" Hassan." By James Elroy Flecker. •(Cambridge.)
Tate friction of twenty-eight years has rubbed some of the gold off the road to Samarkand ; but that is not to say that Flecker's entertainment is dull. Mr. Basil Dean was quick to take the advice of critics (not that he could have needed their prompting, after the near disaster of the first performance) and cut the text severely. Even so it runs for three hours, and one would not have been sorry had Mr. Dean been ruthless enough to scrap a lot of the dancing, too ; it has a sadly self-conscious air on the modest stage of this theatre ; the swirling and thumping and uttering of cries in unison—there is more than a' touch of comic opera about it all.• One saw two•dancers collide and glare at one another impolitely for a split second before resuming: so harassing was their situation that they can hardly be blamed. And then the comic rivalry between the police and the military—how weirdly out of key this is, like some cheerfully bouncing lines by Gilbert tacked on to the stately, high-flown stanzas of Fitzgerald. Otherwise, while there is all the world of difference between the exotic Orientalism of Hassan and poetic drama as it is being austerely shaped today, there is no reason why Flecker's conventions should not be willingly accepted and the spectacular cascades of extravagant imagery enjoyed There is also, although the elaboration of the language and the complexities of production tend throughout to dull it, rather more dramatic edge to the writing than might have been apparent in that long first performance.
It cannot be said that Mr. Frederick Valk is altogether happy as the great Caliph or Mr. Andre Huguenet as the elevated Confec- tioner. The one's performance is a deal too ponderous, the other's not weighty enough. Miss Elizabeth Sellars' Yasmin is as tempting a creature as may be imagined, Miss Hilda Simms' Pervanch a lithe mountain-cat, and Mr. Laurence Harvey's Rafi a fit lover for her. But it falls to Mr. Laurence Hardy as the poet Ishak to give by far the best performance of the evening. Whenever he speaks he
holds the attention as no other player does. LAIN HAMILTON.
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