CONTEMPORARY ARTS
THEATRE
" The Winter's Tale." By William Shakespeare. (Phoenix.) THIS play has a sort of cheerful slovenliness, like an essay written by a schoolboy in the last week of term. At times a craftsman's conscience would seem to have pricked the author, causing him to swerve towards plausibility ; but as far ,as the development of the plot is concerned his motto seems to have been "Anything goes," and he would, I think, have immensely appreciated the artistry with which Mr. John Moffatt delivers, towards the end of the play, a long speech into which Shakespeare has crammed the contents of three or four scenes which he simply couldn't be bothered to write.
But for all its structural shortcomings The Winter's Tale has eminence, charm, of an indefinably old-fashioned kind, and Mr. Peter Brooke's production discovers in it a certain strength as well. Most of this stems from Mr. Gielgud's very fine performance as Leontes, whose jealousy is so unquestionably real and terrible that we are not worried by the fact that its causes are flimsy and its consequences far-fetched. He is well partnered by Miss Diana Wynyard's handsome and long-suffering Hermione and Miss Flora Robson's staunch Paulina (though I am not sure that Shakespeare did not see this officious lady as a slightly more comic character than Miss Robson makes her).
The rustics are a pleasant, friendly lot. Mr. George Howe is an intensely likeable shepherd, Mr. Philip Gerard does well as his son and Miss Virginia McKenna looks very pretty as his royal ward. Mr. George Rose is a good Autolycus, investing the trickster with the right kind of gipsy panache ; and we should all like to have seen more of the bear who—though not, as I am sure he was in the original production, a real bear—looked a very fetching carnivore. Theatre-goers would be ill-advised to miss this distinguished pro- duction of a rarely acted play.
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