''The Incomparable Max'' is a play by

Jerome Lawrence Jerome Lawrence (born Jerome Lawrence Schwartz; July 14, 1915 – February 29, 2004) was an American playwright and author. After graduating from the Ohio State University in 1937 and the University of California, Los Angeles in 1939, Lawrence pa ...

and

Robert E. Lee Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870) was a Confederate general during the American Civil War, towards the end of which he was appointed the overall commander of the Confederate States Army. He led the Army of Nort ...

. It is based on the stories " Enoch Soames" and "A.V. Laider" in '' Seven Men'' by

Max Beerbohm Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm (24 August 1872 – 20 May 1956) was an English essayist, Parody, parodist and Caricature, caricaturist under the signature Max. He first became known in the 1890s as a dandy and a humorist. He was the drama critic ...

. Enoch Soames is a minor poet who makes a pact with the devil to spend a few hours in the library of the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docume ...

one hundred years in the future to learn how history will regard him. There he finds the only mention of his name is in a short story written by Max Beerbohm. A.V. Laider is a palmist who foretells the death of four people riding on a train - or does he? The play had its premiere at the Barter Theatre in

Abingdon, Virginia Abingdon is a town in Washington County, Virginia, United States, southwest of Roanoke. The population was 8,376 at the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Washington County. The town encompasses several historically significant sites and f ...

in 1969. The Broadway production, directed by Gerald Freedman, began the first of ten previews on October 9, 1971 at the

Royale Theatre The Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre (formerly the Royale Theatre and the John Golden Theatre) is a Broadway theater at 242 West 45th Street (George Abbott Way) in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Opened in 1927, the thea ...

. It opened on October 19 and closed on November 6 after 23 performances. The cast included

Richard Kiley Richard Paul Kiley (March 31, 1922 – March 5, 1999) was an American stage, film and television actor and singer. He is best known for his distinguished theatrical career in which he twice won the Tony Award for Best Actor In A Musical. Kiley ...

in the dual roles of Soames and Laider and

Clive Revill Clive Revill is a New Zealand actor, best known for his performances in musical theatre and the London stage. A veteran of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he has also starred in numerous films and television programmes, often in character parts. ...

as Beerbohm. Constance Carpenter and Fionnula Flanagan appeared in supporting roles. The creative team included

costume design Costume design is the creation of clothing for the overall appearance of a character or performer. Costume may refer to the style of dress particular to a nation, a class, or a period. In many cases, it may contribute to the fullness of the arti ...

er Theoni V. Aldredge and

lighting designer In theatre Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a ...

Martin Aronstein. T.E. Kalem of ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, t ...

'' observed, "The work is a glue job rather than an organic entity. The authors . . . awkwardly mixed Beerbohm in as a character among his own creations. In passages that are almost unrelated asides, they have Max as drama critic quoting himself on plays, players and playgoers. These comments lack the pithy bite of

aphorism An aphorism (from Greek ἀφορισμός: ''aphorismos'', denoting 'delimitation', 'distinction', and 'definition') is a concise, terse, laconic, or memorable expression of a general truth or principle. Aphorisms are often handed down by t ...

s, and as out-of-context fragments, they lose much of the slyly inflected wit that is one of the special pleasures of reading Beerbohm . . . The deeper problem lies with Max himself, who was too much the fastidious dandy, too much the meticulous stylist, to serve as a vehicle for the broad, boisterous traffic of the stage."''Time'' review, November 1, 1971
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References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Incomparable Max 1969 plays American plays Broadway plays Plays based on short fiction