Theatre
All the Conspirators
By ALAN BRIEN
THE conspiracy of history is a very tempting hypothesis. It would provide such a simple, even consoling, explanation for all our failures. But much as I try I cannot bring myself to believe that the Elders of Zion are manipulating the puppets in Wall Street and the Kremlin, that the Freemasons are backing the Family Planning Association, or that the College of Cardinals is plotting to sneak a Catholic into the White House. Despite the evidence at my disposal, I cannot even believe that the Association of Bolshy Taxi-drivers really has a secret pact never to send an empty taxi down Gower Street. But intelligent people, who reject these as childish delusions, are nevertheless able to convince themselves that the theatre is in the grip of some kind of conspiracy. Both William Douglas Home and John Osborne take the night air warily, swordstick in hand, expecting to be assaulted by the Fourteen Butchers of Grub Street, better known to the rest of us as the drama critics. And many an experimental playwright suspects that his work is being kept from the Public by a unanimous resolution of the Estab- lishment in plenary session.
The truth is that They are no more in control of the juggernaut than We are. It is a toss-up who Is in the more unnerving role—the ones up there m the driving seat with a brake which won't switch on and an accelerator Which won't turn off, Or the ones down there on foot dodging the run- away traffic. In the theatre, it is the commercial managements who are now in a state of mild Punic. Since July I have counted sixteen plays which threw in the towel after a few weeks' run. Some of them were abysmal rubbish. Most were mediocre stuff moderately well acted. One was the best new play since Look Back In Anger. All of them were box-office failures. Yet the record °t the unorthodox, longhaired, shoestring, fringe theatres on the whole is more impressive, both critically and financially, than that of the big- tulle, conventional, well-heeled, old-fashioned Impresarios. Make Me An Offer and The hostage both originated in Stratford's East End Theatre Royal and Joan Littlewood may soon make her score up to three again by replacing her production of Taste of Honey in the West 11(1 with her production of Fings A;n't Wot they Used 7"Be. One Way Pendulum is a hit out at the Royal Court while the previous Court play, nosinershobti, has transferred to packed houses at the Comedy. The new audience for the new Playwrights is still too torpid and timid, still dazzled by snobbery and smartness, still more comfortable with the copy than the original. Nevertheless it is agreed on what it pretends it Wants. The old audience for the old playwrights 15 gradually disintegrating like an army without a general. It is bewildered by N. F. Simpson, bored by John Arden, depressed by Arnold Wesker, infuriated by John Osborne, perturbed by Brendan Behan, disgusted by Shelagh Delaney—
none of these is an acceptable indigestion tablet after an early dinner. At the same time, the stars of the Thirties have lost their magic for the middle-aged playgoers, they are too like them- selves—leaden around the feet, silver around the temples, brassy around the eyes and brassiere around the bust. The injections of monkey-gland which are intended to revive the old familiar plots only make them look more haggard—the farce about sex change, the romantic love story punctuated with dirty jokes, the melodrama up- dated with snippets of homosexuality and race prejudice, the family soap opera set among Chicago negroes. The West End managements still know nothing about art. But now they don't even know what they like.
A sign of the times is the emergence of Ibsen as a box-office author—a Terence Rattigan with
whiskers. Rosmersholm is now a hit with every- body except some of the progressive young actors. directors and authors. The old mystic Norwegian dynamiter who was thought so obscure is criti- cised today as obvious, his obscenities have become bromides, his revelations are platitudi- nous. There is substance in these complaints, but a second visit confirms, in my view, that the power of the play lies in its projection of the play- wright's obsessions through people. Rosmersholm is a patchwork quilt stitched together from rem- nants he had long hidden away in the basement of unconscious. Peggy Ashcroft's performance as Rebecca West also has its minority of bitter critics. Her mannerisms often seem to be manipu- lating her—the lips become paralysed in that moue which women make when they are putting on lipstick, the voice goes rippling and foaming over the sibilants while the mind is lazing along behind, and she has the general air of a highly strung schoolmistress about to throw a fit of the vapours. But these seem to me to fit this part like a glove—they are the mannerisms of a real individual, not just the gimmicks of a personality saleswoman.
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