The Prisoner. By Bridget Boland. (Globe.) —The Tempest. By William
ShakeS4 peare. (Old Vic.) THE dialectic established between policO interrogator and victim is, it must be admitted, peculiarly a twentieth-centurY phenomenon. Under the pressure of cow' stant questioning, lack of sleep, blinding lights, the human soul plays strange tricks, flying to pieces like a flawed jewel wheq handled in one specific way. The aim of interrogation is to discover the flaw, and this is achieved as an increasing fraternitY unites the two sides of the dialogue. TM passion that exists between tormentor ano It is this universe that Bridget Boland has 1°Oght to present in her new play. A peirdinal, a hero of the wartime resistance, IS accused of various crimes by the govern- Inent of a popular democracy. In prison he IS interrogated and eventually confronted With the sum total Of the vague feelings of guilt he has experienced ever since childhood and which are connected with his relationship to his mother. Then he breaks down and confesses no matter what at his trial. It is as though the explosive forces within him Were suddenly released to wreck his per- sonality—a breakdown proportionate to the strength of the machine. Alec Guinness Makes of the cardinal a creature of fire and tee, a "man who has reached complete self- Control—until the breakdown: then he gives us a prince of the church with the lid off.
What he fails to give us is a human being, but that is not altogether his fault. Humanity is not in the part : even the motivation of the fatal flaw is not quite convincing. The cardinal seems to break more through want Of sleep than because he really hated his Mother. The interrogator has it all his own Way: priests are meant to be able to pray, but the cardinal doesn't do much praying at the moments when he apparently most needs to. The question of when or whether he will crack is really one of mathematics, an exercise for intellectuals like the interro- getor. Noel Willman makes a gooet official Of the Ministry of Love, half doctor, half torturer, but he too is less (or more) than hilinan. And this is the weakness of the Play. Apart from the gruff but kindly Orison warder (very well played by Wilfred Lawson), Miss Boland has failed to inject Warmth into her presentation of character. Both the cardinal and the interrogator are disembodied intelligences or. rather (since ' Much of what they say is not very intelli- gent) disembodied wills. Watching them clash is like watching a fight between an °ctolms and a lobster, and, in spite of the excellent production and acting, the audience is left as uninvolved as (one feels) are the actors themselves in what should be a story Of man's inhumanity to man—but is not.
The Old Vic's new production of The Jenipest is directed by Robert Helpman, and, as might be expected, is very acceptable from the scenic point of view. M, r. Helpman, has struggled bravely with the handicap of a permanent set. which always makes productions in this theatre lours de force-if successful and a shambles if not. To help him he had Michael Hordern's excellent shamanistic Prospero going through the ritual of death and rebirth with con- siderably more dignity than his Siberian Counterparts. Mr. Hordern speaks verse admirably and the usually boring speech to .Miranda was for once lively and interesting. I Was less happy about Richard Burton's excessively monstrous Caliban. There is What might be called an earth poetry in The rempest which depends on Caliban, and Mr. Burton, for all his antics, failed to bring this out. Claire Bloom was suited to an in- genuous Miranda and Fay Compton as _usual lifted her few lines out of the ruck of
• the masque. The only really jarring note was ',struck by an Arid l clothed only in saffron
• „Paint. This was not Robert Hardy's fault: • the Partis a difficult one, but the effect of thj5 apparition :was both startling and .olsastrous. - ANTHONY HARTLEY
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