventional. Mr. Thomas Thorne, as the disillusionized trader of Gum Tree Creek, affects the pathetic mood to comparatively little purpose; and of the other leading characters it need only be said that Miss Winifred Emery is winsome and engaging as Lady Fenton, that Miss Marion Lea is an attractive “society lady,” and that Mr. Gartborne is a plausible representative of the raffish man about town.

Back to the Bibliography or the Plays

_____

A Man’s Shadow from The New York Times (18 August, 1889)

     Robert Buchanan’s English version of “Roger la Honte,” the French melodrama that was founded on a sensational romance printed in Le Petit Journal, will be produced by Beerbohm Tree at the Haymarket Theatre Sept. 7. Mr. Buchanan is understood to have furnished his adaptation with a prologue in which some of the previous acts of Roger and his comrade in arms, Lucien de Noirville, are presented to the eye of the spectator instead of being merely described, as in the original. This must require some curtailment of the subsequent scenes, for “Roger la Honte” is in three parts, five acts, and ten tableaus, and, though it begins at the Ambigue, in Paris, punctually at 8, is rarely ended before midnight.

___

A Man’s Shadow from The Times (13 September, 1889 - p.3)

HAYMARKET THEATRE.

     During the past six months the French melodrama Roger La Honte has attained a degree of popularity at the Ambigu which has rendered its transference to London more or less inevitable. The taste of the English public, it is true, has latterly been somewhat indifferent to French adaptations, but there is always room on the English stage for a picturesque, pathetic, absorbing story of wronged innocence and rewarded devotion; and MM. Jules Mary and Georges Grisier’s play could not have fallen into better hands than those of Mr. Beerbohm Tree, by whom it was produced last night, under the title of A Man’s Shadow, amid unquestionable signs of popular approval. Roger La Honte has not undergone adaptation in the common acceptation of the word. Mr. Robert Buchanan, who is responsible for the English version, has retained the French scene and the French characters, contenting himself with such structural changes as tend merely to quicken and intensify the action. Considering that the story is intimately bound up with French methods of justice, and that the great sensational scene of the third act is a criminal trial in a French court, no other course appears to have been feasible. Even had it been otherwise, it is more than probably, indeed, that a thoroughly Anglicized version would have been less acceptable to a Haymarket audience, who in a general way may be said to have little admiration for the somewhat ad captandum devices of melodrama. So far from being an evil, therefore, the retention of the French criminal procedure, together with a certain French flavour which the adapter has communicated to his dialogue, may help to determine the popularity of the play, the story by that means being redeemed from commonplace.
     In its general aspect the story of Roger La Honte is far from novel. The conviction of an innocent man of murder or some other crime and the ultimate assertion of his innocence has long been a staple theme of melodrama, both French and English. MM. Jules Mary and Georges Grisier’s claim to originality lies in the ingenuity with which a net of circumstantial evidence is thrown around their hero, although it is evident that in working out their plot they had some recollection of Une Cause Célèbre, well known to English playgoers as Proof, the chief incriminating evidence in both cases being furnished by an infant daughter of the accused. Roger Laroque, a commerçant, and Raymond de Noirville, an avocat, are bosom friends, but on their return from the Franco-German war, where they have served side by side in the ranks, the former discovers to his horror that his friend’s newly-made wife is a former mistress of his own. Of a thoroughly vicious nature, Julie de Noirville seeks to renew her relations with Roger, but the high-principled hero regards the duties of friendship as paramount, and the scorned woman falls in accordingly with a scheme of revenge devised against Laroque by a spy named Luversan, who has suffered punishment at his hands. The vengeance is of a somewhat circuitous, not to say improbable, kind, but it results in this—that Luversan murders a banker, robs him of 100,000f., and, with an abnegation truly phenomenal, sends this money to Laroque, together with a note from Julie, begging him to accept it in order that he may tide over certain financial difficulties. As Laroque is on the verge of bankruptcy he falls into the trap, and is forthwith accused of being the banker’s assassin, while a regard for the feelings of his friend Raymond and for Julie’s reputation prevents him explaining how the stolen bank-notes have come into his possession. This is one link in the evidence against Laroque; another is that his own wife and child believe they saw him commit the crime, the banker’s house being exactly opposite his own. The cause of this misapprehension is a remarkable likeness between Laroque and Luversan, who has been reported to be dead.
     Seen through a window in the depths of the stage, the murder is a thrilling episode and provides some exciting material for the second act, inasmuch as the police make an inroad into Laroque’s house and ultimately arrest him as the criminal. But the interest of the play centres in the trial scene of the third act—a vivid and realistic representation of a French assize-court. Here Laroque is defended by his friend De Noirville, whose presence renders it absolutely impossible for him to explain his relations with Julie. Luversan, still thirsting for vengeance, is on the watch, and at a critical juncture passes a note to De Noirville, apprising him of his wife’s faithlessness, and, by implication, of Laroque’s innocence of the charge. For a moment the avocat, who is overcome by the terrible revelation, hesitates what course to pursue. He resolves to do his duty by his client; but, in the act of divulging the name of the “shameless woman” from whom Laroque had received the fatal bank-notes, he is struck down by apoplexy, and dies in open Court, bringing down the curtain. In the fourth and last act, Laroque is discovered as an escaped convict, meeting his wife and child by stealth. The gendarmes are on his track; but Julie, now repentant, appears upon the scene to save him, though not before Luversan, his double, has been shot down by the police in mistake.
     As will be gathered, the story is full of exciting incident, sometimes of a pathetic character, as when the child, in examination by the police, and afterwards in Court unconsciously prejudices her father’s case. It is inevitable in melodrama that acting should be subordinate to situation; but the evil is modified by the admirable versatility of Mr. Beerbohm Tree, who, after the manner of Mr. Irving in The Lyons Mail, doubles the parts of the hero and his evil genius. In Paris the characters of Laroque and Luversan are embodied by actors between whom no striking resemblance exists, and the alteration made at the Haymarket not only furnishes Mr. Tree with the opportunity of performing a congenial tour de force, but also adds to the plausibility of the story. Mr. Tree’s changes of individuality are sometimes of what is known at the music-halls as a “lightning” character, and extend not only to dress, but, what is more remarkable still, to voice and general bearing. “Doubling” is often a dangerous experiment for an actor to make, but in Mr. Tree’s hands it proves astonishingly successful. Mrs. Tree has some pathetic moments as Madam Laroque, and Miss Julia Neilson appears to advantage as the adventuress Madame de Noirville. The child is prettily played by Miss Minnie Terry. As Raymond, Mr. Fernandez is enabled to rivet attention in the culminating scene of the drama. At the Haymarket, Roger La Honte is altogether a more impressive play than it is on its native stage, where it is but indifferently mounted and acted.

___

A Man’s Shadow from The Penny Illustrated Paper (21 September, 1889 - p.10)

MR. TREE has opened the autumn season at the Haymarket Theatre with a powerful new play from the French, “A Man’s Shadow,” adapted by Mr. Robert Buchanan from the successful Parisian drama “Roger la Honte.” Mr. Tree has furnished yet another proof that he is the bright particular stage chameleon of the period. I have so often dwelt in these columns on the unrivalled versatility of Mr. Tree, and on the rare skill with which he merges his own identity in the gallery of clearly defined characters he has created, that there is no occasion now to expatiate on the merits of his rotund Falstaff or of his shambling Russian spy in “The Red Lamp,” of his murderous Macari and his incisive Captain Swift, not to enumerate all his wonderfully real creations. A tall, fair young man in private—he is hit off to the life in the above photograph by the London Stereoscopic Company—Mr. Tree has very early in life won for himself a foremost place in the ranks of histrionic artists. He has a unique reputation. His peculiar talent gave exceptional interest to his assumption on Sept. 12 of the dual rôle of the hero and his criminal “shadow” in Mr. Buchanan’s strong new piece at the Haymarket. I don’t remember to have ever seen the theatre fuller. There could be no denying the expectant and sympathetic audience had plenty of robust dramatic fare set before them. There was great grip in the story. It opened with the generous intercession of the advocate, Raymond De Noirville, with an implacable creditor of his old friend and comrade, Lucien Laroque, who has incurred heavy monetary responsibilities which he is unable to meet. Laroque himself appears upon the scene. To his amazement and embarrassment, he finds his friend De Noirville has married a fair creature who was once his (Laroque’s) mistress. A married man himself, and, bound by ties of warm friendship to the husband, Lucien Laroque repulses with horror the overtures of Julie De Noirville, who on his departure determines to write one last amorous appeal to him, baited by the offer of a loan of money. It is while Julie is writing this missive that the vile “shadow” of Laroque—a villanous ne’er-do-weel, named Luversan—glides into the room, on burglarious thoughts intent. Bearing a close resemblance to Laroque, Luversan is mistaken at first by Julie as her quondam lover, and she hands him the letter. This puts him in possession of her secret, on which he forthwith trades. More. It enables him to revenge himself on Laroque for a wrong he conceived he had suffered at his hands during the war, when he was locked up in a barn as a spy and was near being burnt to death. Gaining admittance to Laroque’s apartments, Luversan finds a pistol in a drawer, and with this shoots the banker who lives exactly opposite Laroque, leaving the weapon there to throw suspicion on Laroque. This crime is witnessed by Madame Laroque, her little girl, and her maid-servant, each of whom fancies it is Laroque who commits the murder. There is even a stronger situation than this. It is in the trial scene, where Laroque is charged with the murder, and is defended by De Noirville. Laroque’s heroic daughter has, to save her father, persisted that she had seen nothing of the crime; and the fainting of the little witness causes the Judge to adjourn the Court. It is in this interval that the diabolical Luversan sends the billet-doux of Madame De Noirville to the barrister, who is overwhelmed when he learns the perfidy of his wife and (as he fancies) of the friend whom he is defending. Mr. Fernandez rouses the enthusiasm of the house by one of the strongest pieces of declamation delivered for some time—the closing passage in which, true to his trust, albeit cut to the heart, he lifts his voice to show that this imagined intrigue accounted for Laroque’s possession of the sum of money it was alleged he had stolen from the murdered man. At the height of his noble argument, De Noirville gasps for breath, totters, and falls dead on the floor of the court. Laroque is sentenced to transportation, but returns to France in time to unmask Luversan, and to clear his fair fame as the wretched existence of his vile “shadow” dies out. Admirable on the first night, Mr. Tree's embodiment of the parts of the well-set-up Laroque and the slouching spy and scoundrel Luversan is now more finished still. As Laroque he is the retired French officer to the life. In his impersonation of Luversan there are artistic suggestions of the criminal “masher” Prado, and various dexterous suggestions of the rascally lounger who is at home at Bullier’s, an adept at the can-can, and a haunter of the lowest wine-shops—in fine, an irreclaimable “bad lot.” Mr. Tree is equalled by Mr. Fernandez in the powerful situation which closes the trial. As Julie Miss Julia Neilson quite distinguished herself, making good the high promise I ventured to recognise she gave in “Brantingham Hall.” Mrs. Tree again proved herself to be the thoughtful artist she ever is, but her Henriette Laroque would command heartier sympathy were she to allow her love for her husband to banish all suspicion of him in the murder scene. Miss Minnie Terry was charmingly natural as Suzanne Laroque. Miss Norreys was worthy a better part; and the same may be said of Mr. Collette and Mr. E. M. Robson, the comic couple of soldiers. Mr. Buchanan has, on the whole, done his work skilfully and well; music and mounting are everything that could be desired; and the Haymarket Management has deservedly scored another unmistakable success.

___

A Man’s Shadow from The Scotsman (25 March, 1890 - p.4)

     At the Royalty Theatre another adaptation by Mr Robert Buchanan from a French work—namely, “A Man’s Shadow”—was presented last night before a good house. As a play it bristles with striking dramatic incidents, and is a powerfully-written work, but its sentiment is hardly suited to the Scottish taste, although the play, from its clever acting, had a very favourable reception last night. A feature of the play was the staging.

___

A Man’s Shadow from Dramatic Opinions and Essays - Volume Two by George Bernard Shaw (New York: Brentano’s, 1906 - p. 380-382)

A Man's Shadow. Adapted from the French play “Roger la Honte” by Robert Buchanan. Revival.
Her Majesty’s Theatre. 27 November, 1897.

     It is not in human nature to regard Her Majesty’s Theatre as the proper place for such a police-court drama as “A Man’s Shadow.” Still, it is not a bad bit of work of its kind; and it would be a good deal better if it were played as it ought to be with two actors instead of one in the parts of Lucien Laroque and Luversan. Of course Mr. Tree, following the precedent of “The Lyons Mail,” doubles the twain. Equally of course, this expedient completely destroys the illusion, which requires that two different men should resemble one another so strongly as to be practically indistinguishable except on tolerably close scrutiny; whilst Mr. Tree’s reputation as a master of the art of disguising himself requires that he shall astonish the audience by the extravagant dissimilarity of the two figures he alternately presents. No human being could, under any conceivable circumstances, mistake his Laroque for his Luversan; and I have no doubt that Mr. Tree will take this as the highest compliment I could possibly pay him for this class of work. Nevertheless, I have no hesitation in saying that if the real difficulty—one compared to which mere disguise is child’s play—were faced and vanquished, the interest of the play would be trebled. That difficulty, I need hardly explain, is the presentation to the spectators of a single figure which shall yet be known to them as the work of two distinct actors. As it is, instead of two men in one, we have one man in two, which makes the play incredible as well as impossible.
     However, as I have said, the play serves its turn. The one act into which the doubling business enters for a moment only (a very disastrous moment, by the way) is thoroughly effective, and gives Mr. Tree an opportunity for a remarkable display of his peculiar talent as an imaginative actor. Indeed, he plays so well as the prisoner in the dock that all the applause goes to the bad playing of the advocate who saves himself from the unpleasantness of defending his friend at the expense of his wife’s reputation by the trite expedient of dropping down dead. I dare say this will seem a wanton disparagement of a stage effect which was unquestionably highly successful, and to which Mr. Waller led up by such forcible and sincere acting that his going wrong at the last moment was all the more aggravating. But if to let the broken-hearted Raymond de Noirville suddenly change into Sergeant Buzfuz at the very climax of his anguish was to go wrong, then it seems to me that Mr. Lewis Waller certainly did go wrong. When he turned to the jury and apostrophized them as GENTLEMEN, in a roll of elocutionary thunder, Raymond de Noirville was done for; and it was really Lucien Laroque who held the scene together. The gallery responded promptly enough to Mr. Waller, as the jury always does respond to Sergeant Buzfuz; but I venture to hope that the very noisiness of the applause has by this time convinced him that he ought not to have provoked it.
     By the way, since Mr. Tree is fortunate enough to have his band made so much of as it is by Mr. Raymond Roze, he would, I think, find it economical to lavish a few “extra gentlemen” (or ladies) on the orchestra, even if they had to be deducted from his stage crowd. Two or three additional strings would make all the difference in such works as Mendelssohn’s “Ruy Blas” overture.

___

A Man’s Shadow from The Guardian (26 May, 1903 - p.6)

     THE QUEEN’S.—Mr. Robert Buchanan’s drama “A Man’s Shadow” is presented here this week by Mr. Arthur Hare’s company. Mr. Hare himself plays the two parts of the injured hero and the villain, the resemblance between whom is the cause of all the mistakes which go to make the melodrama. The villain is a poor specimen of his kind, but the hero is a strong creation, though we are never allowed to forget for long that he is, after all, only an English translation of a Frenchman. It is through the English eyes indeed, that we are shown the France and the Frenchmen of the whole piece, and the court scene might have been written to cast ridicule upon the judicial procedure of our neighbours. Mr. Hare acted last night with much force, but it was noticed that the necessity which he is under of speaking at short intervals in two different voices produces a huskiness which should hardly be in these grand melodramatic speeches. Miss Sydney Fairbrother performed her important part with an uncommon restraint, and the part undoubtedly gained from her treatment of it. Mr. Bertram Steer was highly successful in the “speech for the defence”—made by an advocate who has just discovered that his wife has addressed to the prisoner a compromising letter,—and the unpleasant part of Julie was well taken by Miss Elise Clarens. The agony is more skilfully heaped up than in the every-day melodrama, but there is a great deal of it.

___

The American version of A Man’s Shadow was adapted from Buchanan’s English version by Augustin Daly and retitled Roger la Honte; or, A Man’s Shadow. Reviews are available on the Buchanan’s Theatrical Ventures In America page.

Back to the Bibliography or the Plays

_____

Man and the Woman from The Scotsman (20 December, 1889 - p.5)

LONDON THEATRICALS

     LONDON, Thursday night.—The versatility of Mr Robert Buchanan is, as Dominie Sampson would have said, “prodigious.” Not content with writing original plays and poems, adapting from the French, and from Richardson and Fielding, with publishing articles, abusing dramatic critics, and indicting letters on the marriage laws in a daily paper, he now comes forward with a play on the latter subject, which is a sufficiently startling production. “Man and the Woman,” a new play in three acts by Mr Buchanan, was given at a morning performance at the Criterion Theatre this afternoon. The piece is a play with a purpose, and, like others of that class, there is a good deal more attention paid on the part of the dramatist to the particular social “fad” he wishes to exploit than to the dramatic capabilities of his story. The plot of the piece is a simple and conventional one. The heroine, Gillian Dartmouth, has married a thorough-paced blackguard, who commits every crime under the sun, amd finally deserts his wife—who is only too thankful to be rid of him—leaving her with one child. This happens in America, and Gillian comes home and prospers, some money having been left her, and wins the love of a certain Sir George Venables, a gallant young baronet, who desires nothing better than to be allowed to make her his wife. So far the story runs smoothly enough, but the common-sense of the audience revolts against the needless scruples of the heroine, who, honestly believing her husband to be dead, questions a clergyman as a matter of conscience as to whether she should marry again or not. This gives rise to a great deal of tedious sermonising and delays the action of the piece in a very exasperating fashion. Just before the wedding the heroine’s worthless husband turns up and in the most brutal fashion insists upon claiming his conjugal rights by taking the one child of the marriage, and, in short, shows himself to be as much a brute as he was in days gone by. Thus we enter upon a prolonged contest between the husband and wife, during which we are treated to long and epigrammatic discussions on the marriage laws of the country, and any amount of scorn is heaped upon those who hold that a woman is in any way bound to a man who does not treat her well. Never, indeed, even in any French play, was so much vituperation bestowed upon the bare idea of the sanctity of marriage. In vain the wife is reminded of her duty. That is to say, she is told she should return to her wretched husband; but the answer is “duty is sometimes another name for immorality,” and in view of the brutal husband, and the innocent wife, the audience applaud the sentiment to the echo. Mr Buchanan has laid his colour on with a lavish hand. A more despicable scoundrel than Philip O’Mara, the heroine’s husband, was never depicted on any stage, and one feels an intense loathing for him whenever he appears on the scene. Similarly, the heroine is a charming woman, and the audience sympathise duly with her. At the same time, the play would have been much more effective had there been a little more dramatic action and a little less sermonising; more development of character and not so much chopping logic on the subject of the marriage laws. It is granted that Mr Buchanan has pushed his argument home with indubitable force, has preached his sermon with a power too rare in the pulpit; but people do not go to the theatre to be argued with or to be preached at, and the dramatist is lost in the teacher. We are not concerned with the ethical law broached here. All we say is, that “the play’s the thing,” and we do not trouble ourselves about the king’s conscience. The rest of the story is easily told. The returned husband, after causing his wife much misery, is murdered by an individual whose wife he has wronged in old days, this person having hovered about all through the piece to bring about this particular bit of vengeance, as the audience foresees from the very first. The representation was a good one. Mr Macklin made a very manly representative of the baronet who would gladly marry the heroine, and Mr Cyril Maude acted with indubitable cleverness and much subtle insight into character as the worthless husband. He reminded one here and there of Mr Herman Vezin. Mr John Beauchamp, with a “make-up” which recalled the face of the Archbishop of Canterbury, was excellent as a canting clergyman; while the part of a muscular and genuinely Christian curate was admirably rendered by Mr Nutcombe Gould, an actor whose stage work is remarkable for the rare artistic qualities of finish, of force, and of reticence. Miss Myra Kemble, who comes to us from Australia, was a pleasant and capable representative of the heroine, and Miss Ada Neilson acted with much vigour as a good-hearted farm woman. The performance was received with much favour, and Mr Buchanan bowed his acknowledgments at the conclusion in response to a unanimous call.

___

Man and the Woman from The Times (20 December, 1889 - p.6)

THE CRITERION.

     At a matinée at this theatre yesterday a new play from the pen of Mr. Robert Buchanan was presented to the public. In many respects satisfying and strong, this work is nevertheless disappointing in one essential particular. It propounds a problem which it leaves unsolved. The difficulties which surround the characters are, it is true, removed before the curtain descends, but only by the introduction of a deus ex machinâ. Thus the hopes that have been raised that some new solution of an old theme is about to be revealed are dashed to the ground, and the spectator leaves with a feeling of dissatisfaction because his expectations have been baulked. If, however, Mr. Buchanan’s purpose was merely to draw attention anew to the cruel plight of a woman who is married to a scoundrel from whom she cannot free herself, it must be allowed that he has carried it out forcibly and with telling effect. Whether some of the delicate questions involved in loveless matrimony are not dealt with in too free and virile a fashion for the stage is a matter about which there may well be difference of opinion. The author here certainly does not sing pueris virginibusque. In the first act of Man and the Woman we are introduced to a betrothed couple, Sir George Venables and Gilian Dartmouth, a lady who imagines herself to be the widow of a man who has insulted, ill-used, and abandoned her. She has had some moral scruples as to the propriety of remarriage, but they have been allayed without much difficulty by a friendly curate of broad views, and the hour for the wedding is fixed, when an unwelcome visitor appears—none other than the husband who is thought to be dead. He is a polished rogue, of a pseudo-artistic turn, who prates hypocritically about the loveliness of morality and elects to be a High Church man because “Dissent is so unbeautiful.” As his wife, unconscious of his presence, enters the room, he demonstrates the heartless cynicism of his character by playing “Home, Sweet Home” on the piano before which he is sitting.
     The curtain descends upon an effective situation, and then, in the second act, we see the husband endeavouring to assert authority over his wife and making conjugal plans, which she, mindful of his past conduct, rejects with abhorrence. Finally, she decides to fly, and taking her child, of whom her husband has threatened to deprive her, goes forth to seek a place of concealment. Sudden illness, however, prevents her from travelling far, and she is discovered. The child is taken home by the father, and maternal love prevailing, the wife returns also. The problem, therefore, still remains. What is she to do? Is she to live with a man she loathes, parted from another whom she loves? This and the alternative questions that arise were the points upon which the audience expected enlightenment in a novel way, and here it was that the sense of disappointment supervened, for the end is reached by the well-worn expedient of killing the husband, who is stabbed to death by the relative of a woman whom he has dishonoured. The chief merit of the play lies in the dialogue, which is often satirically pungent. In his characterization the author has also scored a success, the contrast between a narrow-minded vicar and a curate of large and manly views being exceptionally good. The drawing of the husband, a droll mixture of æstheticism and villainy, is also original. The matinée served the double purpose of introducing a new play and an actress new to the London boards. Miss Myra Kemble, who comes from Australia, appeared in the part of the injured wife, and acted with care and discretion. Her hold over the audience would have been firmer if she had abandoned herself a little more freely to the emotional requirements of the character, but her acting was never wanting in sympathetic tenderness. Mr. Cyril Maude appeared to great advantage as the husband, and Mr. Nutcombe Gould was excellent as the curate, appearance, voice, and manner combining to produce a faultless picture. Mr. John Beauchamp and Mr. F. M. Paget also acquitted themselves well as the vicar and the avenging relative respectively. At the close of the performance Miss Myra Kemble and the author were called before the curtain to receive the congratulations of the spectators.

Back to the Bibliography or the Plays

_____

Clarissa from The Times (7 February, 1890 - p.6)

VAUDEVILLE THEATRE.

     The interminable prolixity of the novels of Richardson and the forbidding character of the epistolary style in which they are written have long relegated them to the upper shelf; but readers who search sufficiently will still find in these prototypes of the realistic novel a considerable vein of dramatic ore. More particularly may this be said of “Clarissa Harlowe,” of which a remarkably successful version by MM. Dumanoir, Léon Guillard, and Clairville was produced in Paris in 1846, affording the famous Rose Chéri the occasion for one of her earliest and greatest triumphs. The French Clarisse was readapted more than once to the English stage, but for some reason the story never attained a great degree of success in London, even when played by Mrs. Stirling and Charles Mathews. Nor does a recent American version by M. Dion Boucicault appear to have been more fortunate. Undeterred by the fate of the past English adaptations, however, both Mr. Robert Buchanan and Mr. W. G. Wills have recently dramatized Richardson’s masterpiece afresh; and the former author’s version was yesterday afternoon brought out at the Vaudeville, under circumstances of the most promising character. Indeed, the story as handled by Mr. Robert Buchanan and the Vaudeville company, more particularly by Miss Winifred Emery in the part of the martyred heroine, is not unlikely to attain the vogue of the old Gymnase play, which, of course, the adapter has carefully studied.
     It is easy to see what dangers beset the adapter of “Clarissa Harlowe.” The story is a painful one from the beginning, and has to be conducted to an appropriate conclusion, without regard to that dramatic bugbear, an unhappy ending. For a union between Clarissa and Lovelace—whose name, by the way, as a synonym for libertine has passed into French, as it would probably have done into English had it not been supplanted by Byron’s Don Juan—is out of the question and has never, we believe, been attempted even by the school of adapters who, in the last century, allowed Romeo and Juliet to “live happily ever afterwards.” As a pure-souled martyr to the “polluting hand of man,” Clarissa must accordingly be exhibited by author and actress both in a singularly angelic light; the tyranny which drives her forth from the paternal roof must be odious in the extreme, and all the measures resorted to by her abductor in order to compass her ruin must be correspondingly heartless. By such means alone can the public be brought to acquiesce in the apotheosis of a young lady who, prosaically speaking, only meets with the fate of the common and generally unregarded female “outcast” of melodrama. Mr. Buchanan has very skilfully done his work in this respect, and from Miss Winifred Emery he has received invaluable assistance. Upon the representative of the hapless Clarissa the whole sympathetic interest of the story depends; her virginal air and sweetness count for quite as much as the constructive art of the adapter, and, failing such adventitious aids, the play would be in imminent danger of falling to pieces. Miss Emery in this part is a worthy successor to the fascinating and talented Rose Chéri.
     The changes now imported into the story relate chiefly to the manner in which the death or expiation of Lovelace is brought about. In the French play the