"Romeo and Juliet." By William Shakespeare. (His Majesty's.)
SHAKESPEARE (who also owes much to his style) is responsible for Romeo and Juliet's revivability, but our interest in a new production of this play is usually enhanced or titillated by one or both of the two principal players. At His Majesty's, where the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company have established a welcome bridgehead in London, this cannot be so, since neither Miss Daphne Slater nor Mr. Laurence Payne has either the personality or the experience to make us, in the author's interests, transfer our allegiance from the dead to the living. In this production Shakespeare's most prominent would-be ally— and thus in a sense his most important involuntary rival—is the young producer, Mr. Peter. Brook. His work here is vulnerable to criticism at many points, but it is always interesting. It is, among other things, almost literally half-baked. In Italy, Mr. Brook knew or heard, it is often very hot, so he brings on at intervals a score of supers to rub in the languor and torpor, the heat and the flies, which he has (or had at one time) in his mind. But none of the principals—including the Prince of Verona, who is dressed like a Polar bear, but excluding the Nurse who perspires by permission of the author—feels the heat at all. Nor, indeed, does their behaviour correspond in any way to that of the skilfully marshalled crowd with whom Mr. Brook has surrounded them ; the crowd, with admirable realism, strain at gnats while the principal characters, picking their way among them, swallow the most confidential and extravagant of camels. And finally—while we are .on the subject of realism—Mr. Brook (whose bent, I think, really lies in that direction, and not towards the crepuscular and geometric) should look into the matter of rapiers. These were lethal and rather expensive tools with very sharp points. They were not used like a riding-switch to slap your calf with, nor like a Harlequin's lathe for hitting your friends on their bottoms, nor like a fly-whisk for general purposes of gesticulation ; and if they were carried naked in the belt it must have been at grave risk to the owner's Achilles tendon. But in Mr. Brook's production, as the lady next to -me commented, "there's always plenty going on," and if some of the detail with which he has overloaded the main action is not contrived with com- plete success it is all informed by an eager and questing sense of the theatre. We are throughout aware of a vivid imagination at work, and though at times we may feel that Romeo and Juliet has no clamant need for the kind of treatment which did so much for Chu Chin Chow we are nevertheless grateful for a display of virtuosity behind which is the promise of great talent. Among the actors, Mr. Paul Scofield as Mercutio gave the best performance.
PETER FLEMING.
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