Theatre
A Cad for All Seasons
By BAMBER GASCOIGNE
fate advance publicity for The Lizard on the Rock announced that anyone who liked A Man for All Seasons, Becket, Russ and Luther would certainly love this play. For once, it turns out, the advance publicists were being strictly truthful. If a theatre-goer actually exists who is undiscriminat- ing enough to have liked such a varied quartet, ranging from the appalling to the excellent, it may well be that he will respond to John Hall's portentous Australian drama at the Phoenix.
Mr. Hall has attempted an antipodean John Gabriel Borkman. Senator Rockhart (heart of rock'?) has built up over the years a vast enter- prise, but the cost, as with Borkman, has been a total disregard for other human beings. Rock- hart's project is not minerals but a huge agri- cultural development in the Western Australian desert, an area which used to be mile on mile of dry shifting sand and which will revert to that within weeks if the artesian well runs dry. This, at the start of the play, seems to be pre- cisely what is happening. And the crisis brings Rockhart's true nature to the surface.
His creed can be summarised in two parts. One: the project must go on. Two: people, and above all my sons, should be tough. The first has the advantage of taking us out into the desert for the second act, where Rockhart, against the advice of his dying engineer, is risk- ing his entire fortune in a desperate attempt to sink a new and deeper bore-hole; and the second leads far too symbolically to the death of his peace-loving son, after Rockhart has forced him to have a man-to-man row with a seedy district officer who has bedded his wife.
The play's chief weakness, apart from such heavy tragedy as the son's death, is in the charac- ter of Rockhart. He is, from the first glimpse, a mean type of card, all bullying and petty self- importance. This may be true of some types of tycoonery in real life, but it is very undramatic on the stage, and Harry Andrews's performance of him as a villain from some pre-war melo- drama completes one's disinterest. The central question, 'What is wrong with this man and his life'?,' has been answered at his very first ap- pearance. The play's chief appeal lies in the old thrill of wondering whether oil/gold/the body/, diamonds/the tin trunk/plutonium—in this case, water--will be found. It finally is, with a hectic whistling sound. But this brings us nearer to Hammond lnnes than to Henrik Ibsen.
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