STAGE AND SCREEN
THE THEATRE
" The Ascent of F 6." By W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood. At the Mercury Theatre—" Retreat from Folly." By Amy Kennedy Gould. At the Queen's Theatre The Ascent of F 6 restores to the stage the tragic hero. Michael Ransome is a mountaineer, sensitive, -learned, reserved
and beloved, :apparently somewhat- similar both in tempera-
ment and in repute to Colonel Lawrence.. He is invited by his brother, who is a member of the Government, to lead an expedition up the . haunted - mountain known as F 6. To do so has been his ambition, but he realises that the expedition is an imperialist racket. For F 6 marks the boundary between British and Ostnian Sudolands, the Ostnians are planning an expedition too_, and if they get to the top first the British will lose in prestige and will have difficulties with the natives in the plantations at the mountain's foot. Ransome, who thinks himself an idealist, detects the motive behind his brother's request and refuses to go. But his mother, who from his childhood has been the ally of her elder son, inter- venes and cleverly persuades him to change his mind for her sake. 'Thus the expedition proceeds under the auspices of mother-love. Ransome succeeds in reaching the top of F 6, but all but one of his companions lose their lives during the ascent, and before he has reached the summit he has realised that despite all his asceticism the motive which sent him on the expedition, and destroyed his companions, was the temptation of power. On the summit the demon of the haunted mountain appears to him in the form of his mother, claiming again what she has never relinquished, and he dies resigned to the knowledge that his material triumph is spiritually false.
Viewed in this way, the play is a tragedy on a more or less familiar model. Viewed in another it is a satire. A suburban couple are used as a chorus, illustrating the means by which public opinion can be formed on any topic. At each stage of the action they are shown in their grim little flat reacting to the propaganda about the expedition which is broadcast by politicians and titled enthusiasts. Hypnotised by organised
eulogies they do not suspect the political motive behind the sensational- climb ; they take Ransome's ambitions as their Own, and when he dies he is canonised on the spot by public
opinion. These satirical passages are not altogether successful : the satire is sometimes acute and amusing,. at other times obvious and boring-; but it is nearly always in terms quite
foreign to the, two characters—if these two could in nature, as they do in the play, analyse themselves objectively with the voices: of Mr. Auden and Mr. Isherwood, they would clearly be very different people from the types they are represented to be. It is very largely the unreality of these interpolated scenes that makes the play decrease in effectiveness as it
proceeds. The first act, which ends with Ransome's decision to lead the expedition, is remarkably good ; but from that point the play decreases in coherence and force until it dies
weakly in the muddle of the final scene. On the whole the production and performance were good ; .Mr. Rupert Doone managed to restrain his liking for the flashier tricks of modernist staging 'until quite near the end, the settings were simple and appropriate, Mr.- William Devlin gave an admirable performince in the central part, and -there was -good acting from Mr. Barry Barnes,' Mr. Edward Len', and Mr. Erik
Chitty. The incidental music composed by Mr. Benjamin Britten was both unnecessary and unpleasing.
- At the Queen's Theatre, Miss Marie Tempest, ably assisted by Mr. Graham-Browne, Miss Antoinette Cellier and some others, is giving a performance. It would be inaccurate to say that she is performing in a play, for she has merely been provided with a number of situations, some bright lines, and a. great deal of sentiment, designed to assist her to pretend that she is a woman, parted from her husband for twenty years, who is recalled by him to cope with the indiscretions of their children. If another actress were presiding over this nonsense, hardly anyone would stay in the theatre for five
minutes ; as it is, almost, everyone will stay until the far from bitter end and Afterwards admit to having enjoyed the evening
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