THE ART OF ATHENE SEYLER.
MR. NIGEL PLAYFAIR said of our contemporary drama in last week's Spectator that plays badly written, badly acted, and badly produced were able to succeed, while good plays, well acted and competently produced, often failed. That is a general and a mournful truth about the London theatre, but it is by no means a universal one. He who wills can see at the Criterion* a play which, while it fills the house and delights even a West End audience, exhibits at her best the most accomplished of our comedians. The play is The Mask and the Face, the actress, need I say ? is Athene Seyler. Miss Seyler has long been with us, and she has played a great number of parts, by authors as pleasantly diversified as Shakespeare and Mr. Milne. But not every day does she get the chance to find material so apt to her genius as this chip from an Italian workshop, liberally re-chiselled by an English hand, affords. It may be that she is not quite English herself, and that her vital and energetic art requires rather stronger food than our theatre can give it. Certain it is that in The Mask and the Face she not only plays beautifully, but is herself the spirit of the piece. As was Ellen Terry's Beatrice, so is her Savina Grazia.
The play itself, as the readers of the Spectator are aware, has been " freely " adapted by Mr. Fernald from the Italian play-La Maschera e it Volto. Signor Chiarelli, the author, calls his work " A Grotesque in three acts," and in reality it has not a little the effect of the grotesque, the fantastic. The company, indeed, is familiar enough. It is the society of Our Betters, a set of disillusioned rakes and fribbles, living (on Lake Como) under an easy code a mutual tolerance and general deception. The excep- tion is - Count Grazia. $e, indeed, is a prig, but a blameless prig. He alone among this raffish company lives in the shadow of the old moralities—the sanctity of marriage, the lifelong character of the pact, and the " right " of the husband to avenge himself for its violation by killing the offending woman. The discom- fiture and humiliation of Grazia follow on his discovery that his Savina is no exception to the frailty of his friends. With that discovery his castle of cards falls to the ground. He loves his wife too much to carry out his code of vengeance. But in no case will he endure that his " set " should call him ridiculous. So he concocts a story of having strangled her, and thrown her body into Lake Como, and obliges her to become his accomplice by a forced flight and life under an assumed name abroad. This is what Signor Chiarelli calls his " grottesco." A " grotesque " murder is followed by a " grotesque " trial, in which poor Grazia chooses his wife's lover as his advocate, and this ingenuous gentleman secures an acquittal by blackening the lady's character,
* Lately transferred there from the Everyman Theatre.
and the " grotesque " trial by a " grotesque " funeral service over the body of another woman.
But here the Count's troubles begin. He has been overwhelmed with flowers, newspaper tributes to a saviour of society, and invitations from 'all the ladies of the neighbourhood to take a new Savina. But Count Mario finds he cannot sustain the role of social hero. Neither can he screw his -courage to- the point of frankly forgiving Savina and taking. her back again. In this dilemma Savina returns from her enforced exile, dis- illusioned as to her lover, and bent on reunion with Grazia. Exhorted to allow his heart to speak, and let the law and the social code go hang, the Count throws over the public opinion of Como, and decides to make his second adventure with Savina—in freedom.
This is, in effect, the Italian play. But Mr. Fernald has greatly changed it. Doubtless with his eye on the Censor, he has substituted a compromised wife for a guilty one, has toned down the iniquities of the Como set to a point at which at least they bear no invidious comparison with that of Our Betters, and, while fashioning a very witty play, has taken the grosser edge off the cynicism of the original. But the change has compelled him to make a new Savina, at once more skittish, more conventionally moral, and less natural, Chiarelli's Savina has the depth that comes of a real experience, and Mr. Fernald's has not. And with no such experience there is no moral problem to solve. Therefore the scene of her advances to her husband, made up as it is half of sensuous cajolery and half of serious -appeal, has more the aspect of a stage encounter and less of a real battle of sex and character. But the English adapter has had one great success. Chiarelli's last act is a very fine one, and Mr. Fernald has had the skill to construct another almost as good by turning a comedy of manners into a farce. Out of Grazia's embarrassments, the solemn gathering of the sham mourners, and the comedy of Savina's re-entry, he has made as sparkling a- dramatic finish as is to be seen in London..
But Mr. Fernald's most agreeable feat has been to fit Miss Seyler with a character adequate to the quality of her art. What she would have made of the original Savina I cannot say. It might have given her an opportunity which the -lighter texture of the English play does not afford. But the English substitute suits her well. The action suffers a little in the earlier -part of the play from a certain want of pace and emphasis in the actors. The moment Miss Seyler takes it in hand, its liveliness of movement comes' back as if by magic. Among all our actresses she, since the death of Meggie Albanesi, excels in the positive character of her art, in intelligence, in natural gaiety of temperament, and in the power of making even a dull audience feel its vivacity. Audacious is the flick of Savina's heels as she disappears into the nuptial chamber, leaving her absurd husband to follow meekly after ; audacious her prancing steps as she trips, veiled and in deep black, through the ranks of the sham mourners ; audacious her re-entry in a white crinoline skirt, to rescue the prisoner of con- vention, and end the play in laughable confusion. But to the appetite fcir merely sensuous acting 'she makes little appeal. Her wooing of Mario is at once serious and roguish ; tender, but not sentimentally tender ; provocative, but with a motherly concern for the child-whona she loves and wants to re-capture. For Miss Seyler's playing is an intellectual thing, and it is intellect, with an intellectual artist as its interpreter, of which our drama stands most in need.
II. W. MAthINGHAM
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