" Crisis in Heaven." At the Lyric.
THE THEATRE
WE would expect to find that a play whose principal characters are Voltaire, Aristophanes, Frederick the Great, Abraham Lincoln, Pushkin, Helen of Troy, Florence Nightingale and the Vicar of Bray was the first offspring of a bright undergraduate, and this is exactly how Crisis in Heaven struck me on seeing it, except that the word bright" would not be quite appropriate. I do not know what has happened to Mr. Linklater, whom I had always suspected of having a very respectable talent. Perhaps the well-known Scottish suscepti- bility to education has got the better of our Orkney author • or is it the influence of the B.B.C. bringing culture to the people? Whatever the reason, Crisis in Heaven is altogether so unsatisfactory an affair that one cannot pass it over in silence. I would say it is completely humourless ; that a number of people around me now and then laughed spasmodically and violently I ascribe to embarrassing surprise, to the fact that the efforts to be funny were so ponderous that they, occasionally, were quite alarming. It is reputed a bad sign in a novel when the hero is an artistic genius, and plays about literary celebrities invite almost insuperable difficulties. One cannot expect Mr. Linklater to be as witty and pregnant as Voltaire, but if he has the temerity to put Voltaire on the stage what are we to expect? It is not as if Mr. Linklater were giving us a new and penetrating revelation of Voltaire, as it may be argued Shaw did with Caesar in Caesar and Cleopatra. This Voltaire is just the Voltaire of the schoolbooks, without any of his talent. Nor is he even consistent in character. His remarks when pressed to marry Helen of Troy are of a banality that has to be heard to be believed. Voltaire would have blushed to make them. More energetic but no more interest- ing is Mr. Linklater's Aristophanes. Nor is there an idea at the back of this costume charade. If these famous personages have here the stature of programme writers of the B.B.C. we may add that this Crisis in Heaven amounts to a dull dispute in the canteen at Broadcasting House. The prevailing dullness and flatness of the dialogue is masked by pretty scenes and by some charming and languid acting by Dorothy Dickson as Helen which suffused her performance with a delicate ennui that was the most real and
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