THE THEATRE.
"TWELFTH NIGHT" AT THE SAVOY.
IP Mr. Granville Barker's production of The Winter's Tale was no more than an interesting experiment, his Twelfth Night, which has followed it at the Savoy Theatre, must be pronounced an almost unqualified success. Of the two faults which seemed to us to be at the root of the failure of The Winter's Tale, one has been mitigated and the other altogether reformed. To begin with the latter, we may say shortly that in Twelfth Night the division of labour between scene-painter and costume-designer has been abolished. Mr. Norman Wilkinson is responsible alike for clothes and scenery, and the result, if not of ideal excellence, is homogeneous and, satisfying. In the second place, the blank-verse delivery of the performers is distinctly better. They seemed both more audible and more rhythmical than in The Winter's Talc. We are bound to say, however, that we have some doubt as to whether this is not due rather to the author than the producer. The language of Twelfth Night is for the most part straightforward, and has none of the Donne-like ultra-crabbedness of the later Shakespeare. This may explain much of the apparent increase in the actors' audibility. So, too, with the rhythm. The blank- verse of Twelfth Night runs smoothly ; the stresses come in the expected places, for instance, and the lines are mostly of the Marlowe, or end-stopped, pattern. It was most particularly the enjambment that led to such disaster in The Winter's Tale. But if you attempt to read Twelfth Night deliberately as prose, the regularity of the line-formation will defeat you. For these reasons it is not possible to give the producer the whole credit for the improvement in the delivery. Much, moreover, remains to be done before this side of Mr. Barker's work can be considered on a level with the rest. He must redouble his efforts to make the actors emphasize with intelli- gence the right words in each sentence, and at the same time he must strain every nerve to make them grasp the subtle swing of the verse. In other respects his triumph has been great enough to be its own reward. Each character is finely and intelligently expressed, and each falls without emphasis into its place in a finely and intelligently expressed whole. The acting is not all equally good (Miss Lillah McCarthy struck us as entirely unsuited to the part of Viola), but it is all equally honest and well-directed. Good intentions, as some other recent experiments in Shakespearean production have taught us, are not enough in themselves. But good intentions combined with taste and intelligence have the happiest results. We can think of no pleasanter way of spending three hours than by a visit to the Savoy, and we recommend everyone to go there and make the experiment. The blasé devotee of musical comedy, the Shakespearean scholar who cannot tolerate Shakespeare on the stage, the revolutionary theatrical reformer, or the ordinary theatregoer who is none of all these, will delight in it. He will " smile his face into more lines than is in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies," and he will feel, too, that here is a play that
"Gives a very echo to the seat
Where Love is throned."
Mr. Barker deserves every support, and we cannot doubt that he will gain it.
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