(no subject)

Yesterday I searched for real-life stage adaptations of Max Beerbohm’s The Happy Hypocrite, and apart from the 1930s version with Ivor Novello and Vivan Leigh, I came across this look at a 2011 musical version by David Benedictus and Stephan Hodel which never seems to have gone to a full production, although the introductory song in the video is quite good. I notice they specify the story as being set in 1820, although when I rechecked Beerbohm’s original text he gives no date, but simply sets it in the Regency period. 1820 makes it the year that the Regency ended and the reign of George IV began, not that that changed much. I noticed, because the movie of Jamaica Inn is also set in 1820 – reference is made in an early scene to the Regent having become King – and I’ve come to think of that movie’s villain, Sir Humphrey Pengallan (who by the end pretty obviously sees himself as the personification of the Regency) as a kind of alternate take on Beerbohm’s Lord George Hell, and I’m rambling aren’t I.