Word: counts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...play deals with a count who dresses his house guests up in Louis XV costumes and has them put on a play to amuse his guests at charity ball. The characters are given roles that resemble their real-life roles and they act out their bitterness on the stage. And Anouilh's plot turns out to be very similar to that of the play-within-a-play, Marivaux's Double Inconstancy...
...takes an act and half before we reach the four melodramatic scenes that takes care of the plot; after that three competent actors take over and its' all downhill. The Count (Robert Lanchester) has tolerated his wife's affairs and she has tolerated his. He has a mistress, whom he finds boring. Lucile (Patricia Archer) brings a ray of simplicity into his life; she's a 20-year-old social worker virgin, and he goes nuts...
...simplicity isn't of the Antigone mold; left to a world of deception, she is deceived. The countess persuades Hero (Robert Esckilsen) to lure the count away from the house, make Lucile think he has deserted her, and then seduce her. She runs away in shame the next day, the count runs after her, too late (his wife and friends are sure he'll return to their circle soon...
...erratic, seems to be a competent straight actor and he keeps the last two acts moving nicely. Miss Archer plays her very difficult role with a great deal of style, and Mr. Esckilsen comes off best of all as the drunkard, obsessed by a Lucile-like girl the count made him give up 20 years before...
...stars as Helen Traubel and Maurice Chevalier entertain nightly, and even a zoo. It also has a variety of dining rooms and cocktail lounges, including an authentic 18th century English pub that was imported piecemeal and reassembled. Originally laid out near the turn of the century by a German count who envisioned it as an American Monte Carlo, the Broadmoor was finally completed in 1918 and given its unique flavor by the late Spencer Penrose, a flamboyant and openhanded Philadelphia socialite who made a fortune in Cripple Creek gold and Utah copper, and poured millions into the hotel...