Theatre
Mystery Tour By BAMBER GASCOIGNE The Wakefield Mystery Plays. (Mermaid.) The Rehearsal. (G lobe.) —One Over the Eight. (Duke of York's.) The excellent Mermaid staging of these Wake- field plays has an authentic mediaeval flavour. Noah, for example. after receiving the measure- ments of the ark from God, strips off his coat and sets to. Within a very few lines, muttered t') himself as he works, he has erected a splen- didly painted boat out of four or five pre- constructed pieces. The bow and stern slide into the central hull, then the 'castle' fits neatly on the top. Noah stands back in wonder to admire such God-given progress and the audience burst into delighted applause. Later, when the rain begins, he lets down a flap on the front of the boat to reveal painted waves; and when he is chasing his reluctant wife past these waves they both laboriously gather up their skirts and prance high-stepping through the imagined water. This theatricality, making no attempt at illusion, has endless delights of its own—the sight, for example, of two detachable fig leaves waiting on a painted fig-tree for their moment of glory.
And, oddly enough, knowing the story heightens the suspense rather than dissipates it (this is another of those paradoxes which are at the root of the success of Brecht's theatre); knowing that Lazarus will appear from the tomb intensifies the drama because it focuses our attention during the early part of the scene. When he does appear, this Mermaid Lazarus, pale, thin and stiff, he delivers a magnificent memento mori which will not lightly be forgotten.
The formalism of the comedy scenes becomes, in the serious parts, an admirable and moving formality—a matter of the deepest simplicity. And always, brilliantly, the poetry changes to define the mood. One witnesses a craftsman's carpentry of dramatic language, something used by Eliot in Murder in the Cathedral but never again heard of since he buried his muse in the naturalistic drawing-room. Martial Rose, the adaptor, faced with countless Middle English and dialect words in the original, has made a version which is always comprehensible without imposing awkward modern phrases and without, hardest of all, spoiling the intricate rhythms'and rhymes. The large cast is admirably led by Daniel Thorndike (Noah and Joseph), Donald Eccles (Satan), Gloria Dolskie (The Virgin) and James Bolam (Jesus). 'Cultural' considerations apart, this pageant is an entertainment which shouldn't be missed.
Soon after the war Jean Anouilh grew up—a disastrous event, by his own standards. Until Medea (1946) he had always sympathised with his pure young heroines, his special elite of tragedy and romance. Though he could see the adult side of the question, he was above all mourning the impossibility of youthful idealism lasting in this world of compromise. Jason in Medea was the first of the elite io take the step into an adult life of acceptance, and something of Anouilh himself must have gone with him. From then on he seemed to be writing from the other side of the fence. In his next play, Ardele (1948), the only two sincere lovers were a pair of hunch- backs. And in the play which is now at the Globe, written in 1951, he carefully builds up a pure and innocent girl and introduces her to her first taste of love for the sole and sadistic purpose of kicking her in the stomach and leaving her with a wry laugh. This makes The Rehearsal a 'peculiarly repulsive piece Lucile, a young schoolteacher, is caught up in the life of some modern French aristocrats. They, all wear eighteenth-century clothes, ostensibly because they are rehearsing a Marivaux play, but in practice to soften the harsh fact that Anouilh's play is itself pure pastiche. The Count and Lucile fall in love. His wife, his mistress and his best friend, scandalised that the man should commit adultery outside their social sphere, set about ruining the affair. By a trick they convince the girl that the Count has left her but has sent her some money. In her misery she is virtually raped by the best friend (a villain ironically named Hero, a typical touch in this clever play). She leaves the castle without seeing the Count, and the play ends with a bump when, in a final scene, the Count is told that she has gone. The audience fully expect him to fetch her back (after all, the heroine has to make a final appearance), but we are told that he will never be able to find her— and then suddenly the curtain is down. This surprise denial of a sentimental conclusion, this refusal to resolve the traditional misunderstand- ing, could make a very effective ending to another play; in The Rehearsal it is just the last twist of a Louis Quinze paper knife in a meaningless wound. In Anouilh's best plays innocence was threatened by small-beer hedon- ism or by sly expediency—both of them very real forces, in a way that this frivolous aristo- cratic amorality no longer is. To put a Modern young girl into this eighteenth-century milieu of sexual intrigue is like shutting a hamster in a cage of ferrets and then watching the result with keen interest. Obviously the victim will be eaten, but so what? Without relevance there is only bitterness left, and The Rehearsal's subtitle sums the play up—'Love Punished.' It is an exercise in sadistic reprisal. From mourning innocence, Anouilh has come to hate it. I should in fairness add that anyone who can stomach the play will love this polished and well-acted production.
One Over the Eight, though it never quite scores ten, contains some excellent sketches by Peter Cook and has as its chief clown the one and only Kenneth Williams. But the real success of the evening is the set designer's (Tony Wal- ton), with his series of drawings and colour washes projected on to a full backcloth. Without the fuss of scene-changing, the stage can be trans- formed in a moment. We had at one point a superb impression of a prison yard—it domin- ated the whole stage and yet it was only in use for four seconds. Variations on this idea are an ideal solution to the problem of revue sets.
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