Theatre
Reserve Teams
By ALAN BRIEN
Make Me An Offer. (Stratford, East.)—The Importance of Being Earnest. (Old Vic.)— The Edwardians. (Saville.)— Man On Trial. (Lyric, Ham- mersmith.) WELL, men, I'm afraid we are still waiting for the Great British Musical. And I'm also afraid that we shall go on waiting until the producers produce enough lettuce to persuade the rabbits that it is worth while to have a real nibble. In American terms, a British musical should mean score by Benjamin Britten, book by Arnold Wesker, lyrics by Percy Cudlipp, decor by Graham Sutherland, choreo- graphy by Kenneth MacMillan, cast led by Laurence Olivier, Shirley Bassey, Peter Sellers and Fenella Fielding, under the direction of Peter Brook or Tyrone Guthrie or Joan Littlewood. Make Me An Offer is a parade of second-stringers, a reserve team of substitutes, with only one of the essentials present. Miss Littlewood has staged the whole show like a three-ring wrestling match for an audience of weight-lifters. All the players seem to be threatened from behind by invisible red-hot pokers so that they come urgently prancing on, with desperate high-kicks and painful grimaces, to celebrate a fete worse than death. Whenever pos- sible they knock a hole through the cellophane curtain with an exasperated or exhilarated aside to the stalls—two street dealers double as stately home footmen and grumble about the dangers of skipping the small print in the Equity contract, two lovers sing a song about make-believe while warning us that a play is just a play. Old admirers of Miss Littlewood's braw Brecht lime-licht nichts down at the Theatre Workshop will recog- nise the familiar fingerprints which appear on every Stratford offering whether the author is a Delaney, a Behan or a Mankowitz. Unfortunately Make Me An Offer (book by Wolf Mankowitz, music and lyrics by Monty Norman and David Heneker) is not a Threepenny Opera, or a Hostage, or even a Fing.s. Ain't Wot They Used T'Be. It is not sturdy enough to stand the strain of such an elaborately muscle-cracking work-out.
Mr. Mankowitz's book is full of his customary gruffly sentimental cynicism, but the action lacks coherence and logic. There are far too many questions left unanswered. Not the slightest effort seems to be made to reconcile any of the irritating inconsistencies in behaviour--each moment is hit for its immediate effect and then left to stagger off on its own.
The music and lyrics are by the Expresso Bongo team minus Stanley Myers and something seems to have gone out of the combo with his disappear- ance. Mr. Norman and Mr. Heneker are not aim- ing for the inner ring of the musical where West Side Story or Gypsy live. They would obviously be proud to 'nick an outer in the Pajama Game belt. Their style is heavily reminiscent of Adler and Ross—conventionally tuneful and profession- ally fluent on the surface but lacking any real drive or fresh invention underneath. There are some rousingly percussive choruses, a parody Gilbert and Sullivan auction, a lively unaccom- panied round, and one goodish song, 'I Want A Lock-up in the Portobello Road,' which unites dramatic point and musical colour. The acting is also disappointingly obvious and superficial. Dilys Laye, as the U-lamb who outsmarts the double-U wolves, is allowed to smirk and mince around like a pier-head soubrette condescending to take the lead in the Stock Exchange Operatic Society's Sunday performance. Daniel Massey, as the Can- dide of Notting Hill, at least behaves like some kind of a human being—though his slumped shoulders, glottal mutterings, and sideways sham- blings become monotonous mannerisms. The best performances are given by the second leads— notably Sheila Hancock as the gormless spinster hoping to be accosted any dark night by a gorm- ful man. The scene where she sits around in the sunshine talking about love to her pregnant friend (Diana Coupland) is full of the sort of funny, friendly, natural dialogue that Mr. Mankowitz can always write when he is not trying to play Harry Kurnitz. It ends with a brilliantly despair- ing groan from the friend-1 sometimes wonder if it is possible to have a friendship with a virgin.'
The Importance of Being Lamest is one of the few indisputable masterpieces of comedy in our time. A pattern of thistledown moulded in silver by a Cellini, a ballet of words sketched by a Degas, it seems to tremble at a footfall and yet it has survived sixty-five years of hurricanes without a hair out of place. Trimmed of a few of the more mechanical Wildeisms of the 'I-hate-old-people- they-are-always-so-adolescent' type, it is a perfect example of the classical work of art which appears at the turning of the tide, at the magic moment when one world is dying without realising that another is being born. Studded with paradoxes, The Importance is itself a paradox—romantically realistic, hilariously serious, cynically earnest. It needs to be played by an ensemble of virtuosos— an inbred group who live out of each other's suit- cases yet can meet for the first time each evening. It is the most cogent argument for a National Theatre I have ever heard and this production demonstrates the unacceptability of the Old Vic as a substitute.
The importance still makes a highly entertain- ing evening, though the producer, Michael Bent- hall, betrays every sign that he lacks confidence in his playwright. One of Wilde's themes is the sovereignty of words—the superiority of the epi- gram to the sabre, and the idea to the emotion. Yet Mr. Benthall instructs his actors to scramble over furniture, scuffle over umbrellas, and snatch cigarette cases from each other. Wilde also wrote his arias in clear, flowing rhythms which impose their own beat on the actor as strongly as Shake- spearian blank verse. Yet Fay Compton as Lady Bracknell is allowed to unroll her speeches like strings of tired sausages—each sausage containing stuff which she finds not only mysterious but un- appetising. The costumes, the pronunciations, the business, the readings of the lines are all riddled with social gaffes. The girls (Judi Dench and Bar- bara Jefford) manage to pass more convincingly
than the men (John Justin and Alec McCowen), but the whole quartet occasionally have the air of mummers attempting to gatecrash a Royal birth- day party.
The Edwurdians (adapted by Ronald Gow from Victoria Sackville-West's novel) is like a pirate version of an early Oscar Wilde sentimental melo- drama. 1 cannot understand why some distin- guished critics should have been so baffled by this simple-minded, mildly amusing, country-house charade that one even compared it to 'Pirandello in Chinese.' Mr. Gow is merely suggesting that we are all born in chains and that the higher you are in the peerage the more y–t:r robes fit you like a straitjacket. I think this is nonsense and that the personal history of that bloated schoolboy King Edward VII is evident proof, to the contrary. But Mr. Gow provides some amiably jolly variations on this theme. The director, Alan Dexter, allows most of the cast to overact in that outrageously obvious way which provokes occasional rounds of self-congratulatory applause from an easily pleased audience. Helen Cherry, as a revived Lady Windermere, and Jeremy Brett, as her ducal fan, engagingly pretend to believe what they are called upon to say.
Man On Trial is a Roman Catholic propaganda tract palmed off inside a mezuzah. Despairing of convincing his audience that Christianity must be true because Christians believe in it, Diego Fabbri argues that Christianity must be true because Jews believe in it. The case for Christ's guilt according to Hebraic law is argued out night after night by a wandering band of orthodox Jews. Different roles are taken by different members and the audience is invited to chip in. It is all like an open discussion at a university religious club except that no agnostic or atheist is given an argument worth repeating. Like so many other propagandists, Mr. Fabbri never allows his opponent to untie his -hands and the result is merely well-rehearsed shadow-boxing. Man On Trial opened on the night after Yom Kippur and has several presum- ably genuine Jews in the cast. Some night I may return to see how the apologists of the Church would deal with a genuine interruption from a stage-box.
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