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THEATRE
Vaut le Voyage?
By JOHN HIGGINS
InnChichester Festival Theatre was born five years ago with a silver spoon in its mouth in the shape of Sir Laurence Olivier. When the house was nearing completion it looked around for a director, invited Olivier and was accepted. clearly the moment could not have been better, for the National Theatre was just around the corner and Olivier must have welcomed the opportunity of creating a company and directing it in repertory before setting up shop in the Waterloo Road.
Those beginnings worked out wonderfully well. Although the choice of the opening play in 1962, The Chances, was eccentric to say the least of it, the seasons have been prepared by a master blender. There has been an adroit mix of classics (Uncle Vanya and Othello), contem- poraries (two new plays each from Peter Shaffer and John Arden), together with the occasional inspired exhumation (notably Trelawny of the 'Wells'). With the bond forged between Chichester and the Waterloo Road, every season was likely to be a success before it opened. And rightly so.
Now Sir Laurence has had.to bow out, and the steering of the theatre has been placed in the hands of John Clements. Taking over in such circumstances is much like replacing Callas, and Mr Clements, experienced man of the theatre that he is, will know that there is only one possible course of action: to decide what sort of audience he wants to attract and to fashion Chichester in that image.
Looking at this season's chosen plays, it is not easy to see what Chichester is after. Two very familiar classics (Macbeth and The Cherry Orchard), one less familiar Restoration comedy (The Clandestine Marriage) and one of Anouilh's pieces brillantes, written some time ago but hitherto unperformed here—what does this quartet add up to? It is solid and comfortable, certainly more pop than the Olivier program- ming. It is also a shade old-fashioned and carries with it the feeling of Shaftesbury Avenue in cultural mood fifteen years ago, although Lindsay Anderson, who is directing The Cherry Orchard, might make me eat those words.
Mr Clements, surely, has two alternatives in front of him. He can build up the local affiliations of the theatre and draw his audiences primarily from that rich and luscious arc of countryside bounded by Brighton, Guildford and Portsmouth, in which case he must aim for a much longer season and a larger repertory. Or he can keep to the festival concept and pull in locals, Londoners and tourists alike. But If a festival it is going to be, is there not a case for aiming at perfection in a certain type of drama? Should we not be going to Chichester specially for Sheridan—or Osborne, or Shaw, for that matter—as we go to Aldeburgh for Britten and to Munich for Richard Strauss?
If we don't happen to live in Wessex, we are bound to assess Chichester in Michelin's vaut le voyage terms. The trip can be the delight it Nas on the opening evening of the season, with he chestnuts around Petworth sparkling in the unllght, to say nothirig of a post-performance bonus of a purple dusk over the Goodwood hills. But it can also be the most terrible flog down the A3, with the rain tipping down and holiday (or race) traffic coming in the opposite direction. (Car is the only possibility, for the evening rail connection is via a train from Havant arriving in London at 1.02 a.m., which has its disad- vantages for those dealing with baby-sitters or wanted in the office eight hours later.) The season's opening production of the Garrick /Colman The Clandestine Marriage does not really merit the van: le voyage rating, agree- able though it is and warmly though it was received. It is a Restoration comedy with its fangs removed, showing quite clearly its ancestry in George Etherege's The Man of Mode, one of the earliest examples of the species. The crusty oldsters—Mr Sterling, a man of property much concerned with landscaping his garden and its imported ruins; Mrs Heidleberg, his infinitely snobbish sister; and Lord Ogleby himself, who generates life in his flaccid limbs each morning only with the aid of cups of Italian chocolate and a trunk full of cosmetics—are at heart as soft as a trio of fourteen-year-old spaniels. If put to the test, they would never really stand in the way of the clandestine marriage of the title made between Sterling's younger daughter, Fanny, and his clerk, Lovewell.
. Desmond O'Donovan, the director. has clearly found the soft cloak of amiability which covers the whole play an encumbrance—Cimarosa's librettists encountered much the same difficulty when they were turning it into Il Matrinionio Segreto. The fun is intermittent, and most of it is provided by Alastair Sim's quite remarkable and hilarious impression of Lord Ogleby getting out of bed in the morning, standing in the middle of the stage like a quivering kirby grip, clutching a powder-puff and hoping that his legs will last him out another day. The voice changes hardly at all over the years: this Lord Ogleby pro- nounces 'The mystery thickens' with the very relish that Mr Sim used for the same phrase fifteen years ago when playing the dotty detective- story writer in Hue and Cry. Apart from Mr Sim, the best performance of the evening comes from John Standing, as Fanny's second and unwanted suitor--the figure is elegant, the manner suave, and, joy of joys on Chichester's round stage, the diction is perfect. Sarah Bade! and John Bown make an attractive enough pair of lovers and Bill Fraser enjoys himself as father Sterling, but Margaret Rutherford was surprisingly uncertain as Mrs Heidleberg, the lady who looks up to the 'Quality' having little of her own.
Back in London, the Mermaid has made an admirable two-hour entertainment out of Sardou and Najac's eighty-six-year-old comedy Divor- cons, translated as Let's Get a Divorce. The play is a masterly example of theatrical carpentry which stretches out a single simple idea over three acts: in this instance, the husband-wife- lover triangle is stood on its head so that the husband wins the wife and the lover gets the brush-off. Fenella Fielding has a glorious time complaining in her deep indigo voice of the lot
of girls who are plucked from their convent to marry middle-aged men—'When we're young you shut us in, when we're grown-up you shut us out, and when we're old you shut us up'— before deciding over a sou per intim', where the choice of menu would curdle Leslie Adrian's sauce bearnaise on the spot, that mature hus- bands are much more fun than jejune lovers. There is excellent support from Hugh Paddick, a fluent translation from Angela and Robert Goldsby, and Robin Midgley's exuberant pro- duction is the best at Puddle Dock for many a moon.
At the Whitehall. Danny La Rue shines like the veritable jewel in the Ethiop's ear. This is the first time the country's best female imper- sonator has been seen outside cabaret and pantomime and he scores any number of bull's- eyes in a rapid series of costume changes. The singing voice is good—not least in the final number. iN hen Mr La Rue is back as Mr La Rue —and the legs from the knees down arc the best on stage. A pity, then, that the surrounds should be so tatty—yet another mock spy story tricked out with night-club sketches with a plentiful erowth of mould on them. The author should take a lesson from Sardou on working with thin material.
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