CONTEMPORARY ARTS
THEATRE
Two Gentlemen of Verona. (Old Vic.) AT curtain-fall there was no doubt about the quality and kind of this entertainment : a thing not worth doing had been done very well indeed. There is no substantial- excuse for performing the play at all ; if 'prentice-work in comedy is what the Bristol Old Vic is seeking, let it try Greene, or Peele, or Dekker. But one of the most tempting of directorial urges is to tinker with la bad Shakespeare play, and Mr. Denis Carey is merely the latest to succumb. Here and there, blithely but respectfully, he invents ; but without going nearly far enough, for the play would need much of Donne and more of Drayton to be wholly tolerable. As it is, the happiest moments of the evening are provided by the interpolation of several non- Shakespearian songs, notably a brisk setting of Nashe's "Spring, the sweet spring."
The text holds but three passages of interest, all of them brief- Launce 's description of his sad leave-taking, at which he pictures for us "our cat wringing her hands " ; the lush conceit of" a sea of melting pearl, which some call tears " ; and Proteus' eulogy of the properties of Orpheus' lute, which could : "Make tigers tame, and huge leviathans Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands."
The characters are toys, save for Proteus, who leaves his lady Julia in Verona, sojourns to Milan, and there plots to seduce Silvia away from Valentine, his erstwhile comrade ; thus becoming the first cad in English drama—the first combination of amorous cynic and social traitor. The changes of heart that accompany the final resolution of his caddishness might have worried even Amanda Ros ; the last act somcw'nat resembles a provincial pantomime, and one would not be surprised if the Fairy Queen were to enter in kilts singing " Roses of Picardy."
'Mr. Hutchinson Scott's decor suggests the exterior of an opulent Italian night-club in the off-season : one misses the commissionaire. Miss Pamela Alan, dark and mettlesome, lends a splendid principal buoyancy to the wronged Julia ; Miss Gudrun Ure plays Silvia demurely, as if by candle-light ; and through an inhospitable pair of parts Messrs. John Neville (Valentine) and Lawrence Payne (Proteus) respectively stride and stroll. Mr. John Warner's ,Payne strikes a clever balance between Aguecheek and Restoration foppery ; Mr. Michael Aldridge, looking like Mr. Redgrave in his comic vein, makes a gawky and amiable Launce ; and to Mr. Newton Blick (Speed) falls the job of clubbing us with such faSt come-backs as : "The shepherd seeks the sheep and not the sheep the shepherd, but I seek my master and my master seeks not me ; therefore I am no sheep." It says much for Mr. Blick's self-control that he refrains from actually bursting into tears.
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