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Lord Pengo: Royale Theatre,
November 19, 1962
New York Times,
November 20, 1962
Theater: 'Lord Pengo'
Charles Boyer in Title Role at the Royale
By HOWARD TAUBMAN
S. N. Behrman’s delight in the charm and skill of
a supersalesman of art led him to write a lively and
amusing series in The New Yorker some years ago
called "The Days of Duveen." Unhappily, he has had
no such luck with a fictional art dealer.
"Lord Pengo," which arrived last night at the Royale
Theater, is a poor requital to Mr. Behrman for the
admiration and affection he evidently has spent on
the mystery of selling masterpieces of painting.
Although his play is full of illuminating and no
doubt accurate detail about the way in which
fantastic deals are put over, it lacks the
indispensable ingredients needed in the theater: the
development of character and a story with dramatic
tension.
Mr. Behrman makes the customary disclaimer about
fact and fiction, Lord Pengo is not Lord Duveen.
"Though there are great similarities between the two
men," Mr. Behrman writes in a program note, "there
are also salient differences."
Differences or similarities. What matter which in
the face of an inert play? No one can take away from
Mr. Behrman, an honored craftsman of the theater,
his gift for turning a graceful phrase and writing
lines that sparkle with urbane wit. It is manifest
In "Lord Pengo," but it cannot carry the piece
across the hurdle of an immobile dramatic structure.
* *
*
Mr. Behrman's very beguilement by Lord Duveen and
Lord Pengo has victimized him. He has been at such
pains to make his protagonist the irresistible
virtuoso of the art galleries that he seems to have
concentrated on nothing else. Lord Pengo as Charles
Boyer plays him is gay, sophisticated and
disarmingly resourceful in his encounters with his
millionaire clients. But as you find him at the
beginning, so he is at the end. And that is a fatal
dramatic flaw.
As the play slips away from him, Mr. Behrman
struggles to make you care about what will happen to
Lord Pengo. Brian Bedford as the son denounces his
father, Lord Pengo, for sacrificing everything to
his passion for salesmanship. Bad news of all sorts
inundates Lord Pengo's offices. Just when he seems
crushed and the second act curtain is to go down, he
braces himself, prepares a smile and is ready to
resume his manifest destiny as a dealer. But none of
this is convincing as a crisis in a man's life.
Nor is the end more convincing. Again the play seeks
to stir us with Lord Pengo's gallantry. He is dying
and knows it. He says goodbye to his blunt, loyal
assistant, Miss Swanson, in a scene meant to be
touching. Agnes Moorehead plays with gruff
integrity, and Mr. Boyer covers his emotion with a
debonair manner. But it is too late. One no longer
cares. Lord Pengo, never a human being, remains a
performer, and even his farewell is histrionic.
The best scene shows Lord Pengo teasing a dime-store
magnate, played with crotchety susceptibility by
Cliff Hall, into the purchase of a sculpture of a
child's head for $175,000. Henry Daniell as a
multimillionaire who builds a national gallery under
Pengo's guidance cannot do more than outline a
character whom Mr. Behrman merely has sketched. Ruth
White as a troubled Mrs. Drury almost makes you
believe she is serving some purpose in a dramatic
design.
* *
*
If the externals of atmosphere were decisive,
"Lord Pengo" would have few problems. Vincent J.
Donehue's staging and Oliver Smith's sets confer
credibility on the milieu. And in the final scene
there is Rembrandt's "Aristotle Contemplating the
Bust of Homr" (a copy, unless the Metropolitan has
been careless) on display. You can see the original
at the museum for a lot less than the going rates at
the Royale.
Lord Pengo: Royale Theatre,
November 19, 1962 |
