RADIO
Not All There
THOSE with an appetite for Shakespeare have been on thin commons in the theatre this winter, so that one sat down to The Winter's Tale on the Third Programme last Friday with gusty relish, napkin at throat, cutlery in both hands. Everyone knows it's a problem play, one of his last, variously interpreted as jaded, collaborate, allegorical, mystical, or a bungled attempt to keep up with the Beaumonts. The long first section appears overweighted, overexposed—this king of Sicily, who has hardly been introduced before he has fallen into an unmotivated fit of manic jeal- ousy (as though Iago had become a virus infec- tion), seems to pull the world too easily about everyone's ears before he's cured as suddenly as he fell sick by nothing less than the Delphic Oracle (pontificating unambiguously for the first time in its recorded history). The characters in this section speak at great length without revealing much of themselves and without (one blenches to say it of the Master) ever really closing with a dramatic situation. This is because for each step the single insane character moves forward, the sane people about him, all but Paulina, slink one step backward, avoiding conflict. The middle section transports us to pastures new, semi- Arcadian but recognisably English, with a nearly fresh cast; and most of the denouement occurs without warning, out of sight, between one scene and the next. To crown all, an actress has to stand breathless as a statue for more than eighty lines. There are glaring textual inconsistencies and an apparently deliberate disregard for the kind of plotting that went into Lear and Othello.
This production was served by some strong actors. Stephen Murray as the mad king shot his sentences into the air like so. many angry arrows, and though he didn't make absolutely plain to me the moment at which his jealousy took root there was no holding him in that first magnificent access of delirium : 'my heart dances. But not for joy— not joy.' Edith Evans, as Paulina, the only char- acter who does clash with the king, gave an in- tensely powerful performance, the lines no longer pinned down by their emphases and then carefully shaken out into an intelligible statement, as lesser spirits must do them, but every speech
sounding whole, intuitive, living of itself. The Shepherd and his son (Cyril Shaps and Russell Hunter) were entirely credible countrymen from Bohemian Warwickshire, without a trace of that reach-me-down low-life manner which destroyed Haydn Jones's Autolycus; while Jo Manning Wilson's specialist line in child-parts was more than a match for Mamillius (`No, my lord, I'll fight'). So much so that it seemed a pity she was not given Perdita, too grandly, too maturely played by Jill Bennett, who would have made a fine Hermione.
The question of casting or mis-casting brings us smack up against the producer. I have used my columns on this page almost exclusively so far to worry at radio drama, because, while it ought to be one of the most valuable areas of broadcasting, it is one of the most consistently disappointing. The responsibility for this disappointment lies heavily at the door of the producers. It is all very well to assemble a clutch of famous actors to perform the main parts of a famous play, but if the whole endeavour is not to be shaped and articulated by an exercise of the imagination every bit as exacting as that required by the stage, it will only make the limited effect of a talking book. Instance this production : The Winter's Tale. Shakespeare does not tell us that it is a winter tale until his second scene, but since that follows without a time-lag on the first, one may assume the first is also wintry. Charles Lefeaux sets us going with a short fanfare (where have we heard that before?) and so straight into speech. No attempt to give us climate or place (ate we in- or out-doors?). The fanfare is particularly inappropriate, since the play opens with two gentlemen holding a private conversation. Later the king holds a trial of. his unjustly suspected queen; but where is it held? In a court-room, a throne-room, a private chamber? Is the king on a dais? Does he leave it when he begins his intense private duel with the queen? Does she leave her dock? Here chair? Are they close together, eye to eye, or. bellowing at one another across the heads of their astounded subjects? For that matter, are these subjects present. at all? We catch no sound of them, not a breath, not a cough. Later still, a gentleman carrying a baby is landed during a storm on the coast of Bohemia. Mr. Lefeaux offers us a tangible storm, but where are the gentleman and his boatman? Walking on the water? There's no trace of a boat, of shingle. Certainly we hear the baby moan faintly (Miss Manning Wilson again?) but for all we can tell both it and its attendant are floating on the wind. This isn't asking for the moon—the seventh broadcast of Samuel Beckett's All That Fall a week or two back demonstrated just how `there,' how solid a radio play can sound.
These are details, but what about more funda- mental shaping? Mr. Lefeaux gave us an excellent scene with the shepherds, a sense of excitement, people, alcohol, peasant hair-down, but what became of the other scenes, the difficult ones? Where were the climaxes, the joints and changes of direction, the sudden closeness of two char- acters or their equally sudden rift, both physic- ally and psychologically? That final scene with the living statue—words in a vacuum; disem- bodied voices again; but suppose we had heard the marble floor of the gallery, the feet converg- ing from all directions, some slow, some fast, the voices, some near, some far: couldn't this sort of treatment have put The Winter's Tale finally and superbly in front of us, no longer a problem, but an action in which we took part, were present? Perhaps the BBC might ask Mr. Beckett to write in the sound effects for their next Shakespearian
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