The Valiant (Holworthy Hall and Robert Middlemass)
This is somehow the second play I’ve read already this year that has to do with people on death row. What a time!
The Valiant by Holworth Hall and Robert Middlemass is a play from 1920, about the mysterious identity behind a man scheduled for execution in an hour. His calm demeanor perplexes the warden and the chaplain, as he’s assumed to be under a pseudonym, and shows great poise under pressure. While they mull over who he is, why he’s done what he’s done (murder, that is,) and why they have the feeling that justice isn’t being served, a young woman shows up on the off-chance that the prisoner is her long-estranged brother.
As a play it doesn’t go for a schmaltzy ending, and is thoroughly uninterested in answering questions for the audience, instead deciding to focus on unblinkingly staring at the pain of things that can’t be taken back, and questioning whether truth is useful in its own sake, or whether it’s better to live with a comforting lie or ambiguity.
As a Producer
This isn’t a show for Pronoia: although the end of the play is lovely in its pain, it doesn’t (for me) justify its existence, and it is too bleak for our kind of show. Given the age of the play (first published in 1920,) and its (to me) unremarkable nature, I thought it unlikely that this play would be produced much anymore, or that anyone would stumble across it accidentally, but it seems to be fairly popular among amateur groups and churches (as it is thoroughly inoffensive while still being decently moving,) and there are news items of it being produced a few times in the last few years. I don’t see this being done by any professional company in Houston unless Classical runs out of money or time and needs to do something cheap or fast.
As a Designer
I don’t think there’s much here to tickle the imagination. Among the many, many, many descriptions of things that happen the young woman’s costume sounds interesting to pull off, but it’s a play of mostly men in mostly uniforms, in a drab office, so I don’t think there’s much to sink your teeth into (which isn’t to say that it can’t be rendered beautifully, but I don’t think there are any strong challenges or opportunities that set this show apart.)
As a Writer
My senior year at university the student theater organization considered remounting a play from the inaugural season in celebration of a major anniversary. For that purpose Maggie Sulc read J. M. Barrie’s Rosalind (which will eventually show up here since I own it still and haven’t read it,) and her main take-away was how frustrating it was that there was a parenthetical direction seemingly with every line. The Valiant is rife with that.
Seemingly every line either has dictated movement or emphasis, as a reader that was tiring and in consideration for acting it, it’s annoying. I don’t think there’s much to take away from the writing of the play except for that, unfortunately.
