STAGE AND SCREEN
THE THEATRE
"Henry V." By William Shakespeare. At the Old Vic MR. TYRONE GUTHRIE'S production rightly insists that this is a good play, not just a bad Tattoo ; and the result—save that the scenes of comedy are pedestrianly done—is altogether persuasive. How oddly topical it often is ! The word " lousy " recurs. The conspirators, Scroop, Cambridge and Grey confess and grovel with Trotskyist alacrity. War, and casualty lists, and national prestige are examined at length both by those who have to reason why and by those who haven't. In the former category, Mr. Olivier's Harry is brilliant. He is, many will feel, too far removed from Prince Hal : slaps too few backs, lacks prefectorial unction, emergcs as a lightweight owing kinship to Hamlet which should have been Hotspur's. But it is the virtue of Mr. Olivier's interpretation that he avoids the dashing complacency, the Teddy Lester, Captain of Cricket assurance, with which the part is commonly invested. He throws away his opportunities outside Harfleur, and he is elsewhere sometimes too subdued ; but on the whole he gives us a very just and moving portrait of a young Englishman with greatness and its penalties thrust upon him.
The French Mr. Guthrie depicts with insular but theatrically effective bias. Charles VI, in Mr. Harcourt Williams' hands, becomes a delightfully damaging caricature ; and Mr. Stephen Murray's Dauphin has that glut of arrogance and that dearth of stamina of which it is customary and agreeable, in these islands, to suppose all foreigners compounded. It is left to Mr. Leo Genn, as the Constable of France, to remind us that we were fighting something more than fops ; and he does so with consummate skill. Mr. Marius Goring's Chorus yearns most winningly, on his creator's behalf, for Hollywood. Mr. Ernest Hare plays two small parts very well indeed ; Miss Jessica Tandy is a delightful decoration ; and Motley's trappings are ingenious and practical and gay. It was a particularly happy notion to give the ragamuffin English those drab, essential packs.
Everybody ought to see this, the last of the Old Vic pro-
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