Database: Hérode et Mariamne fails to impress

(This clipping is from a newspaper dated 12 July, 1782. It is badly crumpled, as though someone once wadded it up into a small ball.)

A Theatrical Review by Mlle. Lecouvreur

Last evening I had the pleasure—if indeed pleasure it can be called—of seeing very nearly the worst production of Voltaire's Hérode et Mariamne at Café Théâtre on Île St-Louis. Never has the tragic death of the Queen of Judea been rendered with more glaring ineptitude. M. Dupree's Herod has all the pathos of a fishmonger who is especially ashamed of his day's catch, and Mlle. Arcadie's Mariamne seems able to do little more than wail like a child denied a treat. As to the supporting cast I shall only say that the director would have been better served by releasing a dozen Barbary apes into the theater. That at least might have incited the audience to a modicum of excitement.

As to the sets and the costuming, which should richly evoke the ancient world of Jerusalem, the director's vision seems limited to papier-mâché temples and badly unconvincing false beards. Theater is a world of the imagination, to be sure, but this cheap, shoddy production resembles nothing so much as small children picking up sticks and proclaiming themselves "Mousquetieres de la Garde." In Short: I hated this play. I hated, hated, hated this play. If you, good readers, have any respect for M. Arouet's work, I caution you to stay far, far away.