Contemporary Arts

Shakespeare and Chekhov

THE most promising thing on tele- vision at the moment is the BBC's

World Theatre series, which has

begun with Henry V and The Cherry Orchard. The young in the

theatre-starved provinces are luckier than those of us who grew up between the cat's whisker and the cathode tube. I think of Alistair Cooke and myself as schoolboys lining up at the Blackpool Opera House (I for the gallery, Cooke in his

ritzy way for the ,pit stalls) to see the second Macdona company doing St. Joan. We'd looked forward to it for weeks and we talked about it for half a year afterwards. Chekhov, I may Say, never came within fifty miles of us.

And yet, is it all gain for the present genera- tion? I wonder whether all twelve of the plays

the BBC are doing with star casts in this series will give as much pleasure to the young and make as strong an impact as did this single, live, imper- fect performance of Shaw.

I rate Peter Dews's production of the Shake- speare very highly. It was simple and unmannered and the speech made sense without loss of rhythm, especially Bernard Hepton's Chorus. John Neville's Henry was the most manly and the most soldierly I have seen since Godfrey Tearle's. But Neville, like Tearle, could give no hint of a mis- spent youth. Patricia Cree I thought delightful though a little coy; after all, the girl was acquainted with the coarsest French words. Dud- ley Jones's Fluellen was so strongly emphasised that it must have inflamed the nationalist passions in the Principality.

The Chekhov was very good on one plane, that of an easy graceful' naturalism. In some ways

Chekhov, like Shakespeare, seems to have written With television in mind, for television can isolate and magnify the soliloquiser. But Chekhov in other ways must be a nightmare to the producer, Who has to keep in camera a number of players Who must not be grouped and must remain individual. The effect is inevitably untidy. I Wonder whether a more stylised production might not succeed better on television. Harold Clay- ton's production was strongly reminiscent, or so it seemed to me, of the version done a few years ago at Hammersmith. I wonder, too, when some producer will break away from the traditional Style of speaking translated Russian on the English stage. It is as formalised as the speaking of Ibsen, Shakespeare, Gilbert and Restoration comedy.

But this is all too critical, I fear, of an excellent evening's entertainment. Nora Swinburne's Mme Ranevsky, Paul Rogers's Lopahin, Pauline Jame- son's Varya and William Mervyn's Gaev remain vividly in mind several viewing days later; and that is high praise for television performances.

Pushing memory still farther back to the Christmas programmes, I wonder whether the Commercial companies are right in down-playing such festivals. Of course the BBC has always over- done them; but they do build up that mateyness between giver and taker of entertainment which every theatre manager, every editor—and every advertiser—knows to be most precious.

I do not propose to comment on the manner in which the Queen gave her speech on Christmas bay. It seems to me wrong when a Head of State, Whether royal or republican, uses television as a

medium of communication to judge the occasion as if it were a performance. I do deplore the programme which preceded it, with grand opera prose written by Christopher Hassall and spoken in full poetry voice by Laurence Olivier. I can only presume that these first-class artists were giving the BBC what it had misguidedly ordered.

The one programme which compels me to turn to ITV nowadays is that given on Mondays at 11 p.m. : Conquest of Space. This is a simple, relaxed feature about space and space-travel done in quiet conversational tones. I recommend all people who are as bored with this subject as I was, to give it a trial.

The moralists have always been afraid that television would make us too passive. I call to their notice an advertisement in the Radio Times for rug-making materials which shows a house- wife holding a rug and saying in a bubble caption : 'Yes, it was so easy to make, even while watching TV'

JOHN COWBURN