Sunday, August 2, 2020

259. THE INCOMPARABLE MAX. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975


Richard Kiley, Clive Revill.
THE INCOMPARABLE MAX [Comedy-Drama/Fantasy/One-Acts/Science-Fiction] A: Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee; SC: Max Beerbohm’s stories, “Enoch Soames” and “R.V. Laider”; D: Gerald Freedman; S: David Mitchell; C: Theoni V. Aldredge; L: Martin Aronstein; P: Michael Abbott, Rocky H. Aoki, and Jerry Hammer; T: Royale Theatre; 10/19/71-11/6/71 (23)

Note: this and several subsequent entries are slightly out of alphabetical order.

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.

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.}

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.