page_title: The Lyons Mail (play)
section_title: Production
hierarchical_section_title: The Lyons Mail (play) / Production
caption_attribution_description: English: H. B. Irving as Dubosc in 'The Lyons Mail' at the Shaftesbury Theatre (1908)
context_page_description: The Lyons Mail is an 1877 drama by Charles Reade based on his play The Courier of Lyons. The new version was written for Henry Irving for performance at the Lyceum Theatre.
  Reade's play was based on the 1796 Courrier de Lyon case in Revolutionary France, drawing inspiration from a previous play based on the case by the French writers Paul Siraudin and Louis-Mathurin Moreau. Reade had written the play specifically for the actor Charles Kean. It had its début on 26 June 1854 with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in attendance.
  The roles of Joseph Lesurques and Dubosc were played by the same actor. In the original production this was Henry Irving. Later the roles were played by his son H. B. Irving, Bransby Williams at the Lyceum Theatre and John Martin Harvey at the Savoy Theatre, who had played Joliquet in the 1891, 1893 and 1898 revivals at the Lyceum, among other actors. At the Lyceum the role of Jeanette was often played by Ellen Terry.
  The play's backdrops by Hawes Craven used in the productions at the Lyceum were destroyed in a fire in 1897 at the theatre's scenic store in Bear Lane in Southwark.
context_section_description: The actor John Martin-Harvey, who appeared as Joliquet opposite Irving in the play in the early 1890s, later said of Irving's performance:
  Lesurques in his hands bore very little resemblance to a hero in melodrama; he was typical of all that is implied by 'middle-class respectabilty', though perhaps a trifle too distinguished, and might have passed for a younger brother of Doctor Primrose, whom he more nearly resembled than any other of his impersonations....
  I have known the audience 'stagger' on the first appearance of Dubosc. Lesurques is hardly out of sight when Dubosc is there in the doorway, grim, sinister, the embodiment of wicked intent. His accomplices cower as he comes among them with contemptuous, insolent tolerance. Then, peremptorily, he issues his orders and from that moment dominates.
    
  Martin-Harvey also recalled that to emphasise the cruelty of Dubosc Irving hummed some bars of La Marseillaise while searching the dead body of the courier, on another night shocking the audience by instead humming 'Nearer, My God, to Thee'. 'The effect was appalling,' Martin-Harvey said. '[In the finale] it is hardly possible to exaggerate the savagery of Irving's performance in that scene, yet never did he overstep the truth of nature and degenerate into extravagance. Dubosc though a monster was a credible human being and it was that fact that gave the play its lasting popularity'.
caption: Dubosc at bay - H. B. Irving in the 1908 revival at the Shaftesbury Theatre
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