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| Richard Kiley, Clive Revill. |
Note: this and several subsequent entries are slightly out of alphabetical order.
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| Constance Carpenter, Martyn Green, Fionnuala Flanagan, Rex Thompson, Richard Kiley. |
An unsuccessful attempt to translate two famous short
stories by elegant British wit, essayist, critic, and caricaturist Max
Beerbohm into stage vehicles. “Enoch Soames” is about a pathetic failure of a
poet whose burning desire is to glance into the future to see if his name is
listed in the files of the British Museum. Granted his wish by the devil, he
discovers that his name is listed indeed, but only because Max Beerbohm wrote a
story about him. In “R.V. Laider,” a man with the gift of prophecy is
unequipped with the power to stop that which he foresees, a train wreck, from
coming to pass.
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| Richard Kiley. |
The evening’s host was Beerbohm himself, portrayed without
great mastery by New Zealander Clive Revill, who looked completely wrong.
Beerbohm introduced the playlets and walked into them when appropriate to make
pertinent comments. Richard Kiley was somewhat more effective at playing the
title characters of each piece. {Thanks to Ron Fassler for correcting Clive Revill's nationality, which I originally cited as British.}
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| Clive Revill, John FitzGibbon, Claude Horton. |
The main problems were the inadequacy of the stories for
dramatic treatment, and the inadequacy of the treatments they received. Brendan
Gill was appalled at what “trash” the “lifeless” evening offered, especially in
its travesty of Beerbohm himself. According to Clive Barnes, the authors had
erred in trying “to dramatize things best left to the imagination . . . ; what
was originally fanciful becomes clumsy.” And John Simon dispensed with the
playwright partners (famed for more successful works, like Inherit the Wind) as “not only half-playwrights but half-baked ones
as well.”
The supporting company included several notable names, including Martyn Green and Fionnuala Flanagan.
