THEATRE
FEW people can be enthusiastic over the Shrew as a play. However, like Much Ado, it has two famous acting parts and it gives scope to a ,producer. George Devine uses this scope to the full and by doing so turns a boring play into a spectacle which is never less than delightful to the eye and, at moments, magical. He makes brilliant use of the idiom developed in the days when he, Glen Byam Shaw and Michel St. Denis were responsible for the Old Vic and which goes back to the Compagnie des Quinze and the London Theatre Studio. Not only is .this Commedia dell' Arte treatment ideally suited to this romping play within a play but Devine manages to give what is little more than a rather brutal farce a lyrical overtone. Vivienne Kernot's settings and costumes are quite exceptionally beautiful. There is a richness and solidity about the decor which is a relief after the flimsiness of so many modern stage sets which made the actors appear so much more substantial than the walls against which they lean. The lighting is admirable ; so mellow that at times, with the subdued colour harmonies of the dresses, one seems, to be looking at a living Giorgione. At the end, when the bright figures fade like a dream and Sly wakes from his fuddled dream, there is a moment of pure magic.
As a play, the Shrew only comes to life when Katharina and Petruchio are on the scene. The amount of life generated by this pair is electrifying and refreshing. Marius Goring's Petruchio is a comic triumph. He is bold and sparkling, lively without being fidgety and full of humorous charm. Yvonne Mitchell looks like a lovely wild Italian gipsy and plays with such fire that one almost believes her to be a real girl of uncontrollable passions. I say " almost " because a real girl would surely have shown more nervous exhaustion after Petruchio's quite authentic torturing, and this Kate hardly changed her key after two sleepless nights. But, in the last act, battered and gay, she was delicious and, in the final speech where the tamed falcon coos like a dove, extraordinarily moving. The tension engendered by this pair, the way they suggest profound attraction underlying surface quarrelling makes one think how admirable they might be as Beatrice and Benedick.
Nearly all the other parts were well played except, to my mind, the sham Lucentio, whose constant facial contortions were not only irritating to watch but seemed to bear no relation to what he was saying or hearing. This was all the more evident because Tony Britton, the real Lucentio, acted so admirably with his face that one was aware of all his feelings and reactions even when he was neither speaking nor being spoken to. Two special commendations should go to Michael Warre's Christopher Sly, which he and the producer had built up into a considerable part by excellent mime, and to Mary Watson's demure minx of a Bianca. ANTONIA WHITE.
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