THEATRE
Oedipus. By Sophocles. (King's Theatre, Hammersmith.) MR. DONALD Wourr has, prefaced his Shakespearean season at Hammersmith with King Oedipus and Oedipus at Colonus, in the new translations by Mr. E. F. Watling, brought together for this purpose as the two parts of one long play. This works surprisingly well, although the plays are quite different in mood, and although the Creon of the second is a character who seems to have little connection with the Creon of the first ; and Mr. Wolfit should be congratulated. His production is, like Mr. Watling's translation, blunt and straight- forward, but it is also something less than perfectly balanced. This is more true of King Oedipus than of Oedipus at Colonus, in which a greater coherence is achieved And sustained. In the first it is very much it matter of performance rather than of play, with Mr. Wolfit casting those around him into the shadow, and thundering on— sometimes, it must be said, in a key much too high for the comfort of the audience. The chorus has been handled sensibly, as a collec- tion of individuals among whom the lines have been freely distributed, and drawn deeper into the action. The magnificent ode in praise of Sophocles' white Colonus is sung by a single tenor voice, and this lyrical interlude is something of a compensation for too many lines of a lamentable flatness, such as " We are sensible of the awful import of your tidings." Sir Lewis Casson plays Teiresias, Miss Ellen Pollock Jocasta, Mr. Ernest Hare Creon and Miss Rosalind Iden Antigone. Mr. Tom Lingwood's setting for King Oedipus is simple and good; that for Oedipus at Colonus is simple also but, in my eyes at any rate, not in the least good, and its flimsiness is more than matched by the frivolity, in cut and colour, of the costumes for the second play—and not only the costumes, but also the make-up and general demeanour of some of the players, who seem to have strayed into the fifth century B.C. by way of the hairdresser's and the materials department of a twentieth-century store. !AIN HAMILTON.
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