Professional Playgoing
An Experience of Critics. Edited by Kaye Webb, with caricatures by Ronald Searle. (Perpetua. 7s. 6d.) The Fugitive Art. By T. C. Worsley. (Lehmann. 18s.) 15s.) Verdict at Midnight. By Harold Hobson. (Longmans. 16s.) am asked for my Approach to Dramatic Criticism. It is, I must confess, through the Stalls Entrance.—Ivor Brown.
Pace practically everybody, there seems to me to be nothing very much wrong with dramatic criticism.—Alan Dent.
So do Mr. Brown and Mr. Dent begin their respective contributions to the little book edited by Kaye Webb and, since they are among the more memorable observations therein, they may stand as epi- graphs. But something more may be required, so let us see what Mr. Alec Guinness says about dramatic criticism in his preface. It should, he suggests, be readable, and innocent of French, Latin, German, tiresome quotations, puns, &c. ; and it should conjure up for the reader a " visual picture " of the performance. This is an actor's point of view and as such is reasonable, but since actors (very properly) do not understand dramatic criticism, we may pass on to a dramatist's contribution—the text of an address given by Mr. Christopher Fry to the Critics' Circle in April. This is rich in friendliness and the spirit of the peace-maker, but the music which Mr. Fry makes on behalf of authors and actors is veritably a siren's song, and the critic who allowed himself to be lured towards the rocks by it would soon be reduced to a little heap of bones. Mr. Philip Hope-Wallace sails past the• dangerous cape : " Actresses, actors and dramatists who in that order live on applause dislike criticism which is not praise (in which case they seldom demur)." So does Mr. T. C. Worsley : " Once critics fall into the trap of viewing the theatre with the same eyes as the author or the actor, their usefulness is at an end." So do they all, each in his own way. Mr. Fry might just as well have sounded a harsher note. It is not the critic's business to please actors, authors, producers or managements. " He is writing primarily for the public of a particular paper, which is interested in the theatre either as one of several forms of recreation, if he is writing in the popular Press : or as one of several forms of artistic activity, if he is writing ... in one of the more serious weekly journals or Sunday papers. And in the short space
at his disposal he has 'too much ground to cover. Quite apart from whatever ideals he may set himself as a critic, he has practical
functions to perform. He has to give his readers an idea of the kind of play or production under review ; he has to estimate the worth of the play itself and the standard of performances, and to relate this to the general cultural background. All this in a space which, by pre-war standards, is still niggardly." This is Mr. Worsley again, in his introduction to The Fugitive Art, a collection of notices covering the years 1947-51. He is one of the best dramatic critics working today, and he performs the various " practical functions " expected of him soberly, imaginatively, judiciously, without self-advertisement, add always with his eye on the total effect of the production' under review and its relative place in the contemporary theatre. Should any disgruntled actor, drama- tist or producer hiss the dread word " literary " at him, I trust that he will confidently accept it as a compliment. " The drama is only one branch of literature, and the further it removes itself from the rest of the family' the greater the danger of its degenerating."- That is well said.
There is every reason why we should not think of the theatre as something in the same class as championship snooker, or haute couture for that matter. There is no reason why we should not apply in dramatic criticism the standards that are valid in the criticism of other branches of literature—or try at least to do so. Yet the dramatic critic's job differs in at least one important respect from that of the critic of literature which lies snug and patient between covers. In the theatre the fiction, as Worsley says, " comes at one whole, and all in a lump, and immensely larger than life." It is as though one had to read No Orchids For Miss Blandish on a Monday, Middkmarch on a Tuesday, some vague infinity of commercial twaddle on a Wednesday, Doctor Faustus on a Thursday and the Hymn to Aphrodite on a Friday, judging each as fairly as may be within its own frame of reference and writing an informative and not altogether unintelligent notice of it before bed-time, not forget- ting a word for the typographer, binder, paper-maker and designer of the dust-jacket.
One has to be strong to thrive on such a diet, and Mr. S. R. Littlewood in his wise and comprehensive book The Art of Dramatic Criticism (an expanded and remodelled version of his earlier Dramatic Criticism) warns the aspiring dramatist against it. " I have seen," he writes, " some well-equipped creative minds completely staled by it." But your born enthusiast whose mind is not divided may flourish where others would choke, and Mr. J. C. Trewin, who describes himself as " a playgoer who is happy to be a dramatic critic," indefatigably records night after night of enjoyment between the late summer of 1949 and the early summer of 1952. Mr. Trewin always has a bright phrase for it, and his indomitable cheerfulness may encourage the weary when the night seems long. That night seemed long, alas, when one picked up Mr. Hobson's book. It may have seemed a good plan to " take nearly forty of the most important theatrical productions of the last sixty years ... and to compare what their first night critics thought about them with the considered. judgement, in most cases, of posterity." But the result, weighed down with vast slabs of hasty and unappetising reviewing cut out of mwspapers, is not encouraging. It is, in fact, very nearly dull. Which goes to show that authors and actors are not the only ones whose best-laid schemes can go agley. IAIN HAMILTON.
Previous page
