ARTS
No sign of a Hall-mark
Mark Amory
The Rules of the Game (Haymarket) A Prelude to Death in Venice (Riverside) The striking characteristic of middle- period Peter Hall is his fidelity to the text (rumour that he is about to defect to the Lincoln Center has now appeared in Print, so perhaps we shall not have front seats at the next phase). Gone are the wild days of youth when he would get John Bar- ton to throw together great chunks of Shakespeare. Now he serves up the tragedies uncut, an Oresteia closer to the original than anyone else has dared to go. A Masterpiece need not be easy, let alone rele- vant, it must be made to work on its own terms. When he announced his intention to direct The Importance of Being Earnest the likelihood seemed to be that he would use the rare four-act version; he does not. Well then, perhaps he has combed that lucid, familiar text and found some new subtleties larking in the shallows? Jonathan Miller for example, spotted that there are four references to Germany, if you allow the brand of measles, and made Lady Bracknell a foreigner. Wrong again, this is a tradi- tional, not to say rather ordinary, produc- tion, though it is with Lady Bracknell that it rinds its justification. Everything that Judi Dench says is fun- nier than anything that anyone else does. Her triumph is naturally based on the sure- ness and precision of her timing and tech- nique but she also seems more real than the others without sacrificing an inch of the ,_111811 artificial style. Much has been made of her Youth and the problem of negotiating that handbag. It is indeed pleasant to have the cast suitably young — Algernon in par- ticular is sometimes so silly he needs the ex- cuse — and to watch how she delivers the over famous line. She also emerges as the one next to whom you would like to sit at a Party, a dragon of course, but a dragon who relishes bitchy gossip and sees the Point. Her nephew Algy, on whose knee she her an affectionate hand, may slide out of her dinner-party but he accepted in the first Place and will accept again, though invita- tions presumably jostle one another across his mantelpiece. She saw through his tales (,).f Banbury long ago but allows the myth to ',Inger. You would not want her as a friend but a very acceptable aunt. Elsewhere the !senior generation continue to score with Paul Rogers a Chasuble occasionally grip- ped by nameless fears but bumbling steadily trPrwards, and Anna Massey a confidently foolish Miss Prism, whose finest moment comes when she is unmasked. Her eyes pop °lit in horror, then her hands fly sideways,
her head twists downwards and her feet drag, as she becomes a personification of the phrase about wanting to sink through the floor. Among the young, Martin Jarvis, who had seemed appropriately named, skilfully transforms himself into a man who could constantly be told that he must and should be called Earnest and contrives to make Jack, who has the least glittering lines, the most amusing of the lovers.
The Rules of the Game has many of the qualities of the plays that, as I hear tell, dominated the trivial West End stage before the great revolution of 1956. The curtain rises on an elaborate drawing-room in whicb a nice-looking young man with hair the colour of butter and a neat dinner jacket suggests, 'Chartreuse?' But the dark beauty who is to float about the stage in a peach creation does not respond, for, as the moonlight plays on her elegant features, her thoughts are miles away. After some rather heavy banter it emerges that she is bored and irritated by this her lover and obsessed with her separated husband. As the star has yet to enter, it is scarcely necessary to check in our programmes that he is indeed to be played by Leonard Rossiter. Soon we are plunged into the emotional problems of the rich, though comedy, almost farce, is allowed to con- tinue in the form of drunken foreign aristocrats and servants that speak back. Though not all that funny, this is accep- table and expected. I have been conditioned to assume that plays about such people can be amusing and even if dramatic may be en- joyable but cannot be Really Serious. Even with the weight of its author's heavyweight reputation I feel a little defensive and de- fiant if called upon to stick up for The Cocktail Party. But this is different and can be rated as Serious. The heaviness of the banter is intended, calculated, as is the banality of the wife; neither is meant to engage too much of your attention or sym- pathy. The focus is to be on the husband, the main part in which Rossiter gives the riveting performance that is demanded.
Often it is possible to run a surprise end- ing merely by mentioning that something is up. Rossiter looks as dangerous as a bask- ing shark from the moment he enters. Easi- ly the most intelligent person around, his smiling calm becomes more and more ominous as he nods agreement with every- one, remaining politely passive. He patient- ly explains that this is his defence against the world and his emotions, which he likens to 'wild beasts in a cage'. The slick plot concerns a duel and has little men gambol- ling round him, apparently putting him in danger, but the wild beasts never escape. At the stupendous final curtain we do even-
tually see the effort required to keep the bars in place. It is all as easy to swallow as an oyster and should be a great success if the West End audience has the sense to ig- nore the fact that it is a slightly obscure foreign classic; it has, also like an oyster I believe, much sustenance to offer.
A Prelude to Death in Venice releases a battery of techniques, most notably the use of a dummy, on a New Yorker in a telephone booth. Real hands, a little too big for the rest of him, tap and scratch away, while the wooden face naturally remains impassive. He borrows a coin off his con- troller, who eventually dumps him altogether. All this is interesting and distracts you for ages from the fact that the character concerned is an entirely dreary fellow.
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