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ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841-1901) |
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THEATRE REVIEWS 48. The Wanderer from Venus (1896)
The Wanderer from Venus: or, Twenty-four Hours with an Angel There is a letter in The Era (13 June, 1896) from Buchanan complaining about one critic’s response to the play.
The Era (16 May, 1896 - Issue 3008) A NEW and original play, written by Robert Buchanan and Charles Marlowe, described as a fanciful comedy of modern life, will be produced at the Grand Theatre and Opera House, Croydon, on Monday, June 8th, and will be played there during the week. The leading female character will be created by Miss Kate Rorke, who will be assisted by a company of London artists. New scenery is being prepared by Mr Hall. It will be remembered that Mr Beerbohm Tree and the Haymarket company opened the beautiful new Croydon theatre with Trilby, and the experiment was so successful that another record, the first production of an important original work there, will now be made. ___
The Stage (11 June, 1896 - p.12) THE GRAND, CROYDON. On Monday, June 8, 1896, a new and original “fanciful comedy,” in three acts, by Robert Buchanan and “Charles Marlowe,” was produced, entitled:— The Wanderer from Venus; or Twenty-four Hours with an Angel. Claude Somerville ... ... Mr. Oswald York Whatever the ultimate verdict is as to this work from the pens of these productive writers, it cannot be denied that the large and fashionable audience that assembled to give greeting to the new work was throughout most friendly, if not demonstrative. It can hardly also be denied, however, that though the authors have worked upon a theme that in other guises has already been well nigh used up. Suggestions of Pygmalion and Galatea and Niobe were on the lips of all experienced playgoers, and it is unfortunate for the present collaborators that these two works should have preceded theirs, and, moreover, should also have been infinitely better both in story and treatment. The slight ringing of the changes in making the central figure descend from the heavens, instead of taking the form of a vivified statue, matters little; the ruling idea is the same, and the story runs on similar lines. The handling of the theme, too, shows a want of decision, and it would have been much better to make the piece either broadly farcical or entirely poetic, the former for choice, as there is little doubt that the subject is one that lends itself much more to humorous than to serious treatment. On one point the authors may certainly be congratulated, and that is in the interpretation of their work, the cast being one that could not well be improved, although most of the artists cannot be said to have had any great scope for the exercise of their abilities. The play opens in the village of Moonbury, near London, where we find Claude Somerville, an ardent and enthusiastic astronomer, and John Middleton, a matter-of-fact country doctor, engaged to the two daughters of the vicar, Dr. Dullamere. After a talk of more or less worldly affairs the conversation naturally turns to astronomy and upon Claude’s fixed idea that this earth is only one of many planets that are inhabited, and that angels unawares may occasionally visit us on this sphere. The doctor pooh-poohs the notion, and enforces his conviction by material arguments, and after a short love scene with his fiancée, Dora, the young astronomer is left alone, and, after indulging in flights of fancy and meteoric rhapsodies, calls upon the planet Venus to come down. The answer is a charming visitant in the form of Stella, who, lightly clad in gauzy-green garments, flutters down from the heavens, and straightway makes innocent, yet dangerous love to the young enthusiast, at whose call she has left the realms above. In act two, the morning after, we naturally find that the presence of a young and charming “angel,” clad in diaphanous raiment, in the room of a bachelor about to become a Benedict, gives grounds for much uneasiness, and Somerville’s housekeeper is particularly forcible in her reasoning as to the undesirability of such a visitor. As, too, the charming Stella is none too constant in her innocent attentions, but when Claude is absent clings prettily to the village medico, it will be foreseen that the ground is prepared for the plentiful crop of lovers’ quarrels which eventually, and naturally, arise. The engagement between Claude and Dora is broken off. The Girton girl, Euphemia, with her up-to-date notions of man, does not, however, go to such extremes, but contents herself with the stipulation that, knowing such “goings on” must happen, they shall be carried out more under the rose. In the third act the ladies are still inexorable in their refusal to believe in the angelic visitor, whose liberal embracings of everything in the shape of man-kind still continue. Some fun is made when the ever-alluring Stella entices the doctor and the vicar to sit one on either side of her, and proceeds to deck their headgear with garlands of roses. Explanations eventually ensue between the lovers, and when the gentle spirit realises all the mischief of which she has been the innocent cause she is freed from a spell which binds her to the earth, has a timely recall to the planet Venus, and all ends with conventional bliss. ___
The Era (13 June, 1896 - Issue 3012) “THE WANDERER FROM VENUS.” A New and Original Fanciful Comedy, in Three Acts, Claude Somerville ... ... Mr OSWALD YORKE (FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) The initial performance of Messrs Robert Buchanan and Charles Marlowe’s latest comedy, The Wanderer from Venus; or, Twenty-four Hours with an Angel, was given before a large audience on Monday last. The play is described by the authors as a “fanciful comedy of modern life,” and the appellation is happily chosen, as a more fanciful comedy it is difficult to imagine. The action of the play takes place at the village of Moonbury, near London, the scenes of acts one and two being laid in Claude Somerville’s apartments, which are presided over by a motherly old matron named Mrs Allgood. Act three takes place in the garden adjoining the house. Claude Somerville is a young man who is given to star-gazing, and whose soul soars to things ethereal and planetary possibilities. His friend, John Middleton, M.D., a rural doctor, is more matter-of-fact, and ridicules Claude’s lofty ideas. The two friends are betrothed to Dora and Euphemia, daughters of Dr. Dullamere, the vicar of Moonbury. Claude is carried away by his star-gazing and dreams of other worlds, and when left to himself, in his enthusiasm he calls upon the planets to send to him one of the beautiful beings his mind has conjured up. His prayer is answered, and a creature of entrancing beauty, robed in light drapery, appears upon the scene. She states that her name is Stella, and that she has winged her way from the planet Venus in answer to Claude’s fervent calls. From this startling commencement the chief incidents in the play proceed. Claude is soon deeply in love with the celestial being, and cannot resist her bewitching power of attraction. Stella, in her innocence, asks many naïf questions regarding doings on mother earth. Her astonishment is unbounded when the differences between the sexes, the marriage laws, and other interesting truths are explained to her. As her knowledge of earthly ways increases, so her mood changes; and in the place of the happy, light-hearted Stella of Venus, with no thought of evil or cares, we soon see the more earthly being with her varying passions, and with her love for Claude, which must not be checked by the thought of a rival. To such an extent does her passion carry her that she does not hesitate to hint that she would not stop at trifles to remove her rival, Dora, from her path. A bitter scene between Claude and Dora is watched by Stella, whose jealous passions are subdued by the grief of the latter. Stella then sees that Dora has a prior claim to Claude; her goodness overcomes her bad feelings, and she renounces her love for him. With the casting away of wicked, worldly thoughts, all her former gentleness returns, and she sees that earth is no place for her. Amidst a scene of reconciliation between Dora and Claude, she wings her way back to her planet home. The serious business is relieved by humorous scenes between Dr. Dullamere, Middleton, and Stella. The latter, not understanding the consternation she causes by her fascinating beauty, makes love indiscriminately to the doctor and the vicar, and a lively scene reaches a climax when Euphemia discovers the three together on a garden seat, the men decorated with flowers, and Stella’s head softly reclining on the vicar’s breast. Dora, Euphemia, and Mrs Allgood also cause amusement by their different ways of showing displeasure and indignation at the conduct of the “angel,” as Claude so aptly denominates his new-found love. The entire action of the play is supposed to take place within twenty-four hours. ___
The Era (13 June, 1896 - Issue 3012) THEATRICAL GOSSIP. . . . MISS VERA BERINGER was originally engaged for the part of Dora in Mr Buchanan’s play The Wanderer from Venus, but a minute or two before the curtain rose it was announced that she would be “unable” to appear, and that Miss Harriett Jay would replace her. As one or two portentous paragraphs have been penned, it should be stated that the rearrangement was made in perfect amity among all the parties. _____ . . . SO satisfied are the authors of The Wanderer from Venus with the results of its initial week at the New Grand Theatre, Croydon, that they have determined to send it on tour at once, with all the new scenery and effects, prior to its London production. In view of the large expense involved in the cast and in the production generally, only first-class towns can be visited, but a No. 2 company will be organised later on to visit the smaller theatres. ___
From Dramatic Opinions and Essays - Volume Two by George Bernard Shaw (New York: Brentano’s, 1906 - p. 15-16) The Wanderer from Venus; or, Twenty-four Hours with an Angel: a new and original fanciful comedy. I note with satisfaction that the suburban theatre has now advanced another step. On Monday a new play by Mr. Robert Buchanan and his collaborator, “Charles Marlowe,” was produced at the new theatre at Croydon—a theatre which is to some of our Strand theatres as a Pullman drawing-room car is to an old second-class carriage—with a company which includes Miss Kate Rorke, Mr. Oswald Yorke, Mr. Beauchamp, Mr. Anson, Miss Eva Moore, and Miss Vera Beringer. The band played the inevitable overture to “Raymond” and Mr. German’s dances, for all the world as if we were at the Vaudeville. I paid three shillings for a stall, and two-pence for a programme. Add to this the price of a first-class return ticket from London, three and sixpence (and you are under no compulsion to travel first class if second or third will satisfy your sense of dignity), and the visit to the Croydon Theatre costs three and tenpence less than the bare price of a stall in the Strand. And as Miss Kate Rorke not only plays the part of an angel in her most touching manner, but flies bodily up to heaven at the end of the play, to the intense astonishment of the most hardened playgoers, there is something sensational to talk about afterwards. The play is a variation on the Pygmalion and Galatea theme. It is full of commonplace ready-made phrases to which Mr. Buchanan could easily have given distinction and felicity if he were not absolutely the laziest and most perfunctory workman in the entire universe, save only when he is writing letters to the papers, rehabilitating Satan, or committing literary assault and battery on somebody whose works he has not read. I cannot help suspecting that even the trouble of finding the familiar subject was saved him by a chance glimpse of some review of Mr. Wells’ last story but one. Yet the play holds your attention and makes you believe in it: the born storyteller’s imagination is in it unmistakably, and saves it from the just retribution provoked by the author’s lack of a good craftsman’s conscience. |
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[Advert from The Era (20 June, 1896)] |
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[Advert from The Era (11 July, 1896)]
The Northern Echo (3 August, 1896 - Issue 8242) THE DRAMA AND THE STAGE. DARLINGTON THEATRE ROYAL. More of the light and amusing fare which is so increasingly popular amongst theatre-goers is provided this week at the Darlington Theatre Royal in the engagement of Miss Doris Hunt’s company in “The Wanderer from Venus.” This is the first time the piece has been produced out of London, where this original, fanciful comedy has won golden opinions. The company includes Miss Doris Hunt as “The Wanderer from Venus,” and Mr L. Cory Thomas, who will be remembered with pleasure as one of the officers in “Bootles’ Baby” when in Darlington. |
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[Advert from The Northern Echo (4 August, 1896)]
The Era (5 December, 1896 - Issue 3037) A SYNDICATE has bought the rights to The Kiss of Delilah, for production after the pantomime season. Mr Robert Buchanan was so impressed by Miss Edith Jordan’s performance of Estelle Beaupas that he immediately engaged her to sustain the leading character in A Wanderer from Venus at the Lyceum, Edinburgh, on Monday. ___
Glasgow Herald (8 December, 1896) ROYALTY—“THE WANDERER FROM VENUS.” A considerable proportion of the audience at the Royalty last night were doubtless drawn to the theatre by the title of the piece which was performed—“The Wanderer from Venus.” Another attraction was probably the fact that it is partly the work of Mr Robert Buchanan, poet, dramatist, and novelist. As in some others of his stage productions he has had in this instance also the co-operation of Miss Harriett Jay. Of the two sources of attraction we are inclined to think that the name selected for the comedy was the more potent. Mr Buchanan as a playwright has not always been an unqualified success. Neither is he in this, the latest of his essays, as a dramatic author. Over-seriousness is his besetting fault. To him the stage has evidently a mission—namely, to lift us all above base and conventional ideas of human life. If there is one quality more conspicuous than another in Mr Buchanan it is individuality. It asserts itself in all his work, nowhere more so than in his productions for the theatre. In “The Wanderer from Venus” his originality is scarcely so much as usual in evidence. The idea of the comedy is by no means new. In the school books for juveniles there used to be an interesting poem entitled “How it strikes a strange.” It was the story of the impressions of a celestial visitant to the earth—how he was rejoiced with the joyousness of nature, and saddened by the spectacle of decay and death. The idea has been turned to comedy by the skilful pen of Mr W. S. Gilbert, whose Galatea is not yet in danger of being surpassed for boldness of conception or brilliance of expression. Such poetic and mythological fancies have probably suggested to Mr Buchanan an expansion of the same idea. In response to the rapturous apostrophes of a love-sick youth, addressed to the starry firmament, he brings to this terrestrial globe an inhabitant of the planet Venus. This vision of loveliness, clad in airy robes, is made to walk the cold, dull earth barefooted, as if she were a sort of celestial Trilby. She is like the gay grisette of the Latin Quarter in another respect—she turns the heads of all the men she meets. She is presented by the youth, at whose invocation she has come from aloft, to his landlady, to his fiancée and her father, the vicar of the parish, and to his intimate friend, a Scotch doctor, as an angel from heaven. As the newcomer arrives late at night, and is accommodated in the young man’s rooms until the morning, his friends, not unnaturally, take a somewhat more prosaic view of the situation, and it is in this connection that the best comedy of the piece is introduced. A young lady who has learned philosophy at Girton, and has not been unobservant of the ways of the world, has some piquant remarks to make about men and angels in the abstract, and even the doctor and the clergyman discover that after all there may be more things in heaven and earth than even they have dreamed of. Of course, the visitor soon adapts herself to her environment, and begins like ordinary mortals to indulge in material sustenance. Then the passions of love, jealousy, and hate take possession of her for a while, and, finally, when she realises that the world and the things thereof are not worth the trouble they bring, she is hoisted back to Venus by means of a wire worked from the flies, and leaves the poor humans whose peace and happiness she has temporarily upset to resume the thread of their everyday existence. As a somewhat eccentric example of comedy the piece is interesting after a manner, but the passages, and there are several, in which the authors rise into the region of ethics are, truth to tell, a little tedious, and not at all convincing. The comedy was capably acted. Miss Edith Jordan had the sympathy of the audience entirely with her in her heroic, and, on the whole, distinctly successful effort to give dramatic embodiment to an extremely fanciful creation. The other parts were also well played by Mr Acton Bond, Mr George Traill, Mr Robson Paige, Miss Florence Tanner, Miss Lucy Sibley, and Miss Marie Anderson. ___
The Era (12 December, 1896 - Issue 3038) AMUSEMENTS IN GLASGOW. ..... ROYALTY THEATRE.—Lessees, Messrs Howard and Wyndham, Limited; Acting-Manager, Mr Frank Sephton.—The first performance in the provinces of The Wanderer from Venus, by Robert Buchanan and Charles Marlowe, was given here on Monday. The play is one of the many dealing with miraculous or supernatural visitations, of which W. S. Gilbert’s Pygmalion and Galatea is the best known and most satisfactory. The present production has all the advantages of Mr Buchanan’s poetic temperament and imagination, and is clothed in really beautiful language, the graceful and flowing blank verse of the two principal characters, the romantic star-gazer Claude Somerville and the mysterious Stella, contrasting well with the modern up-to-date prose of the other parts. The idea forming the basis of the play is good, that of an idealistic astronomer, strong in the belief of there being other inhabited worlds, hoping and praying for proof, and his wish being answered by the descent of the dainty wanderer from the planet Venus, whose advent flutter the dovecotes of the little village of Moonbury, and sets the various characters by the ears, for a time, at least. In the working out, however, the authors have allowed themselves to waver between the fanciful and the farcical, and the combination does not make a good blend. The ethereal Stella, who seems at first a being utterly removed from earthly weaknesses, speedily develops a human selfishness and tawdry jealousy that go far to estrange sympathy from the character, and the final scene, in which the wanderer elects to return to her native Venus, in place of being the outcome of some grand development of love, pity, or even jealousy, suggests nothing but female caprice of a very human description. Miss Edith Jordan as Stella acted throughout in graceful and sympathetic style, and spoke her lines with feeling and rhythmical charm. Mr Acton Bond was an effective and duly romantic Claude Somerville. Miss Florence Tanner as Dora, the lady whose happiness is so nearly blighted by the planetary visitor, looked and acted well, rising to the occasion in the scene in the third act with her lover and his “angel.” As the matter-of-fact Scotch doctor and his equally prosaic intended Mr George Traill and Miss Lucy Sibley were of decided value, and Mr Robson Paige as a prosy and earthly-minded parson was amusing without any tendency to over emphasise the part. Miss Marie Anderson was an attractive and effective housekeeper. The play was preceded by a comedietta, Down East, in which Miss Constance Wallis and Miss Helen Farrington worked hard to amuse. _____
Next: The Mariners of England (1897)
Back to the Bibliography or the Plays or Harriett Jay Theatre Reviews
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