THEATRE
Time Remembered. By Jean A no u I h. (Lyric, Hammersmith.) Time Remembered. By Jean A no u I h. (Lyric, Hammersmith.) ,IT is worth meditating what makes of Time Remembered an entertainment much superior to anything else of the kind on the London stage. Is it the acting? Margaret Rutherford gives a performanee which confirms one's opinion ,of her as one of our finest actresses: her Sense of comedy and of humanity, are unerring, and she knows how to give richness and depth to the character she is creating by providing an impersonation which remains tactfully this side of the ridiculous. Paul Scofield and Mary Ure (making a most successful debut as a young woman out of Giraudoux) were pleasant and romantic, which was what the parts required. The standard of acting and production was high, but the same could, after all, be said of quite a number of West End plays. No, the superiority of Time Remembered over, let us say, The Dark is Light Enough consists in the quality of the writing. Clean French prose, a rococo which is the result of a shattered classicism and not of a pot-pourri of 'stylistic aberrations, a duchess who is a human being first and a grande dame after- wards, dialogue that advances the action of the play while containing its own poetic breath--all these things are rarities on a stage abandoned to characters in search of an interior decorator.
What is this piece rose about? Much the same as M. Anouilh's pieces noires super- ficially. A young girl is summoned to a chateau by a duchess to rehabilitate her nephew who is under the spell of the memory of a short affair with a frightful woman now, happily, dead. So much under the spell that he has reconstructed in the grounds of the chateau all the places where he and Leocadia once met. Needless to say, the cure is effected by the homeopathic medicine usual in such cases. If it had been a piece noire I suppose Amanda would have been expected to do likewise for the cretinous Lord Hector (who is admirably played by Richard Goolden). It would all have been another horror of the feudal bedroom. As it is, we are snared the sinister side of M. Anouilh's talent.
Graceful, nostalgic and classical, giving that severer twist to preciosity which makes the French version of a normally pejorative txpression worth looking at, Time Remem- bered is a delightful excursion into poetic fantasy, which, since it is not pretentious, can be judged in terms of pure enjoyment. They order these matters better in France. As 1 have already said, it is well acted and produced. Let me repeat that Miss Ruffierford's performance seems to me a great one.
ANTHONY HARTLEY
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