THE THEATRE
- Magic." At the Arts Theatre Club.
Ar the Arts Theatre Club, near Leicester Square, Mr. Alec Clunes has revived G. K. Chesterton's fantastic comedy Magic. I did riot see this play when it was first produced but it is true Chester- tonian fare—lively, intelligent, witty, with gleams of real wisdom and understanding but, nevertheless, thoroughly sophistical, if not specious. It is a saddening thought that a man so brilliantly endowed by nature as G. K. Chesterton should have left behind him so few completely satisfying works, if, indeed, any. There may be many reasons for this, but one is that he was perhaps the first of the modern race of 'propagandists who undertook to prove more than can be proved without loss of integrity. It was not, in Chesterton's case, any lack of integrity of motive ; but he was a man of sensitive, perceptive instincts rather than of profound intellect, and was of ten compelled to distract our attention when he was out of his depth by the most prodigious acrobatic display of those parts of him which were still above water. Chesterton's reasoning power was almost wholly devoted to justifying his prejudices, and as some of his prejudices were sound the results of that fertile and ingenious brain were occasionally dazzling. But at other times when you stopped being dazzled you discovered that you had been fooled. Well, why not, if the fooling is good and you can take it as such? But it was not always pur- fooling, it was generally propagandist fooling, 2nd that is why so much of his work dates and is quite unconvincing.
Magic is a good example of his gifts and his defects. The Duke is a masterly comic creation which lost nothing at the hands of Stanford Holme. Every sentence the Duke utters is a delight, and I feel that the man who created this character ought to have been able to produce a series of unique comedies for the English stage, comparable to those Tchekhov created for the Russian theatre. But, alas, Chesterton had not got Tchekhov's clear objective vision ; he played a game of Blind Man's Bluff—and if by sheer exuberance of wit and fantasy he often prevented us from catching him out, yet, finally, he was the one left with the bandage on.
Mr. Clunes made an effective charlatanesque conjurer, haggard and handsome enough to fascinate the Duke's niece, impeccably represented by Penelope Dudley-Ward. Mr. Graveley Edwards as Dr. Grimthorpe securely dated the play, whose effectiveness was somewhat dimmed by excessive intervals. JAMES REDFERN.
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