Theatre
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By PETER FORSTER Farewell, Farewell Eugene. (Garrick.) — Detour After Dark. (Fortune.) — The Tempest. (Old Vic.) WHAT happens when the proper order is reversed, and the actors are given precedence over the (ALAN BRIEN author (our theatre's principal it Alin on holiday) defect at present) can be seen in the case of the new play by John Vari at the Garrick. It deals with two elderly sisters whose Fulhani menage in the year 1905 is upset by their enforced adoption of a stranded baby; and the signs are that at the heart of Mr. Vari's original play was a concern with the problems of genteel poverty, the conflict between the puritanical spinster who bitterly resents having come down in the world, and her briefly married sister who accepts the change with a light heart and a light ale. As such, Mr. Vari's play may or may not have been worth attention—I have scant means of knowing.
For clearly somebody then saw in this abomin- ably titled piece an answer to the managerial Problem of what next to do with two distinguished but difficult-to-cast comediennes, and that skilled dramatiser, Rodney Ackland, was engaged to turn it into a vehicle for Mesdames Margaret Ruther- ford and Peggy Mount. It has proved a task beyond him, beyond anybody. The trouble is that Miss Rutherford's natural vehicle is the Edwardian Pram, eccentrically furbelow'd, absurdly canopied, which this most endearing of nutty nannies can forever be pushing round the private parks and follies of our imagination; whereas the sound and sight of Miss Mount unmistakably evokes the tumbril, the knitting, and the knife. Both, in short, are delightful artists, but they have not their beings in the same world. Miss Rutherford, for all her seeming flamboyance, excels in a curiously deli- cate vein of comedy, edged with a pathos that comes from knowing oddity to be a state often worth pity; Miss Mount is best when puncturing the farcical balloon with a brick. revealing a talent for ventriloquism; or it might have been Miss Mount's echo; but then they gave up pretending, and so did I.
The new thriller at the Fortune is notable only for a performance by Stephen Murray as a bearded French recluse which is so effective and well studied that it seems to have nothing what- ever to do with the trivial events around him but to be part of some quite different and quite excel- lent play. The rest of the cast cope fairly efficiently with a variation on the I-Have-Been-Here-Before theme, in which a novelist lost in the French countryside finds his death planned under circum- stances exactly described in ;his on unpublished novel. In essence this is no sillier or lin probable than a lot of other thrillers, but as worked out it becomes far too complex, and the elaborate house of cards falls disappointingly to pieces in the last act. Shorn of the detailed reconstruction of the novelist's book, it would be much stronger, and have more chance of being made into the film towards which the whole conception rather obviously casts an eye. For the rest, there are a couple of mildly spooky moments, and the room furnished like an aviary put me in mind of my favourite description of harpsichord music, which Philip Hope-Wallace once likened to thrashing a birdcage.
At the Old Vic, under the new policy of casting a wider net, they have come upwith the interesting idea of reviving The Tempest In the Dryden- Davenant version of 1667, with Purcell's music. This needs to be considered in context : written at a time when Dryden had just become a contract writer for the King's theatre, it is conceived as an opera, which to him meant 'a potential tale, or fiction, represented by vocal and instrumental music, adorned with scenes, machines and danc- ing.' With The Tempest this involved 'the fable of it all spoken and acted by the best of the Comedians; the other part of the entertainment to be performed by the singers and dancers.'
And so poor Mr. Vari's play becomes a tug-of- war between these two ill-matched champions, with a supporting cast directed by William Chap- Pell as if the whole thing were being done by ENSA in the open air in the middle of an air- raid; and this amplification goes to underline the fact that the piece itself is just not witty or dramatic or charming enough. Perhaps in a more muted production, and with somebody more icy, more truly grande dame than Miss Mount, it might have seemed different, but as sentimental farce the effect is too often dull and embarrassing. The two ladies have their occasional moments of glory, but It is really asking too much to expect them to coo convincingly over a cradle placed by the foot- lights while baby noises emerge from backstage. At firSt.I wondered whether Miss Rutherford was Moreover, Dryden cheerfully set about re-writing Shakespeare (he said he never worked at anything with more delight); being at that time under the influence of the tidier French drama, he intro- duced some symmetry in the shape of sisters for Miranda and Caliban, and a counterpart for Ferdinand; he contrived a neater, less complicated narrative, and made ample allowance for the 'machines' which he knew to be the main attraction for his public, theatre-starved after two years of closure.
Even now, one could make out a case for Dryden improving upon Shakespeare. This Tem- pest makes much more sense than the original. Continually we see Dryden asking Shakespeare rational questions about points of plot or character —does not Prospero, for instance, feel any pity for those he tortures?—and because this is the kind of thing that puzzles us no less than him, it is satisfy- ing to find him putting the question in somebody's mouth and obtaining a good enough answer. The play has become quite consistent and plausible; all that we have lost is most of the poetry, the revelation of a great mind near the end of its life, the genius. Dryden's Shakespeare is commonly called a perversion; it is in fact a reduction.
I would like to be able to salute more than the Vic's enterprise, but am bound to say I found the experience a beautiful bore. No fault of the com- pany : Douglas Seale has produced brilliantly in Finlay James's conch-shell settings; the musical interludes are truly operatic, except that we can actually make out the words; Miles Malleson is on hand as Trinculo, working the old familiar collywobble charm as hard as ever; there is a pleasant, distinctive-voiced newcomer, Christine Finn, as the Dryden-invented Hippolito; and Joss Ackland's Caliban is a splendidly blab and bloated lizard, another Oxford man gone wrong. Every- one, indeed, works hard and well, and if the overall effect is bloodless, the fault is with Dryden and Davenant; in particular Prospero exemplifies the way Shakespeare's creation in depth is turned into a one-dimension, flat-wash, strip-cartoon character. Perhaps, too, our modern convention of the well-behaved audience is wrong in an enter- tainment clearly designed for a more turbulent crowd, coming and going. As a collector's piece, it is obviously worth a visit, but for this occasion the Old Vic tradition of visits from schools might be discouraged, for I can only think that this would put children off both Shakespeare and Dryden, though they might like the 'machines.'
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