[" LITTLE EYOLF," PLAYROOM SIX]
THE terror and tragedy that lie in wait for us in a little house near Oslo (they call it Christiania on the programme) enter superbly with Miss Betty Potter in the middle of a long ultra- Ibsenish first act. From the moment when the Rat Wife, tall, yellow, macabre, looms between the curtains of the quiet sitting-room, the action never flags.
We learn how the Rat Wife lures the rats from houses and drowns them in the fiord, and we hang on her lips, fascinated and frightened, as does Little Eyolf, the crippled child. By the time she leaves us we know that a doom has overshadowed the house—as perfect a piece of playing as any to be seen in London.
Allmers, the hero, is irked by his jealous and too devoted
wife, Rita, and he loves his sister, Asta, with her big eyes. And Asta is not his sister at all, but a foundling. Little Eyolf falls into the fiord, lured by the Rat Wife, and is drowned. Rage and remorse overcome the two Allmers, with the hysteria of Rita to fill their cup to overflowing. This desperate, brim- ming sense of wild grief gets across the footlights, so that I myself nearly screamed, in concert with the Allmers, during the second act. Only in that Grand Guignol scene when a wardful of lunatics grow restive in a thunderstorm, have I felt such a similar shivering contagion of horror.
The play ends more happily and simply than is usual with Ibsen. Asta goes off, renunciation written in her marvellous eyes (Miss Maude is a very finished actress) ; the Allmers are
reunited by an understanding of the true meaning of the tragedy and all is very fairly well, for a time at least. But one can't help feeling that Asta will come back and Rita go mad. Gramophones and wireless weren't invented when Ibsen wrote, but I feel that if the Allmers had been able to switch on the loud-speaker they might have avoided some of those dreadful probings into the depths which so shattered their lives. But perhaps this is a frivolous thought.
It is all magnificently acted. The least high-brow of spectators—with whom I number myself—will enjoy this play, for such a catharsis of emotion is good for the soul.
These " Playroom Six " productions at 6 New Compton Street (Regent 3988) are worth watching. They will present Strindberg's Miss Julie from October 4th to 22nd. There are Sunday evening performances. and the rates of sub- scription are much less than for tickets for an ordinary ' theatre. Certainly they are far better value. F. Y-B.
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