C2 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14 , 2019
ens, as Dumas begins to develop
three interlaced story lines: the
rescue of the Duc de Beaufort from
his maximum-security cell;
Raoul’s entry into court society
and his first military adventures;
and — in an ominous Gothic turn
— the introduction of a pale and
sinister Englishman named
Mordaunt, who is obsessed with
discovering the names of Milady’s
executioners.
Dumas’ original text of “Twenty
Years After” makes for an enor-
mous volume, so Ellsworth decid-
ed to reserve its second half for
later publication. Not that this
matters much. Dumas never stints
the action, witty dialogue and sur-
prising plot developments in what
we have. As gradually grows clear,
his overriding theme is loyalty — to
friends, family and party but,
above all, to living by a principled
code of honor in a debased and
chaotic world.
Alexandre Dumas is one of the
world’s most enjoyable writers,
though his artistry doesn’t always
get the respect its deserves. Wil-
liam Ernest Henley — author of the
stirring poem “Invictus” (“I am the
master of my fate,/ I am the cap-
tain of my soul”) — long ago recog-
nized the French writer’s genius,
rightly describing him as “a prodi-
gy of force and industry, a miracle
of cleverness and accomplishment
and ease.” Because Dumas started
out as a playwright, his books al-
ways move along briskly, while
emphasizing dialogue and action.
He remains — again quoting Hen-
ley — “an artist at once original
and exemplary, with an incompa-
rable instinct of selection, a con-
structive faculty not equaled
among the men of [the 19th] cen-
tury, an understanding of what is
right and what is wrong in art and
a master of his material.”
That “material” would eventual-
ly include several volumes, begin-
ning with this one, about the Mus-
keteers’ later adventures, which
reach their culmination in “The
Man in the Iron Mask.” If you only
know “The Three Musketeers” you
owe yourself the pleasure of
spending some happy evenings
with “Twenty Years After.” Athos,
Porthos, Aramis and D’Artagnan
may be older and their hair start-
ing to gray, but they’ve lost none of
their romance and grandeur.
[email protected]Michael Dirda reviews books each
Thursday in Style.become the secret mistress, possi-
bly even the wife, of Richelieu’s
successor, the avaricious, Italian-
born Cardinal Mazarin. France
meanwhile is riven by unrest, and
there is talk of civil war. The Duc de
Beaufort, leader of the Frondeurs,
as the forces opposing Mazarin call
themselves, has been imprisoned
for five years. He has nonetheless
vowed to escape and revenge him-
self on the cardinal.
Given such a threat, Mazarin
needs loyal retainers he can count
on, men with strong sword arms
and dauntless hearts. But, alas,
where can such heroes be found?
Once, according to some half-
forgotten rumors, Queen Anne
was saved from disgrace by four
extraordinary young champions,
but that was 20 years ago. The
queen has never revealed their
identities.
By trickery, Mazarin eventually
learns that D’Artagnan had been
one of the four. Who and where are
the others? Athos, Porthos and
Aramis were simply noms de
guerre assumed when these
younger sons of distinguished
families entered the Musketeers.
Still, might they be found and
persuaded to pick up their swords
again? Somewhat hesitantly — no-
body except the queen really likes
the cardinal — D’Artagnan agrees
to search for and, if possible, reas-
semble the old gang. Together, he
knows, they bring out the best in
one another.
Aramis, it turns out, is now the
Abbe d’Herblay, head of a Jesuit
monastery. Has that bon vivant
become austere and devout? Not at
all. Aramis resides in gorgeous
chambers decorated with the sou-
venirs of war, drinks the most
expensive wine and probably does
more than just flirt with that beau-
tiful Frondeur, the Duchesse de
Longueville. Even though the ge-
nial, bearlike Porthos has inherit-
ed enormous wealth, his vanity
yearns to add Baron to the name
Porthos du Vallon de Bracieux de
Pierrefonds. As the Comte de la
Fere, Athos shows himself to be
utterly devoted to his mysterious
ward Raoul. The revelation of that
youth’s parentage — in a delightful
conversation between Athos and
the free-spirited Duchesse de
Chevreuse — might have been
written by Boccaccio.
To all appearances, D’Artag-
nan’s old comrades have settled
into quiet, provincial lives. Or have
they? At this point, the plot thick-BY MICHAEL DIRDA
Swordplay, romantic intrigue,
comic escapades and desperate
undertakings — Alexandre Du-
mas’ 1844 nov-
el, “The Three
Musketeers,”
long ago set the
standard for
swashbuckling
adventure.
Even now, the
thrilling pledge
of “All for One
and One for All,”
coupled with
the image of
four raised
swords crossed
in eternal
friendship, in-
stantly brings
to mind the
book’s youthful
heroes, Athos,
Porthos, Aramis and their protege
D’Artagnan.
While “The Three Musketeers”
regales the reader with humor as
well as derring-do, it nonetheless
closes on a somber note. The
scheming and cruel femme fatale,
Milady de Winter, is judged guilty
of the most heinous murders by an
ad hoc tribunal consisting of the
musketeers and her late husband’s
brother. Following her secret exe-
cution, the once inseparable
friends part and go their separate
ways.
“Twenty Years After” — newly
translated by Lawrence Ellsworth
— opens in 1648 with D’Artagnan
now a 40-year-old lieutenant in
the King’s Musketeers. His has
been a solid military career, but
with nothing in it to match the
dashing exploits of his youth. He
still mourns his beloved Constance
— poisoned by Milady — and has
never married. Like so many mid-
dle-aged men, he wonders more
and more, “Is this all there is?”
In the old days, D’Artagnan
worked to thwart Cardinal
Richelieu but now misses that con-
summate politician’s statesman-
ship, generosity and personal fi-
nesse. (See Dumas’ “The Red
Sphinx” for a sympathetic portrait
of Richelieu, tirelessly working on
behalf of France.) Louis XIII has
also died but his heir, Louis XIV, is
still just a little boy, not yet the Sun
King. Queen Anne — who once
loved England’s Duke of Bucking-
ham, assassinated at the instiga-
tion of the seductive Milady — hasBOOK WORLDOld Musketeers never fade away
TWENTY YEARS
AFTER
By Alexandre
Dumas
Translated by
Lawrence
Ellsworth
Pegasus. 456
pp. $26.95ham sandwich,” she wrote.
It has been an eventful few
months for the celebrity couple,
who have been married since- Teigen is well-known for
her lively social media presence,
particularly her willingness to
confront trolls critiquing her
parenting approach, her ap-
pearance and now. Her come-
backs found an even broader
audience in September when
President Trump derided the
couple on Twitter after seeing
Legend, one of his most vocal
celebrity critics, on an MSNBC
town hall special.
Teigen was widely praised for
her pointedly vulgar response to
the president’s tweet, in which
Trump called Legend “boring”
and referred to the best-selling
cookbook author as his “filthy
mouthed wife.” Just over a
month later, the couple and
their children appeared on the
cover of Vanity Fair as the
magazine proclaimed them
“The First Family We Deserve!”
“Legend calls himself a nerd.
Teigen admits she’s kind of a
basket case,” writer Karen Valby
noted in the accompanying arti-
cle. “They adore each other.”
Legend reiterated the nerd
label in his People interview,
noting that he loves to do cross-
word puzzles. He recalled writ-
ing songs for girls he liked as a
kid but told the magazine that it
wasn’t “extremely effective” at
the time. He would go on to pen
“All of Me,” the soul-baring bal-
lad he dedicated to Teigen, who
later joked that she should have
also been congratulated when
Legend received a Grammy
nomination for the song. “With-
out me there is no all of me,” she
wrote.
Teigen is also — at least
partially — responsible for the
glow-up that landed Legend on
People’s closely watched annual
issue. “She always looks amaz-
ing,” Legend told the magazine.
“And I get to stand next to her a
lot and I don’t want to be a huge
let down... so I try to dress well
enough to be worthy of being
next to my wife.”
[email protected]BY BETHONIE BUTLER
Chrissy Teigen made a cryptic
confession to her nearly 12 mil-
lion Twitter followers Tuesday
night: “I have big news and it’s
killing me I can’t say it and it’s
not a baby,” the model and
author wrote.
About an hour later, the news
broke: her husband, singer John
Legend, had been named People
magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive.
“My secret is out,” she wrote
alongside a photo of the annual
issue’s 2019 cover, which depicts
the 40-year-old (real name:
John Stephens) with one eye-
brow raised as he buttons — or,
perhaps, unbuttons — a dapper
suit jacket.
A flurry of tweets followed:
There was “#EGOTPSMA,”
which Teigen wrote in a refer-
ence to the EGOT status the
singer achieved last year. She
added a trio of heart-eye emoji
while retweeting People’s offi-
cial announcement. “The kids
... do not care,” she reported of
the couple’s young children,
sharing a video of 3-year-old
Luna and 1-year-old Miles as
they offered lackluster reac-
tions to their dad’s latest acco-
lade.
And because Teigen is a celeb-
rity on social media, she pre-
dicted that some outrage would
follow. “I cannot WAIT for peo-
ple to get mad about John being
the sexiest man alive. it’s my
new Starbucks holiday cup,” she
wrote before tweeting a spicy
response to one such critic.
Teigen also retweeted a self-
deprecating tweet from Legend,
who shared a photo of himself
as a bespectacled teen next to an
alluring, more recent photo of
last year’s Sexiest Man Alive,
Idris Elba. It wasn’t exactly a
fair comparison, she conceded,
noting that Elba was “prob still
very hot” in the mid-’90s. Leg-
end likewise acknowledged in
his People interview that he had
an “awkward phase,” particular-
ly leading up to his years at his
Ivy League alma mater, the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania.
The kicker to Teigen’s Twitter
celebration arrived three hours
after Teigen noted she had not-
so-subtly tweaked her Twitter
bio to reflect the news: “the
sexiest man alive just made me a
Teigen is tweety about her Sexiest Man Alive sweetie
DIA DIPASUPIL/GETTY IMAGESJOHN SCIULLI/GETTY IMAGES FOR QUAY AUSTRALIA
TOP: Chrissy Teigen and John
Legend. When People magazine
declared him the Sexiest Man
Alive, it reported: “Legend calls
himself a nerd. Teigen admits
she’s kind of a basket case. They
adore each other.” ABOVE:
Legend, who succeeds Idris
Elba as Sexiest Man Alive.self-image that inform the compa-
ny ethos — “Women hate the way
they look,” Priya declares proudly
— offer further backup for the
sense that Clearday’s skin-bleach-
ing product is bottled evil. As one
employee asks another: Is there
ever such a thing in Asian culture
as being too white?
Alas, the plot doesn’t so much
thicken as weaken, especially as it
veers into the abusive entangle-
ment of a rich, brash American
employee, Diana Huey’s Built Sutti-
kul, with the play’s sole male char-
acter, Marcel Benoit (Zachary Fall).
The Frenchman’s obsession with
Built has a pivotal impact on Clear-
day’s public-
relations emergency, but Marcel’s
role comes across as false and fac-
ile. The unconvincing histrionics
(and more) that attend the couple’s
tawdry reunion only diminish the
play’s comic strengths, leading to a
silly, unsatisfying conclusion. As a
result, “White Pearl’s” mission feels
less than fully accomplished.
Chiang keeps the production
percolating efficiently, until the
material begins to let her down.
Like Clearday, “White Pearl” might
want to consider further consulta-
tion to shore up its strategic plan.
[email protected]White Pearl, by Anchuli Felicia King.
Directed by Desdemona Chiang. Set,
Debra Booth; costumes, Helen Huang;
lighting, Wen-Ling Liao; sound, Melanie
Chen Cole; projections, Rasean
Davonte Johnson. About 90 minutes.
$60-$90. Through Dec. 8 at Studio
Theatre, 1501 14th St. NW. 202-332-- studiotheatre.org.
be as dumb about the differences
between North and South Korea as
any geopolitical illiterate across the
ocean and that a Chinese market-
ing executive can entertain the
same racist stereotypes as a
backward-thinking white suprem-
acist.
What’s gratifying on this occa-
sion is the convergence on a main-
stream Washington stage of so
many potent actresses of Asian
descent: The unifying adjective for
their work, under the direction of
Desdemona Chiang, is ferocious.
Parasuraman makes of company
head Priya a stately fount of arro-
gance and entitlement; Narea
Kang’s Soo-Jin, the firm’s South
Korean biochemist, is a chafing,
boiling cauldron of resentment.
Resa Mishina applies a useful ve-
neer of genial deference to Ruki,
the Japanese business manager;
Jody Doo hides the insecurities of
Singaporean staffer Sunny persua-
sively behind a wall of foul-
mouthed hipness; and Jenna Zhu
melts down admirably as the Chi-
nese marketing employee, Xiao,
who faces political persecution at
home if she loses her job at Clear-
day.
King tantalizingly sets up the
satirical underpinnings of “White
Pearl,” which take place in set de-
signer Debra Booth’s glossy realiza-
tion of Clearday’s sterile headquar-
ters; the description of the racially
tone-deaf commercial, and the on-
line outrage it engenders, give the
play some amusing propulsion.
The retrograde notions of femaleTHEATER REVIEW FROM C1‘White Pearl’ provides
laughs, then gets lost
TERESA WOOD/STUDIO THEATRE
Jenna Zhu, Shanta Parasuraman, Narea Kang, and Diana Huey in
the U.S. premiere of “White Pearl” at Studio Theatre.Why did Pocahontas captivate
people in her own time and in every
generation that followed?
Pocahontas: Her Place in the Emerging Atlantic
World and Nascent United States
Tuesday, November 19, 2 p.m.
Free | First-come, first-served seating | No registration required
This presentation by award-winning
National Museum of the American Indian
curator Cécile R. Ganteaume explores what
we know about Pocahontas and her early
impact on European and American thought.
National Mall | Washington, DC | AmericanIndian.si.eduPocahontas, unidentified artist, after Simon van de Passe, oil on canvas, after 1616
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; transfer from the National Gallery of Art; gift of the A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, 1942