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Title: Review of Gordon Daviot's play "Richard of Bordeaux"
Author: Benchley, Robert Charles (1889-1945)
Date of first publication: 1934
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: The New Yorker, 24 February 1934
Date first posted: 9 July 2010
Date last updated: 9 July 2010
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #558




Review of Gordon Daviot's play "Richard of Bordeaux"

by Robert Benchley

24 February 1934


There is a definitely modern quality about "Richard of
Bordeaux" which makes it impossible to say of it, "Oh, just
another one of those historical costume plays, full of
clanking Gloucesters, Oxfords, and, by God, the Earl of
Darby!" It _is_ full of Gloucesters, Oxfords, and Derbys,
and they do clank about quite a bit, but it also has
something else woven in through all the clanking. It has an
honestly written, clearly drawn characterization--that of
King Richard the Second of England, who, until last week, I
had vaguely thought grew up to be Richard the Third and
murdered the little princes in the Tower.

This character was written by a _soi-disant_ "Gordon
Daviot" (who later turned out to be a Miss MacIntosh of
Edinburgh, or Catherine of Aragon) and played with
astonishing variety by Dennis King, who, I am afraid, is
chiefly remembered in this country as a young man who put
one foot on a chair and sang a loud song, with a male
chorus, to a tankard of Burgundy, although I can go his
program biographer one better and remember him very
pleasantly in a Theatre Guild play called "The Lucky One"'
ten or a dozen years ago. At any rate, Mr. King and Miss
MacIntosh combine to give a specific and dramatic study of a
young aesthete goaded too far. I did not see Mr. John
Gielgud in the London production (an enormous success, by
the way), but Mr. King satisfied me, insofar as I understood
the part, and if I didn't understand it, it certainly wasn't
the author's fault, for it was written with an explicitness
which removed it completely from the customary Eaves Costume
Company's line of kings who reign in most dramas of this
sort.

It takes some time, as in all historical dramas, for an
audience to settle down to understanding just who is who
in "Richard of Bordeaux." The history of the fourteenth
century in England is not common chitchat among Americans,
and to hear Robert de Vere sometimes called "Oxford," and
the Earl of Nottingham sometimes called "Thomas Mowbray,"
with Derby being interchangeably "Henry," "Bolingbroke,"
"Hereford," or "John of Gaunt's son," calls for a little
regimentation before one can get into the swing of the
story. Of course, one can read up on the period before going
to the theatre, as dramatic critics do, or can consult the
program each time a name is mentioned to see what the alias
is, but, on the whole, it is better to just sit tight and
hope that, before long, things will straighten themselves
out and you can tell whom to hate and whom to like. This
sitting-back process, however, sometimes runs the danger of
resolving itself into a sound sleep.

There is no doubt about whom to hate when the Bucklers,
father and son, are on. Hugh Buckler, as Gloucester
(sometimes known as "Thomas of Woodstock"), and John
Buckler, as Nottingham ("Thomas Mowbray"), have big voices
and the bulk to swing them, and you know right at the start
that they are up to no good. There is also no sleeping when
the Bucklers are on. They constitute a valuable menace for
any play which has a tendency to lapse into torpidity.
Montagu Love, made up as "Ol' Bill, the Walrus" in the
character of Arundel, is also definitely in the opposition.
On the side of pleasant characters, we could be pretty sure
of Francis Lister as Oxford and Margaret Vines as Anne, the
young wife, no matter what they were called. And I think
that it was Andrew Cruickshank who was excellent as the
young secretary, although his name in the play was John
Maudelyn, and you know what the English could do to that
name.

The production of "Richard of Bordeaux" goes in more heavily
for beautiful costumes than for scenery, but the costumes
are really beautiful enough to make up for that strange,
billowing greenery outside the palace at Sheen, which held
its verdant aspect although an even stranger tree, evidently
growing in the front hall, was laden down with snow. That
tree worried me more than it should have.

On the whole, however, "Richard of Bordeaux" is a good thing
for the public to have handy to offset dress-suit adultery,
besides being a field day for the actors, and it is
something you should see.




[End of Robert Benchley's review
of Gordon Daviot's "Richard of Bordeaux"]
