CONTEMPORARY ARTS
EDINBURGH FESTIVAL
The Confidential Clerk. By T. S. Eliot. (Lyceum, Edinburgh.) SIR CLAUDE MULHAMMER, financier, is sitting in the spacious private office of his London house. Enter to him the elderly Eggerson, his former confidential clerk, who has now, except for purposes of consultation, retired. The reason he has been summoned on this occasion is, we learn, so that he can undertake the task of meeting Sir Claude's wife (Lady Elizabeth) shortly due to arrive at Northolt. This is too delicate a matter, Sir Claude explains, to be entrusted to Egg'rson's young successor, Colby Simpkins, of whose appointment Lady Elizabeth has not yet been told. But there is something else about the new confidential clerk of which Lady Elizabeth is ignorant. Colby Simpkins is Sir Claude's natural son. And we gather that Sir Claude wishes that he could tell his wife about Colby, wishes, since before her marriage she had a son of her own, that she would accept Colby in the missing boy's place.
As the limpid, often witty dialogue runs smoothly on, the personable Colby conies in. Soon we arc hearing of the existence of Lucasta Angel, for whom, it seems, Sir Claude has made himself responsible. And when Lucasta herself appears and is introduced for the first time to Colby, we discover that she is engaged to one B. Kaghan, who follows close on her heels. Kaghan is a business man too, with bowler and umbrella, an amiable rough diamond, but we can easily perceive, before the betrothed couple depart, that Lucasta's meeting with Colby is an event likely to give rise to repercussions. A spark has been struck; And we see too that behind her airy banter there is something deeper, a melancholy, it may be, a hint of tragedy, something, at all events, beyond Kaghan's ken, something that the thoughtful Colby might understand and resolve.
Light,relief from all this is provided by the premature arrival of Lady Elizabeth. It is perhaps a little surprising to find not only that she is a silly woman but that we have met her before. She belongs to Hay Fever, and if she is not Judith Bliss herself, she must be a close relation. She speaks of mind-control, auras, and the marvellous continental doctors she has been consulting. But she • only stays long enough to inspect and approve of Colby, and to femind us that she herself once had a son who would now be about his age. Finally, Sir Claude and Colby are left alone, and the act ends with a conversation in which the similar characteristics of father and son and the insecurity of their relationship are drawn with an • exquisite dry-point clarity. The writing here, almost Jamesian at times in its detail, is the best thing we-have heard on the Lyceum stage since the performance of The River Line last year. This, clearly, must be the pith of the play.
But there is still what might be called the secondary theme. The curtain swings up again on Colby's mews flat, two months later. He is playing the piano to Lucasta. The spark struck in the first act has begun to glow. A picture is sketched of two puzzled intelligent young people searching for a common ground. Once more we are given a scene of infinite tact, full of lyrical beauty and insight, flawlessly acted and produced. And it terminates effectively with Lucasta's announcement—shocking news, of course, to Colby— that she is Sir Claude's natural daughter.
At this point in the play not only the situation but the characters are rich with possibilities. How will the Lucasta-Colby affair be resolved? How soon will she learn that he is her half-brother. Has Colby really abandoned all idea of musicianship—for that was to be his ambition? Is he content to fall in with Sir Claude's plans? Or will Sir Claude himself, who is also an artist manqué, come to realize that Colby's talent is worth cultivating? Is this the meaning of the presentation piano? Above all, to what deeper revelations is all the fascinating conversation tending? What more has Mr. Eliot to tell us of music and craftsmanship, of loneliness, of secret gardens, of God?
It is here that the first ridiculous false note is sounded. B. Kaghan divulges that his parentage too is unorthodox. He is a foundling; he was adopted. Before the second act is over Lady Elizabeth has gaily refused to believe, what we have already accepted as fact, that Colby is Sir Claude's son and claims him as her own "lost child." And as the play's centre of gravity giddily shifts, the staggering suspicion dawns that the rest of the evening is going to be taken up deciding who has fathered or mothered whom. This not only proves to be the case, but the most obvious forecast turns out to be the right one. The issues raised in the first half of the play are either perfunctorily wound up or ignored. ,Lady Elizabeth, dominating the stage, delights the aud.ence with counterfeit Coward. Her relat.ves, she says, "were so carnivorous—aIv.ays killing things and eating them"; or, speaking of her former lover, "he was run over by a rhinoceros in Tanganyika." And by the time Colby's future comes to be decided—for the greater part of the last act he is either off altogether or standing in the background—our interest in him has evaporated, and we have certainly no sighs to spare for Sir Claude.
In short, this is a maddening, broken-backed play, which, with every contrivance of art and poetry, raises the highest expectations and then, perversely, fails to fulfil them. It is somehow no comfort to be told that it is based on the Ion of Euripides.
But if the play falls off, the goodness of the acting is maintained to the end. Margaret Leighton as Lucasta adds a faultless technique to her incandescent appearance. Denholm Elliott (Colby) proves himself again to be one of the most promising and accomplished young actors in the profession, and Alan Webb plays Eggerson, the only truly rewarding part, with captivating charm. Isabel Jeans, Alison Leggatt, Paul Rogers and Peter Jones complete a cast which must be one of the most talented of any current production.
The two sets by Hutchinson Scott are ingeniously contrasted. The one is dignified and formal; the other has planes and perspect'ves slightly but significantly out of true. HENRY DONALD.
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