THEATRE
The Puff Direct
No fear of Dryden's complaint this week with Feydeau, whose crowning glory is, as always, plot: character, observation, thought and feel- ing streak by on the maelstrom of situation. Dialogue is `so to speak, the activity of the vocal chords and the cerebral cortex,' as Eric Bentley says in his celebrated chapter on Farce in The Life of the Drama (theatrical bible of our time). In it he explores, among other things, the possi- bility that the preoccupation with adultery in Western drama of the last thirty years is a thinly veiled preoccupation with incest; and that Fey- deau, having gulled us with laughter and stepped up human activity to the speed of bullets, moves on to gratify our darkest and most primitive lusts. It becomes more than a pleasure, almost a moral duty, to visit A Flea in her Ear at the Old Vic.
Subconsciously we have known all along, of course, that farce is a hotbed of guilt and desire —who, for instance, could doubt that once the butler has formally stated his belief in his wife's fidelity, it can only be a matter of minutes before he finds her stripped to her stays and squealing in a brothel? Or that the prurient lady who suspects her husband of deceiving her will Shortly be deceiving him, against her wilt, in the clutches of a lascivious stranger in the very same brothel? Feydeau's plot has a beautiful inelucta- bility in small things as in large: a mouthwash of boracic acid is no sooner brought in than forgotten, abandoned on the mantelpiece and accidentally swallowed by a Spanish gentleman so maddened with jealousy that he barely notices the extra pang. Given that he drinks a mouth- wash in Act 1, and that a glass of ammonia-and- water appears in Act 3, it follows that he will find his way to its side like a homing pigeon. Sure enough, he gulps it down, this time under the impression that he has just murdered his wife's lover, and vcmits briefly, almost absent- mindedly, before jealousy closes once more over his head : 'Filthy French drink,' he snarls (an interpolation of the translator, John Mortimer, and under the circumstances one of the funniest jokes in the play). The pleasures of this kind of plot are relished the more on the second time round—at least in the expert hands of M. Jacques Charon, guest director, and pre-eminent in the Feydeau field.
As to the performance, coming fresh from The Critic, which opened the bicentenary season at the Theatre Royal, Bristol, last week, one feels this is frankly a case for the Puff direct: Mr. Wylie was astonishingly great in the character of the Spaniard! That universal and judicious actor, Mr. Finney, perhaps never appeared to more advan- tage than in the husband and the hotel porter combined—but it is not in the power of lan- guage to do justice to Mr. Hardwicke! His Camille—an amiable, gibbering Caliban with no roof to his palate, groping for his lost mouth-
plate in mortal fear of being recognised by the friends and relatives who whirl in endless chase across the brothel floor—was one of the most ele- gantly finished performances we have ever seen; only rivalled by the Mme Chandebise of Miss Geraldine McEwan. In short, we are at a loss which to admire most—the unrivalled genius of the author, the great attention and liberality of M. Charon. the wonderful abilities of the de- signer (Andrd Levasseur), or the incredible exer- tions of all the performers!
Dr. Faustus, on the other hand, is a case for the Puff collusive: Richard Burton plays the doctor as a dry academic, round-shouldered, short-sighted, wryly humorous, raising a quizzical eyebrow at Professor Coghill's idea of the lures
Edward Hardwicke of the world, the flesh and the devil. The director —whisking Elizabeth Taylor in and out at the double—apparently feels at the end of a long career that life beyond the study offers no temp- tations worth a moment's trouble. Apart from the Mephistophilis of Andreas Teuber, this must be one of the most perverse productions ever seen of Marlowe's shoddy masterpiece.
HILARY SPURLING
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