STAGE AND SCREEN • The Theatre
"The Tempest." By William Shakespeare. Sadler's Wells.
AFTER a vigorous and exciting shipwreck, the curtain rises on a scene which we conclude, on internal evidence, to have
been designed by a moderately precocious child of nine. A
pile of mauve logs, refuses to be ignored ; Prospero's cell suggests a bathing machine which has got involved in a
Harvest Festival ; a small, scone-like eruption in the middle of the stage provides a rostrum for the major speeches, but belies its apparently volcanic origin by shifting shamelessly about an otherwise static set ; on the backcloth the sea has, literally, " mounted to the welkin's cheek," and the artist's tongue, perhaps, to his. This is Shakespeare's Enchanted Island.
Of its inhabitants and visitors, only Ariel rose superior to so disconcerting an environment. Both in speech and movement, Miss Elsa Lanchester was excellent. Eschewing acrobatics, she expressed in the unobtrusive pawing of her feet, the seemingly unconscious fluttering of her hands, that eager darting quality which should transfigure Ariel. In an atmosphere as empty of magic as the Edgware Road, Ariel contrived to stand out as an authentic spirit, volatile and fiery. The actress maintained throughout a birdlike reserve ; malice and loyalty alike were tinged with a kind of remote- ness, and this Ariel was the truer to her ethereal nature for it.
Mr. Roger Livesey's Caliban was good, though played too much on one note. A distinctly aboriginal make-up under- lined the parable of Civilization and the Savage which Shakespeare has here prophetically presented. Mr. Evan John's Gonzalo was a delightful and indomitable bore, and Miss Ursula Jeans, though attired like a debutante in quest of paragraphs, made Miranda a pretty and poetic innocent.
But poetry was lacking in her father. Mr. Lytton Strachey has argued plausibly that Prospero is Shakespeare's prize bore, and the earlier part of the play, in particular, abounds in evidence of testiness and self-importance. It would be most interesting to see the part played for character along these lines, with perhaps a dash of the charlatan thrown in. But however you play it, you must have majesty and you must have music. Mr. Charles Laughton forswore the former and could not achieve the latter.
I cannot believe that Mr. Tyrone Guthrie, the producer, was wise to substitute Buckie's Bears for the masque of spirits ; nor, having substituted them, to encourage them
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