CONTEMPORARY ARTS
THEATRE
Don Juan in Hell. By Bernard Shaw.. (Arts.) THE third act of Man and Superman was Shaw's attempt at " a new Book of Genesis for the Bible of the Evolutionists," his exposition of that doctrine of creative evolution which might be celebrated more simply by the exultant cry of " Life ! Life ! "—life tomorrow or the next day, of course, not today : another brand of pie in the sky, and only to be relished by Superman. Here I sympathise with the world, the flesh and Your Obedient Servant (as Senor Satan says), and agree with that much maligned figure that the reformed Juan's speeches reach an unconscionable length. Not that there is anything dull in the delivery. Alec Clunes has produced the infernal interlude in costume, himself playing Juan, in a void near Hell that is most concretely and un-hellishly decorative. The piece is acted every inch of the way. Perhaps it was not seriously intended for the stage, but it certainly serves better there than as Holy Writ in the hand ; for even at their most serious and persuasive, Shaw's paradoxes persist in being theatrical rather than philosophical. It makes a lively enough evening : a thousand times rather this than a reading by an evening-clothed quartet. Gwen Cherrell discovers the feeble glimmer of life that Shaw, allowed to Doila Ana ; Richard Warner's Statue descends from the Officers' Mess above which has grown tedious and brings a little bit of Cheltenham to the void ; and David Bird makes a quaintly plump, petulant and cultivated Nick. If the matter of Juan's utterances grows wearisome as the evening advances, Mr. Clunes's manner does not. " Whew ! " says the audience on the last notes of the more outrageously difficult arias.
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