CONTEMPORARY ARTS
THEATRE
44The Tempest " (Mermaid Theatre, St. John's Wood.) THE second experiment in Bernard Miles's back-garden Globe is not as happy a choice as the first, Dido and Aeneas—which is, on the face of it, odd ; for few plays could have seemed more suited than The Tempest to show off the Mermaid Theatre's inner stage and thoroughly practical " Heaven." And indeed, during the shipwreck, it worked: rigging and rope-ladders were tossed down from the clouds, and we were seeing the most ingeniously seasick staging of the opening scene that lubberly heart could wish. But afterwards, on the island, a long disenchantment set in—the disenchantment of proximity. The Tempest, after all, was not written for perform- ance on a normal Elizabethan apron stage. Intimacy does not improve it. Distance and mystery are its big guns and unless we believe in spells, how its faults glare at us, buttonhole and bore us ! To an age unfamiliar with sorcery, the play is no more than a wondrous conjuring trick ; and when, as at the Mermaid, we can see the rim of Caliban's mask, the join of Ferdinand's wig and the creases in Ariel's tights, the wonder is puffed aNyay.
However, the settings and costumes are rich ; and if Mr. Julius Geliner, the producer, would turn his hand to Measure for Measure, or some other such frowsty play, I should return full of anticipation. Mr. Miles's Caliban, growling and drooling and made up like a mandrill's hindquarters, might be effective much'farther away ; Mr. Clifford Evans will be a serviceable Prospero when he gains in pace ; and a twelve-year-old schoolboy, Master Terry Wale, chirrups through Ariel with a sort of delighted compassion for mortality and eld—a pretty performance, prettily attired in moth-soft swansdown. The two lovers are tormentedly played by Miss Josephine Griffin and Mr. Kenneth Fortescue. As I write, they return to my mind's eye, their faces working in furious search for the physical equivalent to what they are saying, and finding it never once.
KENNETH TYNAN.
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