Your Humble Blogger’s Dear Director had Royal Gambit recommended to her by a knowledgeable friend, which just goes to show how little knowledgeable friends really know. Or that people are different, one from another, and that’s what makes the world interesting and fun, but also means that different people like different things.
It’s hard for me to imagine anybody liking this play, though. It was written in German by someone named Hermann Gressieker, who appears to have been successful in Germany, but not so much here. The translation is by someone with the plausible name of George White. No idea. Anyway, its original title is Heinrich der Achte und seine Frauen, and yes, the seven characters are Henry VIII of England and divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, lived. Or whatever their names were. I could barely tell them apart, even acknowledging that one was German and one was ugly, etc, etc. Ah, well. And where Henry is supposed to be one of those bravura parts, magnificently vain and cruel, nothing about it appealed to me as an actor or as an audience.
I am hoping that my Dear Director doesn’t decide to stage the thing. Although, I suppose, since I’m not going to be in whatever she does, it’s better if she does something I wouldn’t want to be in. Except that I’d rather she does something good, just with no part in it for YHB.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.