THE THEATRE
" Arms and the Man." At the New Theatre.—" The Banbury Nose." At Wyndham's.
THE Old Vic new repertory company, after giving the best produc- tion of Peer Gynt London has seen in my time, has followed it with a revival of Shaw's Arms and the Man of outstanding brilliance, produced by John Burrell. There are only two slight blemishes, apd they detract nothing from the superb acting of Ralph Richard- son as the hard-headed but romantic-souled Swiss professional sol- dier, Captain Bluntschli—one of Mr. Shaw's most human creations --or from the inspired performance of Laurence Olivier as Sergius Saranoff, the dashing Bulgarian cavalry officer. " Inspired " is not too strong a word for Mr. Olivier's subtle and brilliant re-creation of the part, but, even so, it is a word that fails to do justice to the degree of hard work, knowledge, experience and acquired technique which have gone to the making of Mr. Olivier'S dazzling per- formance. It is a performance to delight in, and to watch again and again, for Mr. Olivier succeeds in equating Saranoff with Bluntschli and thus producing the impression that this play is one of Mr. Shaw's finest and most enjoyable achievements. The only criticism I have to make is that in the first scene the actors, Miss Margaret Leighton (who was afterwards admirable) and Mr. Richard- son, did not always remember the danger threatening outside the shuttered window, which in fact would never have left their minds ; so this difficult scene lacked realism. My other criticism is of Miss Sybil Thorndike, who is apt to be exaggerated both in her comedy (as in the last scene) and in her sentiment—as in her rather overlong and superfluous verse epilogue. All the other members of the cast were worthy of the principals, and Miss Joyce Redman as Louka gave a revelation of unexpected powers of comedy.
Mr. Peter Ustinov's play The Banbury Nose seems conventional and old-fashioned beside Arms and the Man ; which shows how little age or time have to do with freshness and originality, for Mr. Ustinov is about twenty-four years old, and the author of Arms and the Man must have been over forty when, in 1898, this play was published, which has not been unsurpassed as a comedy since. Nevertheless, and even perhaps because of its conventionality, The Banbury Nose may be a success, because Mr. Ustinov has a real sense of the theatre and knows how to make his commonplaces effective on the stage. It is the old story of a domineering father forcing his son into a hated career, and it is shown as a family trait, which, like the family nose and " cold blue eye," goes on from one generation to another. The part of the soldier-father was so well played by Roger Livesey that it won our sympathy and somewhat undermined the author's satire. Hugh Burden, Michael Shepley and Alan Trotter did well• in most ungrateful parts, but the general impression is that the play must have been written by an indignant
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