CONTEMPORARY ARTS
- THE THEATRE
"Tess of the D'Urbervilles." Adapted by Ronald Gow. (Piccadilly.)
LITERARY men are apt to wince when they see some immortal novel reissued in a gaudy dust-wrapper on which appears the legend "The Book of the Film "; to put the horse so pointedly behind the cart implies, they feel, a certain disrespect for the masterpiece concerned. Their susceptibilities ought, conversely, to be soothed when the theatre offers them something of which the main raison d'être is that it is "The Play of the Book." Yet fiction changed—or as we should say nowadays reconstituted—into drama is not very often an un- qualified success. It is perhaps fair to say that as a general rule it is only the-second-rate books that make first-rate plays (like Bulldog Drummond and The Constant Nymph), and that the riches and depths of your real dyed-in-the-wool masterpiece rarely survive the necessarily Procrustean technique of the dramatist.
It is reasonably certain that if Thomas Hardy had not written a novel called Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and if that novel had not achieved great fame, no one—or anyhow no playwright of Mr. Gow's experience—would have written the cramped and arbitrary melo- drama now to be seen at the Piccadilly Theatre. Mr. Gow's drama- tisation is skilful and the production has its powerful moments ; but the components do not add up to ,A good play.
We are, however, given the chance of seeing Miss Wendy Hiller as Tess, and it is a chance well worth taking. Great force and sincerity go to her playing of the part and we feel, rightly or wrongly, that we are seeing Tess as Hardy meant us to see her. Mr. Hugh Burden's Angel Clare did not, and perhaps could not, altogether escape a charge of priggishness, Mr. Henry Mollison's Alec D'Urberville bounded with unregenerate zest and Miss Jane Wenham showed promise as one of Tess's sisters. The production by Messrs. Hunt and Macowan was imaginative and sound and the lighting
deserves a special word of praise. PETER FLEMING.
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