Word: richelieu
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Much as your average musical's book is just an excuse for letting go with lots of song and dance, Dumas' bizarrely complicated plot is just an excuse for action and dueling and general running about. Although the king himself, at the urging of the insidious Richelieu, has outlawed the duel, his gallant musketeers still try to work through worn-out codes of loyalty and honor, something that the Cardinal's guards don't share. As a result, every duel devolves into chaos and confusion. And also a good deal of fun. Hamlin's actors seem to have jumped into...
...character a telling adjective there isn't much more to say of them. No one is about to accuse Dumas the Father of too much character development. As compensation, Joan Minto has provided costumes that would do the Laguna Beach "Festival of the Masters" proud. Warren Motley's Cardinal Richelieu, silently suffering from constant migraine as he tries to hold together both himself and the entire French state, could easily have stepped out of a painting by Goya, and Charles Smith, with just the slightest trace of foppishness under his dirty black hair, looks like Gainsborough's "Blue Boy" gone...
Luxurious Playground. The Casino's heritage is as glorious as the tricolor itself. It was originally founded on the estate of the Due de Richelieu (grand nephew of the cardinal) two centuries ago. For the libertine duke's pleasure, the loveliest courtesans of France performed voluptuous charades. Between the Franco-Prussian War and World War I, France's Belle Epoque, the Casino was the luxurious playground of continental nobility. Between the world wars, it went into decline under Director Henri Varna. "Give the public nudes, feathers and spangles. That's all they want," he once said...
...fears hell," a fellow cleric once summed up Richelieu, "he loves theology, he does not entirely lack interest in the things of God, but in the final analysis his kingdom is of this world." The judgment is thoughtful, and O'Connell, an Australian professor of international law, endorses it. He sees Richelieu as a remarkable pragmatist who "combined in a completely unique fashion an iron resolution and a gift for seeing both sides of a question...
...leaving France "in the highest degree of glory and of reputation which it has ever had, and all your enemies beaten and humiliated." Then he asked the King to appoint the Italian papal diplomat Mazarin his successor as First Minister. Louis, O'Connell believes, probably never liked Richelieu. Almost no one did. But the King fed the dying Cardinal two egg yolks with his own hand. A few hours after the Cardinal's death, Louis told Mazarin of his appointment...