STAGE AND SCREEN The Theatre
"Noah." Translated by Arthur Wilmurt from the French of Andth Obey. At the New Theatre
Jr is the mark of a reprehensible superiority to sneer at charades. In their right place and upon proper occasions they deserve deep respect and gratitude : they are one of the major amenities of country house life and provide some of the rare opportunities for imaginative freedom that are permitted in our public schools. But nothing is more tedious than the imitated charade of another family, another Christ- mas, another school. M. Andre Obey's Noe was an inspired charade, pointed with the sophistication that comprehends simplicity, whose rare appeal to the imagination more than made up for the shortcomings in its fulfilment of the strict demands of the intellect : it was originally produced in a little theatre, with the simplest of scenery, and with actors who, whether they played the part of men or of animals, were unequivocally actors pretending to be animals or members of Nod's household. It succeeded precisely because the simplicity of its setting allowed the imagination of its author to operate in the form best suited to it without the embar- rassment of ,a commonplace naturalistic convention.
The present production is inferior to its predecessor in almost every respect. Mr. Gielgud, covered with the hair of primitive man and of almost every other member of the animal world, and looking every one of his six hundred years, most skilfully suggests the romantic's conception of Noah, but suggests with even greater precision M. Auguste Boverio, the distinguished French actor who played the part in the first production in London. It seems that M. Saint- Denis, the producer, who was in charge of the French produc- tion also, has simply aimed at reproducing the qualities of the French production with additional elaborations : this is merely an enlarged and touched up photograph of its French original. Now the point about the play in its original form was that Noe was conceived by the dramatist in almost every respect as a French peasant, and the rebellion of his children and the appre- hension of his wife was the rebellion of French peasant children and the apprehension of a French peasant woman : it was not merely an attempt to make a poeticized costume drama out of Hebrew legend, it was an attempt to interpret the traditional story in a manner that would be dramatically relevant to twen- tieth-century France. Similarly in the English version, to pro- duce anything like the effect aimed at by M. Obey, Noah should have been seen as an English peasant, his wife an English country woman, his children English country children. M. Obey's intention has been lost in this production because Noah, instead of being an English peasant, is a brilliantly accurate photograph of M. Boverio's presentation of a French peasant, and because his children are not peasants at all. Mr. Colin Keith-Johnston's Ham is an opinionated insensitive midshipman, and Mi. Marius Goring's Japheth and Mr. Harold Young's Shem, together with Miss Ena Burrill's too sophis- ticated Naomi and Miss Cicely Howland's Sella, suggest the less responsible elements of Dartington Hall. Miss Marjorie Fielding's Mrs. Noah is paralysed by a devastatingly inappro- priate quaintness. • .
The translation of this play must have been an exceptionally difficult task, and it is not surprising that _Mr. Wilinurt!s version is unsatisfactory in several respects. In `theFrench version the passages between the points of greatest dramatic stress (for one cannot pretend that all the play is of the same quality) were. sustained by an implicit gaiety. Mr. Wilmurt uses a language that for purposes of dramatic emphasis, is almost dead it is quite devoid of gaiety, at times is drably prosaic, at times whimsically poetic, and throughout is so empty of personal style that it is difficult to realize that it is the work of a single writer.
And so to the animals : the bear, the lion, the monkey, the elephant, the lamb, the wolf and the tiger=all of theni superbly executed by Motley.' and admirably domesticated; again after the French manner (but here it does not Matter); by M. Saint-Denis. An unfortunate exception is the cow— a whimsical and cOquettish beast, which might have pranced straight out of the illustrations to I 'hen e Weie Very Young.
1)Eurii VERSCHOYLE.
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