THEATRE REVIEWS

Buchanan’s Short Plays

1. Only A Vagabond (1881)

The Graphic (19 February, 1881 - Issue 586)

     Mr. Robert Buchanan’s historical drama, The Nine Days’ Queen, of which we gave some account on the occasion of its recent production at a matinée at the Gaiety, has been reproduced at the ROYAL CONNAUGHT Theatre. Miss Harriet Jay, the author of that clever novel, “The Queen of Connaught,” again sustains the character of the heroine. By way of introduction to the evening’s entertainment the management have produced a comic drama in two acts, entitled Only a Vagabond, founded on one of Mr. Robert Buchanan’s “London Poems.” The story of this little piece is somewhat extravagant. It represents a solicitor of position conspiring with his father, who is a tramp and a mendicant, to coerce a young lady into a marriage, while concealing from her the circumstance that she is an heiress under a will, which is to be fraudulently hidden for the purpose. The old tramp proves a marplot; and finally, his sympathies being aroused by the young lady’s appeal to his generosity, he declines to be a party to the deception, and assists in exposing the nefarious scheme. The moral seems to be that a generous ne’er-do-weel is morally superior to a smug solicitor of crafty and designing habits; but this is a thesis hardly worth maintaining in two acts. The story, such as it is, however, is skilfully set forth, and the dialogues and incidents amuse the audience; though Mr. Wood plays the part of the father with annoying exaggeration; and the representative of the young heroine is too manifestly a manifest novice. The best piece of acting in the play is Mr. Beaumont’s performance of the part of the wicked solicitor.

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The Era (19 February, 1881 - Issue 2213)

CONNAUGHT THEATRE.

     Mr Robert Buchanan’s historical play A Nine Days’ Queen, recently produced at the Gaiety, and fully noticed in these columns, has now taken the place of La Fille du Tambour Major here, and seems likely to attract considerable attention, and to win deserved favour. Miss Harriet Jay resumes her original character as Lady Jane Grey, and is well supported by Mr F. H. Macklin as Lord Dudley, Mr H. St. Maur as Earl of Hertford, and other competent artists. The drama is preceded by a two-act piece called Only a Vagabond, also from the pen of Mr Buchanan. It is not very original, but it is thoroughly interesting; and, having in Mr Arthur Wood a most competent exponent of the most prominent and most important part, it should command success. The part referred to is that of Elijah Sleek, a man who returns to England from America very poor and very shabby, and, in a word, a vagabond. Elijah has a son—a highly respectable son—Thomas, who is by no means proud of him. Indeed, he has given him money to keep at a distance. He has, however, returned, and Thomas must put up with him as best he can. Soon the vagabond father becomes the instrument for the frustrating of the rascally scheme of the son. He is once more disgusted with respectability, and back he goes to his wandering, shiftless, vagabond life. Mr Wood’s acting throughout is admirable, and he gets good support at the hands of Messrs Beaumont (as the son Thomas), Bauer, and Bindloss; and Misses Letty Lind, and Clifton.

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2. Agnes (1885)

The Stage (20 March, 1885 - p.12)

     The production of Agnes, Mr. R. Buchanan’s new two-act comedy, at the Comedy Theatre, has been postponed till Saturday evening, when it will be played in front of Nemesis, with Miss Adelaide Detchon, a lady whose talents have before been noticed in The Stage, as the heroine. It is probable that an adaptation of Clara Soleil will also first see the lights at this house shortly.

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The Times (23 March, 1885 - p.8)

COMEDY.

     In conjunction with the burlesque of Nemesis, a new two-act idyllic piece called Agnes, by Mr. Robert Buchanan, was produced on Saturday night to enable Miss Adelaide Detchon, a young American actress, to make her début in London in an ingénue part. The piece is at once short and tedious, and requires no further description than that its purpose is to show how a maiden brought up in Arcadian innocence tricks her elderly guardian and marries the handsome young cavalier of her choice. Miss Detchon is pretty and graceful, and, although occasionally over emphatic in her assumption of innocence, is a decidedly pleasing actress, of whom the public will be glad to see more.

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The Era (28 March, 1885 - Issue 2427)

THE COMEDY.
On Saturday, March 21st, a Comedy in Two Acts, entitled
“AGNES.”

Lovibond     . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .     Mr F. COOPER
Oldcastle     . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .     Mr S. CAFFREY
Flecknoe     . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .     Mr FRED. MERVIN
Harlowe      . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .     Mr PERCY COMPTON
Stanley        . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .     Mr F. COLLINI
Toby           . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .     Mr ESMOND
Margery      . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .     Miss MARIA JONES
Agnes          . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .     Miss ADELAIDE DETCHON

     That good Americans, when they die, go to Paris, one had heard; it was reserved for the acting-manager of the Comedy to disclose to an unsuspecting world that the spirits of defunct Parisians return the compliment by going to America. “The author of Agnes,” said Mr D’Albertson, on Saturday night, in response to a more than half-ironical call, “is in America,”—an announcement which should afford a valuable clue to the Psychical Research Society as to the whereabouts of the ghost of an illustrious Frenchman, for the author of Agnes, if the word “author” have any meaning at all, is, undoubtedly, a certain Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Molière. The play is, in fact, simply L’Ecole des Femmes, done into blank verse, and with all its humour eviscerated in the process. The programme was studiously silent, not only as to author, but as to adaptor as well; but it is a secret de Polichinelle that the latter is Mr Robert Buchanan. For adding another to the existing English versions of the L’Ecole des Femmes Mr Buchanan may fairly plead the scurvy treatment which the play has suffered at the hands of previous adaptors. Of these the best known is, probably, Wycherley, whose vile perversion The Country Wife deserved all the hard things Macaulay said of it, and Garrick’s Country Girl, though wholesomer than this, is still a libel on the original. Agnes is far and away a better rendering than either of these; better, because closer. Unfortunately, it is not close enough. Not content with cutting out half the comic interest of Molière’s play, as well as altering its conclusion, the adaptor has turned the Arnolphe of the original (a part played, by the way, by Molière himself) from a semi-humorous character into a wholly unsympathetic bore, at the same time introducing a trio of noisy chatterers, fatuous enough to compromise a far better piece. Instead of Molière we get Molière and water. As it now stands, the argument, to use the good old-fashioned phrase, is briefly this. One Oldcastle, a sour old curmudgeon, disliking the manners and distrusting the morals of town-bred damsels, has determined to educate a wife for himself, and has accordingly adopted an orphan girl, whom he causes to be reared at a remote country house in a state of the most unsophisticated innocence. Agnes’s innocence, however, instead of preserving her from the love-making feared by her jealous guardian, proves the very means of leading her into it. For a dashing young gallant, a certain Lovibond, who has spied her knitting at her window, is captivated by her charms, and profits by her simplicity to gain an entrance to the house. When Oldcastle at length arrives to prepare his hidden treasure for the approaching marriage, the guileless Agnes naïvely relates to him the story of her meetings with Lovibond, his pretty speeches and innumerable kisses, and is not a little astonished at the rage and consternation into which the old fellow is thrown. Of course, she is now immured more closely than ever, and is forced to take leave of her gallant, the parting between the pair affording the opportunity for a very pretty little scene, upon which the curtain of the first act descends. In the second, the wedding-day has arrived, and the bride is already arrayed for the ceremony, when Lovibond bribes the servants to admit him to the presence of Agnes, and woos her so fervently that her love, hitherto only budding, now bursts into bloom, and she consents to wed her lover. Oldcastle thus arrives only to find the bird flown, and when, the next moment she returns, she is the wife of Lovibond. Of all this it is an obvious criticism to say that, whatever grace of poetic diction it may have, or whatever charm of idyllic sentiment, it is now, in any ordinary sense of the term, a play. Lest we should be accused of wanton iconoclasm in venturing to disparage a play which is virtually Molière’s, we cannot do better than let the author criticise himself. It is well known that Molière wrote a little dramatic discussion of his own Ecole des Femmes under the title of “Critique de l’Ecole des Femmes,” and here is a bit of the dialogue he puts into the mouths of two of his characters in the latter play:—

LYSIDAS—In this comedy there is no action; the whole consists of narrations told by Agnes or her lover.
CLIMENE—A clever remark, and one which touches the gist of the question.

This criticism is not to be gainsaid. The piece is absolutely undramatic. It is merely a series of duologues in which description usurps the place of action. Like Lamb’s biblia a-biblia, books which are no books, Agnes is a play which is no play.
     But let us not pick too fierce a quarrel with the piece, for it serves to introduce to the English public a young American actress who gives promise of becoming a valuable acquisition to the not too populous ranks of stage ingénues. promise is the word we are at present constrained to use, for the full extent of Miss Adelaide Detchon’s powers cannot be gauged until they are exercised upon some piece of less flimsy texture than Agnes. Miss Detchon has youth, a pretty figure, and a still prettier face; and, if she has not naturalness, she has that highly artificial simulation of nature which is, on the stage, the next best thing. Her chief charm is, however, her voice, which is of dulcet tone and of really marvellous flexibility. To display this last quality a passage is expressly introduced into the play descriptive of the carollings of the bob-o-link and other New England birds, in which the actress proves herself as much a mistress of shakes, trills, and roulades as any prima donna, yet never once crosses the line which divides speaking from singing. This is, of course, a mere Tour de force, and shows Miss Detchon as an adept at recitation rather than as an actress. Whether she can strike the note of human emotion or passionate sincerity as cleverly as she can mimic the song of birds still remains to be proved. Her present part makes no demands of this sort on her, requiring only a certain winsomeness and Miranda-like simplicity, and both of these attributes Miss Detchon displays to perfection. One detects now and then an unfamiliar trick of pronunciation; but a slight American accent, at any rate on the lips of a woman, is, we fancy, becoming by no means unpleasing to English ears. As the young lover, Lovibond, Mr Frank Cooper cut a very pretty figure in velvet and plumes (the time of the piece, we should have stated, is fixed, probably for costumier’s reasons, at 1680), and we don’t know that much more was required of him. Feeble, however, as the lines set down for him were, he would have done better to have been a little more familiar with them. The voice of the prompter heard chiming in at a moment of passionate love-making is apt to spoil the illusion. The Oldcastle of Mr Caffrey struck us as altogether a mistake. The Arnolphe of the original play was certainly conceived by Molière as a comic part, and as a comic part it is played at the Comédie=Française to this day. In Mr Caffrey’s hands (partly, no doubt, through the clumsiness of the adaptor) the character becomes serious, so serious, indeed, as to be simply repulsive. A querulous, jealous, hoodwinked old dotard is a typical figure of classic comedy; but he must be portrayed with a certain lightness of touch, a perceptible undercurrent of humour, or her travels outside the region of comedy altogether. A serious Sir Peter Teazle would be a dramatic monstrosity. As regards the remaining participants in the representation of Agnes, we can only offer them our sincere condolences on their being cast for parts so thankless. Nemesis is still running gaily on its course at the Comedy, the only change in the cast being the substitution of Miss Farebrother for Miss Zeffie Tilbury as Praline Patoche. Mr Arthur Roberts is as amusing as ever as Calino, and, we note, has added a good deal in the way of “gag” since the first night—“not too much gag, however, but just gag enough.” His great song “S’m’ other ev’ning” is now enriched by an additional verse. As a counter-irritant to the discomforts of this “roaring moon of daffodil and crocus” nothing more effective could be recommended than the drolleries of Mr Arthur Roberts and his play-fellows in this capital revival of Nemesis.

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The Graphic (28 March, 1885 - Issue 800)

     The new piece entitled Agnes, at the COMEDY Theatre, originally announced as “a two-act comedy by Mr. Robert Buchanan,” proves to be a new and rather weak version of Molière’s L’École des Femmes. It served to introduce to our stage an American actress, Miss Adelaide Detchon, whose appearance is prepossessing, and whose style is agreeable enough to inspire a wish to see her again under more favourable conditions.

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3. A Dark Night’s Bridal (1887)

Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper (10 April, 1887 - Issue 2316)

VAUDEVILLE.

     Mr. Robert Buchanan’s new one-act poetical comedy, called A Dark Night’s Bridal, is a far-fetched, romantic little piece that is not long enough to be tedious, but fails to interest to any extent, for the reason that the issue can be perceived almost from the outset. An aged old tyrant living in the Middle Ages mistakes a knight who has sought shelter in his castle from a storm for a particularly ardent lover of his niece. The Sire de Chassaloup refuses to listen to any explanation, and offers him the hand of the lady or a noose, giving him half an hour to decide. The thought of being married on compulsion is at first repellant to both the young people, but in a short time they grow fond of each other and proceed to their bridal as the curtain falls. The dialogue is the best feature of the flimsy trifle, which is avowedly founded on a prose sketch by Mr. R. L. Stevenson. The piece was ably acted by Miss Kate Rorke and Messrs. Fuller Mellish and Royce Carleton; but the attitude of the audience was rather that of graceful toleration than of satisfaction.

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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.

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The Theatre (1 May, 1887)

     A new poetical comedy, in one act, entitled “A Dark Night’s Bridal,” founded by Robert Buchanan on a story of R. L. Stevenson’s in “The New Arabian Nights,” was produced at the Vaudeville on 9th April. Henri de St. Valery, a young soldier, drawn in the romantic lines of mediævalism, finds himself overtaken by a storm in the neighbourhood of an old Burgundian castle, and seeks shelter there. The owner of the castle. Sire de Chasseloup, mistakes his guest for a lover of his niece, and very angrily demands that St. Valery shall marry the lady immediately, or submit to the ignominious process of strangulation. As only one course can be adopted, a lovemaking consequently ensues, at first of a rather stormy character, but ultimately maturing into a placid acceptance of the old sire’s requirements. As a book for the study, Mr. Buchanan’s little comedy would be most acceptable, but it seems rather out of place upon the stage. Miss Kate Rorke played the wayward Blanche in pretty, mock-coquettish manner. The Sire de Chasseloup of Mr. Royce Carleton was a somewhat stiff performance, and Mr. Wheatman and Mr. Fuller Mellish did not achieve any considerable measure of success.

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4. The Night Watch
(First performed April, 1902)

The Stage (10 April, 1902 - p.10)

     SOUTHEND—EMPIRE.—The Southend Dramatic Society on Tuesday night gave a performance in aid of the Fund to provide a Permanent Memorial to the late Robert Buchanan, who had resided at Southend for a long period, and now rests in “God’s little acre by the sea,” beneath the sheltering wall of the Church of St. John. The local society decided to give performances on two nights—Tuesday and Wednesday—in aid of the Memorial Fund, and for such an occasion could not have presented a more attractive programme. Indeed, the curtain raiser was produced for the first time by permission of the author’s sister-in-law, Miss Harriett Jay. This was a poetical drama in one act, by Robert Buchanan, entitled:—

The Night Watch.

Heinrich von Auerbach    . . . . Mr. Reginald Sewell
Vicomte de Lisle    . . . . . . . .  Mr. J. K. F. Picken
Hubert    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mr. G. W. Taylor
Dr. Marton     . . . . . . . . . . . . Mr. Reveirs-Hopkins
Irene de Grandfief     . . . . . . . Mrs. Reveirs-Hopkins

This drama was admirably acted by a quintet of well-known amateurs; but it was not a cheerful opening for an evening’s entertainment. It was tragedy, as a contrast to the comedy to follow. Mrs. Reveirs-Hopkins cleverly interpreted the character of Irene de Grandfief, and Mr. Reginald Sewell appeared as Heinrich von Auerbach, who is supposed to have witnessed the death of the Vicomte de Lisle, to whom Irene is betrothed, and who, by a freak of fortune, is brought wounded to the chateau of which Irene is mistress. The participation of Heinrich in the events which led to the supposed death of her lover leads Irene to be tempted to allow Heinrich to die by neglect, but her better feelings hold sway, and as the curtain falls her lover returns well, and the scene closes with the usual conquest of meaner feelings with virtue triumphant. Buchanan’s Sweet Nancy was the chief feature of the programme. Mrs. Reveirs-Hopkins decidedly scored a success as an amateur in the part of Nancy; Mrs. Cardy Bluck made a charming Barbara, and the other sister, Teresa, became an admirable juvenile part in the hands of Miss Dora Seal. Mr. William Gray looked the character as Sir Roger Tempest, and acted admirably. Mr. Donald Gray was a very fair Frank Musgrave.

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