Your Humble Blogger has mentioned Alan Bennett’s marvelous line more than once in this Tohu Bohu. I don’t remember exactly where it’s from, but he makes the point that when you go around backstage after a show, whatever you say is likely to cause offence in the high-strung and excitable cast member who you want to be nice to. If you name a particular thing you liked, they will hear that it was the only thing you liked, after trying desperately to come up even with that. If you attempt to list all the things you like, they will hear your pointed silence about their favorite bit, or more likely the bit they feared was disastrously bad but hoped nobody would notice. The thing to do, Mr. Bennett said he had found, was to nod a lot and smile a lot, all with a glassy look in the eye that could be inspiration or inebriation, and simply repeat marvelous, marvelous and nothing else.
I do that. Unfortunately, I also tell people I do that, so I go backstage and give my glassy-eyed marvelous, marvelous and then people hit me.
Anyway, Matthew Barber in this adaptation of Enchanted April makes good use of the marvelous line. It first appears in I,ii when Mellersh Wilton is taking his wife Charlotte to a party with impressionist artists.
LOTTY: I never know what to say. And if, by chance, I do have something to say, it comes out wrong.
MELLERSH: If you’re asked for your opinion, you need merely say “marvelous” or something of that nature, and leave it at that. That’s all they want to hear anyhow. Try it.
LOTTY: Marvelous.
MELLERSH: You’ll be surprised how far it will get you.
I should throw in here the fact that I’m aware Mr. Bennett wasn’t on to anything particularly new, nor do I blame Mr. Barber for stealing it, if indeed he didn’t come up with it independently. But we’re moving on to my scene, I,vii, where Mr. Wilding mentions to Mrs. Wilton and Mrs. Arnott that he is a painter.
WILDING: I paint. Portraits. Classical, of course. Two eyes, one mouth, and so on. (Lotty thinks.)
LOTTY: Marvelous!
I particularly like the stage direction there, don’t you? Anyway, it’s a cheap joke but a good one, and—wait, we’re not done? No, we’re not, and this is where it gets fun: when Wilding comes back in Act Two, he sketches Mrs. Arnott, and Costanza sees it.
COSTANZA: Ah! Squisita! Bellissima!
ROSE: Is that good?
WILDING: Quite.
COSTANZA: Oh, Tonio. Meravigliosa!
Now, is Costanza, like Mrs. Wilton, saying what Mr. Wilding wants to hear? Or is Costanza’s (rustic Italian) enthusiasm a contrast to Mrs. Wilton’s (urbane English) politeness? Or shouldn’t we be able to tell? And there’s one more, this time near the very end, when Costanza and Mrs. Graves have finally taught each other a smidgen of a common tongue:
MRS. GRAVES: Oh, and both of you please be prompt for breakfa…
COSTANZA: Eh!
MRS. GRAVES: … for colazione.
COSTANZA: Marvelous!
And that’s Costanza’s exit and Mrs. Graves’ as well, two pages from the curtain.
It’s quite nice as a thread, just a little touch of writing, if you know what I mean. Unless I’ve missed any, those are the only uses of the word: other things are beautiful or lovely, or enchanted of course.
There are lots of places that I think the wordcraft of the play is weak. I have one scene where we change the subject every three lines, abruptly, and without (as far as I can determine) subtextual reason for it that the audience can pick up. The characters are all less well-rounded in the play than in the book, which would likely be true of any adaptation. But I focus on those things. It’s an unfortunate tendency, to mark in my mind all the clinkers and none of the bright spots, all of the way in which the zcript fails to be zatizfactory, and not mention to myself or to you, Gentle Reader, the things I like. Which include this little bit with the word marvelous.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.