Conan Doyle's Play Roasted

From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia

Conan Doyle's Play Roasted is an article written by Curtis Brown published in The Chicago Tribune on 25 march 1906.


Conan Doyle's Play Roasted

The Chicago Tribune (25 march 1906, section X, p. 3)

By Curtis Brown.

LONDON. — [Special Correspondence.] — "We fancy," wrote a London critic recently regarding Conan Doyle's new play, "that the piece will make a lot of money — at least in America." Previously, this writer had asseverated that Dr. Doyle's production was but an indifferent piece of work, so it will be seen that his remark as to its probable success in the United States was one of those gratuitous attempts to belittle American intelligence which a certain class of writers here apparently finds it necessary to make every once in a while.

However, the critic in question is no one of consequence, and so his sneer may be allowed to pass except so far as it applies to Dr. Doyle's new piece, which is called, "Brigadier Gerard," and is, of course, a dramatization — though with much added matter — of this hero's "exploits," as narrated by Dr. Doyle in a series of magazine articles.

Truth to tell, the Gerard play, which has been put on by Lewis Waller, was pretty generally "roasted" by the London reviewers, and so there is considerable quiet curiosity among those interested in stage matters to see whether they, or the eminent novelist who wrote it, are in the right as to the piece's merits. Of these, it appears, Dr. Doyle has an uncommonly high opinion, and he proved it in the beginning by trying the play on manager after manager, though each one treated it with scant courtesy, until finally, after an experience that really must have been a little exasperating to so distinguished an author, Sir Arthur finally induced Lewis Waller to give "Brigadier Gerard" a chance. And at present it looks as if his new play were going to win out, for the greater part of its first night audience was quite evidently delighted, and subsequent reports from the Imperial theater tell of such business as has not been done there since the days of "Monsieur Beaucaire."

So Dr. Doyle does well to be gratified, even though the reviewer may assert that this "Gerard" play does not reveal its author as a dramatist of any particular ability, and that although nearly every ancient theatrical device is employed in it, there is hardly an original one of the least consequence. As a matter of fact, there were many points in the drama — which is all about some state papers which have been stolen from Napoleon by Talleyrand and which Gerard is employed to get back — that were violently entertaining in a way that few supposed the author had intended, and quite a good deal that did not square with French history as most of us understand it.

There is one scene, for instance, in which Brigadier Gerard is first locked in a cabinet by Talleyrand and then manages to imprison that famous diplomatist in similar fashion, which is really immoderately funny, though one feels that this is not the desired effect, and Dr. Doyle, too, has drawn Napoleon as a choleric person, whose frequent tirades were received by the more experienced portion of the first night audience with something approaching irreverence.

But It's all right, for Dr. Doyle says so, and as, judging by present appearances, he has pleased the public that supports the box office, there is little for the critic to say in rebuttal. Taking up the cudgels in defense of his work, the author of "Sherlock Holmes" admits that his new play makes its hero rather ridiculous now and then, but he explains that he has tried to make Gerard a character whom you laugh at as well as with, and adds that the critics are "so steeped in the conventional perfect hero of romantic drama that they can't understand an author's trying another experiment."

He says, too, that his picture of Napoleon is a veracious one and that the only word by which the emperor's friends could describe his energy in his excited moods was "epileptic."

Doctor Doyle doesn't like, either, the general hint that only such spirited and ingenious acting as Lewis Waller does in it could save his piece from being ridiculous. "After all," says the author, "an actor must have his lines, however good the use he afterwards makes of them — his lines and his situations." And Dr. Doyle adds "When I wrote 'A Story of Waterloo' for Sir Henry Irving, I was enormously indebted to him for the personation, but I hope there may have been something in the words and the idea as well. There was no bit of stage 'business' in the acted version which was not in the manuscript, though I could not have hoped that it would be so admirably done."

Well, a few weeks will show conclusively whether the author or the critics are right about "Brigadier Gerard," and if the play catches on Sir Arthur will be able to snap his fingers at William Gillette, who put his "Sherlock Holmes" on the stage so successfully, just as Anthony Hope snapped his at Edward Rose after he discovered that he could get along without the adapter of "Phroso" and "The Prisoner of Zenda."

London, and that generally means the United States, too, is about to have a new musical "Girl." This time it is "The Girl Behind the Counter," and she has been invented and set to music by Leedham Bantock and Howard Talbot, authors of "The White Chrysanthemum," the piece which is about to be produced in the United States, after a long run at the Criterion in Piccadilly.

Interesting to London is the fact that this new musical play will bring back to the stage Hayden Coffin, who has not played since his break with George Edwardes, and there is also promised something striking in stage effects, especially a scene in the fashionable shop in which the "Girl" is employed.

The piece is due at Wyndham's at Easter, where, by the way, "Captain Drew on Leave," in which Charles Wyndham has been so successful, is in its last nights.