Theatre
THE WINTER'S TALE. By William Shakespeare. (Old Vic.) I TAKE it that the only really satisfactory way of playing The Winter's Tale is as an elaborate masque. To attempt it as comedy or even as farce is not quite right; the fantasy is missing in the one and the pure poetry in the other. Judged by this standard the Old Vic produc- tion just missed coming off. The ritual atmo- sphere, though present in the moments when Father Time was doing his stuff and in the last scene where the statue comes alive, was not sustained. In particular I felt that the country scenes were not Arcadian enough—there was a deal too much knock-about humour and Zena Walker missed Perdita's flower speech (not altogether her fault this, but due to a wrong convention). However, the production had its successes. John Neville's Autolycus, for ex- ample. This is extremely difficult to play. It is the only part in Shakespeare about which I have absolutely no ideas as to how I should like to see it played, and I fancy that we can no longer even visualise the kind of lunatic at large, who seems to have formed the basis for this sort of character in the Elizabethan drama, Mr. Neville managed to make him convincing, while playing down the scatty side of the part, presenting us with an Elizabethan wide boy, whose picking up of trifles was as skilful a piece of pickpocketing as I have seen. Success- ful, too, were Charles Gray and Paul Rogers as Polixenes and Leontes, while Margaret Rawlings made a very finished study of Paulina.
ANTHONY HARTLEY
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