CONTEMPORARY ARTS
PARIS FESTIVAL •
THE choice of play which confronts a troupe visiting an international festival of the drama, is a double one. One solution, to show an example of the theatre of their own country, has been the course chosen by most of the Visiting companies to this year's festival; the second, which is to demonstrate how the french classics are treated abroad has, understandably enough, found few sup- porters. • One attempt at this latter course, however, must give us pause. Some of the best act- ing that I have seen this year, acting which leaves the Comedie-Francaise with a very questionable superiority, was in the unex- pected sphere of the F;ench classics. A company of Danish actors from the Ny '):'eater of Copenhagen, produced an inspir- ing version of Le Cid which will stay long in my memory. The players I must dismiss with general approval, but the beautiful decor that they brought with them is worth a more detailed account. The vast blue cyclorama of the Theatre Sarah-Bernhardt Was used to back a collection of formalised Pavilions, delicately cut in fretted silhouettes of whites and greys; and the visual effect of the rich costumes against this background was quite entrancing. The secret of this successful work by Joergen Espen-Hansen was in its capture of exactly the right propor- tions of brilliance and deep clear colour like the depths of a ruby. It was a triumph of theatrical art.
Of those foreign companies who chose an example of their own national drama to bring to the festival, the most enjoyable was the Yugoslavian production of Dundo Maroje (Uncle Maroje). This was a com- plicated tale about an old merchant who, having sent his son to Rome on a business trip, hears nothing from him for ten years, and prompted by mercenary rather than paternal motives, eventually follows in an attempt to regain some of his money. The delightful characters that throng the stage would hold any audience enchanted what- ever their nationality; and aided by a synopsis of the action supplied by a thought- ful management, the people at the Premiere Representation .sat quite spellbound, like children listening to a fairy tale from a faraway country.
The Polish troupe at the festival,presented a play by Alexander Fred°, their most famous dramatist. The Husband and the Wife is probably his best known play, and shows very clearly the pronounced influence that the comedies of Moliere had on Fred°. The decor of the play was again exceptional, this time for its precision and workmanship rather than its artistic value. Here were marble columns that really looked like marble, doors that an actor could slam, confident that the wall would not ripple, and the most elegant salon in Paris. The cost of such a set must be fabulous, but to the jaded Parisian eye, it was a great refresh- ment.
A greater c&nrast in decoration than that between The Husband and the Wife and the play that followed it, is hard to imaging. The second German company to appear at the Paris Festival, presented the most inter- esting modern play in the programme. It was an adaptation for the stage of Franz Kafka's book, Das Schloss by Max Brod. once his intimate friend and now widely recognised as an authority on his work. I wondered, when I saw the play, whether the adaptor's knowledge of the theatre was sufficient for such a task. Kafka's writing is a fabric of vivid prose description liber- ally supported with dialogue, and should not be difficult to adapt for the stage—we have in fact, already seen an excellent version of The Trial by Andre Gide and Jean-Louis Barrault—but The Castle was too episodic in structure to be good theatre. It had nine scenes, most of which necessitated a change of set, and although the changes were managed quickly and for the most part efficiently, the device of a blackout every few minutes became tiresome. But the appropriately weird music of Kurt Heuser helped a great deal to preserve that con- tinuity of mood which is so essential for a work of this nature.
My adverse criticisms are solely concerned with the adaptation. For the players, and for the mice en scene which earned Rudolf Noelte the Berlin prize for the best produc- tion of 1953, I have_ nothing but praise, except fOr a detail of interpretation. Wil- helm Borchert, who played K, began badly. In order that this play should succeed, the audience must identify itself with K, since he is the only 'real' person in the work; and this process was made difficult by Herr Borchert's playing of the opening scene, where he was already detached from reality, far sunk into despair and exhaustion.
Towards the end of the festival; Henry Sherek presented E. Martin Browne's production of The Confidential Clerk with Isabel Jeans and Robert Speaight as Lady Elizabeth and Sir Claude Mulhammer, and Owen Holder as Colby.
I found the play itself disappointing, but since Eliot's work is well-known in England, I will not discuss that here.' The acting at the Sarah-Bernhardt began badly; Mr. Speaight and Norman Tyrell as Eggerson were mainly responsible for that, and Mr.
• Holder's performance was little better. But things improved quickly, and once Isabel. Jeans had swept in, the discomforts of the first scenes were soon fotgotten. Lucasta Angel, not overplayed, which must have been a difficult task, became a charming character in the hands of Rosemary Harris; and John Stratton fully deserved her for his excellent work in the part of B. Kaghan. The decors of Hutchinson-Scott I found disturbing for this type of play, with their exaggerated angles and general air of expres- sionism, but the costumes certainly deserve an honourable mention.
Now, with only the Habimah theatre to appear, and the memories of Ibsen's Ghosts in Norwegian, an Italian Cyrano de Bergerac, The Playboy from Dublin, two Polish and one Belgian play, and a sadly disappointing Spanish version of Life Is a Dream, the first instalment of what will become an annual event of great importance in the theatrical world draws to a close.
JEAN-PIERRE LENOIR
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