The Theatre
Expressionism at Norwich
IT is now a little over ten years since Mr. Nugent Monck began gallant adventure at the Maddermarket Theatre in Norwich. It was soon known that if one wanted to see Shakespeare Properly done, Norwich was one of the two or three places where the wish would be fulfilled. At times it was the only Mace. 'Slime then -Mr. Monck has produced drama of most ages and countries. Until this week his most daring innovation tlas been Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author. Now, for the first time, he has given Norwich an Expressionist play, in the form of Georg Kaiser's From Morn to Midnight.
• The Maddermarket Theatre has an " Elizabethan " stage, and it was interesting to see how well this was adapted to the modernist play : it is really not so much a question of symbolism (though for both Shakespeare and Kaiser realism can be ignored) as of speed. In the Expressionist drama, which depends largely for its effects on immediate contrasts of scene, tension and emotion, as does also the Elizabethan, speed is essential. The Maddermarket is especially well adapted to this. As for the kind of dream quality, that stripping of the moment of all that is everyday, which is another of the aims of Expressionist drama, Mr. Monck achieved this by a skilful use of the gallery in the scene of the Lady, the Son, and the Cashier, and in that of the Steward's Box at the Velodrome.
It is, of course, impossible to avoid comparison of this per formance with that produced by Mr. Godfrey five or six years ago. There the mechanical effect was more strongly empha- sized ; some of the characters deliberately assumed the movements of puppets and the voices of automata. Mr. Monk's effect was rather more subtle : here and there auto- matism, especially at certain group moments, was suggested with a suavely gruesome comicality which gave just the right tone to what followed. In a play of this kind the focus con- tinually alters : the difficulty is to preserve unity at the same time, but this was stiffieLotly maintained at the Madder- Market.
The anonymous actor (all the actors are anonymous at this theatre) who took the terrific part of the Cashier achieved the difficult feat of playing it at a far higher emotional tension than Mr. Claud Rains did in the London performance. Where Mr. Rains carried it off with a vein of cynicism, here we felt that the Cashier was ruthlessly driven. The part was less intellectually played, but that is not to say less intelligently or less effectively : it was from a different point of view ; that is all. But, the acting and the production show once more what can be done with small resources and non-professional acting ; and Mr. Monck is again to be congratulated on having produced in the provinces what one usually expects only to sec in London, and to have prOduced it at a very high level.
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