Waiting for Sappho
THE CHILDREN'S HOUR. By Lillian Hellman. (Arts.)--UNDER MILK WooD. By Dylan Thomas. (New.) ONE of the numerous disadvantages of the Lord Chamberlain's censorship of plays is that even rather indifferent works get given the cachet of a hold treatment of a social problem. Lillian Hellman's twenty-year-old melodrama hinges on the submerged Lesbian tendencies of one schoolmistress who is accused by a pre-Searle awful child of letting them run away with her, and whose life, together with that of her non-Lesbian col- league, is wrecked in consequence. Passing rapidly over most of the acting (Margot van der Burgh and Clare Austin were all right as the two schoolmistresses, however) and also over the inflated dialogue (which includes a
good deal of the 'Oh! God, what's happened to us?' type of remark), I should just like to mention the extreme improbability of the plot and the summary character of the psychology. We owe the production of this inferior play purely to the Lord Chamberlain, who thus suc- ceeds in ruining the British stage in two entirely separate and contrary ways. And, while I am on the subject, I gather we are in for a season of banned plays put on at the Comedy by the Watergate Theatre Club. Unfortunately, how- ever, they all seem to deal with the stage's Favourite Social Wrong with a monotony which can only do the cause of a free theatre damage. Why can't they put on a play about sedition or blasphemy or something?
Under Milk Wood has already been noticed in these columns so I will do no more than remark on the excellence of the production and acting. Donald Houston, William Squire, Diana Maddox and Buddug-Mair Powell were particularly good, and the staging was lively enough to disguise the thinness of dramatic effect and the complete absence of plot of what was, after all, never meant to be a play. If you are like me and find Thomas's neo- surrealist linguistic pyrotechnics make your teeth ache after ten minutes, then you won't like Llaregyb and its inhabitants. If, however, you enjoy eating Turkish delight at length, you should go to the New Theatre.
ANTHONY HARTLEY
Previous page
