The Theatre
€‘ Richard of Bordeaux." By Gordon Daviot. At the New Theatre.
THE majority of plays command (at the best) acquiescence : not surrender. That is true to-day, and it was true yesterday and the day before. The theatregoer has learnt to be easily pleased, to be grateful for isolated and partial virtues. " That at least was good," he says, recalling a scene, a flavour in the writing, a character fully seen and faithfully presented. Un- common excellences he discerns with charity, and remembers. He spends his evenings in a half-unconscious quest. for some fraction of that full satisfaction for which, against the lessons of experience, he still hopes.
At Richard of. Bordeaux no such quest need, or indeed can, take place. At no moment does this play, or this production, stand in need of what amounts to an instinctive patronage. Complete surrender is spontaneous and welcome ; all that you demand of an evening in the theatre is yours. For once, it' is not a question of making shift with what you can find you do not even have to seek. It is all irresistibly there.
Gordon Daviot's Richard II does not differ in essentials from Shakespeare's ; but the modern portrait is fuller; flatter; more photographic, illumined—not occasionally by flashes of lightning—but continuously by the warm, steady glow of understanding. We see Richard first in 1385, a young man vehement in the quest for beauty. The interests of his power- ful uncles are vested in war ; the King alone can see the less catchpenny attractions of peace. He has already the instinct for statesmanship, and, if he cannot school his own intolerance, that instinct teaches him to exploit its tactical advantages. It is not until later in that long struggle with the Old Gang that he is altogether master of himself, and bids fair to become their master too. Anne his wife is dead, and de Vere his friend has gone : Richard's stake in this life is not as large as it was. He can give himself wholly to the hard, cold, violent business of ruling.
The barons are cowed, tricked, bought, or murdered. Success goes to Richard's head and unseats his judgment. Coming back from an ill-timed campaign in Ireland, he finds his armies melted, the fire-eating Derby returned from exile, and his enemies all-powerful in the land. He abdicates, only to find that he has exchanged the stale, familiar captivity of kingship for a shorter, darker sojourn in the condemned cell. An escort, he is told, will take him to Pomfret at dawn .
The play., succeeds in almost all that it attempts, though Richard's strength is so closely bound up with his weakness that we never feel—as we do when Shakespeare handles him —that his fall is inevitable because of what he is in his nature. The dialogue is in an unaffected modern idiom, never exploit- ing its naturalism for the purposes of facetiousness ; its easy, forcible, often witty style is one of the play's chief virtues.
Mr. Gielgud's Richard is a performance of consummate ability, almost of genius. Of its many facets, there is space to mention only one. The contrast between the passion and the detachment in Richard's nature is very subtly presented. At _once a lanatie_and a connoisseur, he spies out the small humanities in the great conflicts and finds time to relish them in the heat of crisis : stops to feel disgust with de Vere's pre- occupation with a love. affair in a moment when the man should have been all bitter despair : strikes furiously a mes- senger who brings bad news, and then stands aside to analyse the messenger's feelings. Mr. Gielgud's Richard had disas- trously keen perceptions, and they obstructed the realization of his visions. A king, like others, needs blind spots if he is to be successful.
In a long and excellent cast there is space to mention only Miss Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies' Queen, beautiful and wise, stronger internally than her husband ; Mr. Eric Stanley's thunderous and formidable Gloucester ; Mr. Frederick Lloyd's jingoistic Arundel ; Mr. Francis Lister's de Vere, whose loyalty to an ideal coincides with personal cowardice, destroy- ing both the King's cause and his own peace of mind ; the sensitive fidelity of Mr. Richard Ainley's Maudelyn ; and Mr. Henry Mollison's swaggering Derby, all guts and no brains, all instincts and no principles, a familiar type presented with insight. Mr. Gielgud's production is swift and beautiful, and Motley's dresses give delight, reflecting and enhancing their age. Richard of Bordeaux is the best play in London.
Previous page
