I wrote this immediately after reading this and with a young child, I did it quickly so if it's complete gobbledegook, I apologise.
The Devil In the Cheese, is an interesting play to kick start our Dwight Frye reading group as DFLL states as it was one of Dwight’s longest running successes on Broadway with an impressive 165 performances, it teams him up with Frederic March and for the first time Bela Lugosi. Written by Tom Cushing, it was initially performed at The Charles Hopkins Theater before transferring to the larger Plymouth Theater.
I wasn’t sure how I would find the play, as I knew it involved a degree of fantasy and that at one point Dwight ages severely, gaining a huge belly and bald head (this image is actually in the PDF text, if you look) and that he enters the play in a net, that’s been hoisted up a cliff.
I have opted to discuss the play by writing a synopsis but if you do not want any spoilers either look away or skip this until the sectin marked personal thoughts
The Plot:Successful American millionaire and archaeology enthusiast, Quigley is lured to an Ancient monastery atop the Meteora Rock in Northern Greece by a group of Monks led by Father Petros (Bela Lugosi). On a sudden whim he has brought along his wife and daughter Goldina because the young girl has recently fallen in love with unsuitable ship steward Jimmie Chard and hopes that a few weeks in the mountains will get the young man out of her system. Quigley has also brought along his cockney valet and the young Dr Pointell Jones (Dwight) partly because he has recently suffered an alleged heart attack brought on by an unusual addiction to parmesan cheese. The young doctors presence within the party, is also meant to show Quigley’s wayward daughter what a successful, affluent young man looks like and hopes that Goldina’s affections will switch from Chard to the humourless, protégé, Jones who also aspirations to enter politics.
Goldina is aware of her father’s machinations and immensely (if a little unfairly) dislikes the doctor. However her anger is mostly drowned out by the bitter complaints from her mother, who is unprepared to rough it in the abandoned 12th century monastery. Dwight spends most of this act, trying to please Mr and Mrs Quigley. Along with the entire Quigley family, he enters the play in a net and unfortunately is constantly sat and trampled upon by the hysterical Mrs Quigley, though he is incredibly diplomatic about it and doesn’t actually complain though it’s obvious he is slightly injured. It’s Pointell who tries to arrange suitable living arrangements for the ladies, improvising with old farming tools etc.
Father Petros shows Quigley various artefacts including a cartouche with the inscription “Eat this cheese”. As the family are familiarising themselves with their surroundings, a plane passes by but is flying too close to the peaks and Goldina’s true love Jimmie Chand (Frederic March) is forced to bail out, parachuting into the monastery. Pointell Jones see’s Goldina and Jimmie together and quickly alerts the Quigley’s, commenting that the young lover should “know his place”, indicating that Goldina might be correct in her assumptions about the Doctor.
Furious by Jimmie’s appearance and subsequent announcement that he and Goldina are now engaged, Quigley demands that the young man is immediately hoisted back off the mountain and forbids Goldina from ever seeing him again. His daughter is no less furious than her father, claiming he has conjured up his illness and that he is so old and out of touch he could never understand a young girl in love. Still angry but mystified as to why, his daughter would feel so much animosity towards him and fall in love with someone so socially inadequate, Quigley decides to eat a little of the ancient cheese discovered earlier, too nurture his cheese addiction. Immediately Quigley feels ill and Min appears before him, claiming to be a God that has been trapped in the cheese bottle for years and in gratitude he will grant Quigley one wish. With thoughts of his daughter still present, Quigley asks to see inside Goldina’s head, to understand why she feels the way she does. Min grants the wish.
The second act is entirely set in Goldina’s imagination, with Quigley commenting on the action. All the characters are therefore performed based upon Goldina’s opinions. The Act opens on her fantasy honeymoon, on a yacht which merely demonstrates she knows nothing of nautical practices, the couple are then stranded on a desert island where Golda demonstrates her skills as a housewife and trains a pet Gorilla who the couple jokingly name Pointell and Goldina has a baby. Cannibals invade the island, Jimmie fights them without a problem and then the family escape on a raft that has suddenly appeared.
The action then moves on about twelve years, to 1938 where Jimmy is standing as President against Dr Pointell Jones. Despite being popular with the electorate, Jimmie has lost the vote but determined to see the “right man” in the job, Goldina contacts Pointell, demanding he see her “in memory of monastery days”. Immediately Pointell arrives, looking like “an older more sinister” version of himself and it becomes clear that he still harbours a fondness for Goldina. The girl encourages this infatuation until she demands he resign from the Election. When he refuses, she threatens to expose the truth about him with various rumours she intends to discuss with the caucus. Panicking Pointell resigns, only to realise that Goldina was bluffing. Act Two concludes with Jimmie becoming President and the Quigley’s finally accepting him.
Act Three opens with Quigley returning to the monastery and Min departing. Initially we presume the whole of Act Two is a hallucination however Quigley talks to his daughter, it is clear what he has witnessed matches what has been going on in her own mind. While Quigley has a little more understanding of his daughter, he is still not convinced that Chard is a suitable match and proposes he offers Jimmie a job to prove himself. However before anything can be decided, the Monks suddenly reveal themselves as bandits with Father Petros in fact their leader, Kardos. The bandits demand a ransom of fifty thousand dollars or the party will each be thrown off the cliff, something that causes Quigley to become bombastic yet strong willed, his wife hysterical, Dr Jones ineffectively wimpish and Goldina hopeful that Jimmie will finally have the opportunity to prove himself in her parents’ eyes.
However when Jimmie returns he is tied up and clearly embittered with Quigley and his family. He tells Kardos that the family are worth more than fifty thousand a piece and that he could easily get a million, Jimmie turning heal proves to Quigley he’s no good and confuses Goldina. However Kardos is grateful to Jimmie, convinced he’ll make an excellent bandit in the making and releases him only to discover that he has been double-crossed when Jimmie grabs his gun. Kardos is lowered off the mountain, Quigley is happy to bring Jimmie into the family and everyone returns back to the safety of the ground.
[glow=red,2,300]
Personal Thoughts[/glow]
The characters are all stereotypes however in comedies, especially from this period that can be forgivable. However reading this play, I often found several moments to be incredibly tedious so I am guessing that much of the success of the play was down to the performances rather than the writing. Act Two, for me just didn’t read well at all and I can’t help but feel that a modern audience may get a bit bored with the constant, over the top exaggeration because the action is based in the frivolous head of a teenage girl. Much of the humour in the second Act derives from the fact, Goldina as an overly romanticised view of both Jimmie and the world and her knowledge of real life is lacking, hence why some of the characters talk nonsense. I can see it being the kind of play which actors would enjoy as it gives them the freedom to put their own stamp on a certain type. Dwight apparently said of
The Devil in the Cheese, “I have a deep respect for the author and his words. He knows better than I do what he wants. But sometimes when I start rehearsing a part, I find some lines that would belong more to the character if they were switched around a little. Mr Cushing worked with me in twisting Dr. Pointell Jones’ phrases to make them more and more indefinite until we now have him floundering beautifully in his speeches, until now I feel able to act the negative role confidently and positively.”
The leading romantic couple of Goldina and Jimmie are very predictable and though, we are supposed to be supporting their plight, I kind of hoped that Jimmie would turn out to be a villain just so it wasn’t soooo predictable. Quigley is an interesting character, coming across as a cantankerous old fossil but does still have a heart underneath his crusty exterior and therefore the theme of generational conflict is not rendered completely dull.
I hate to say it but Pointell Jones seems quite a familiar role for Dwight to play i.e. the rejected suitor but at least he is not an ogre. Pointell is a negative role but while the Doctor is a slightly sycophantic, cowardly, taddle-tale, he is at least colourful and funny. If the character was British he would perhaps be a cross between Bertie Wooster and Cecil Vyse from A Room With A View. I think it would have been wonderful to see Dwight attempting to charm his potential in-laws, while almost ignoring the potential bride completely.
I also would have loved to see Bela Lugosi playing the bandit because for me, I think his dialogue was possibly the funniest, which makes me query his true knowledge of English. As a monk, he acts naïve but as Kardos, he boasts of his skills as a bandit, discusses the etiquette of his crime and see’s banditry as almost an art form, kissing Jimmie Chard when he mistakenly believes he has found a natural apprentice. The role if played well would have been great for the Hungarian actor and it is therefore no surprise that his next role on Broadway, only a few months later, was the one that he would be forever associated with.
!
