THEATRE

Variety fare

ROBERT CUSHMAN

The Well of the Saints (Old Vic) The Philanthropist (Royal Court) Twelfth Night (Aldwych) How the Other Half Loves (Lyric)

Last week in London, crowded and reward- ing, was begun by Dublin's Abbey Theatre

with a double-bill at the Old Vic: an in- comprehensible piece of fantasticated blar- ney called The Dandy Dolls (the masks were nice, though I found it difficult to accept a Grey Man from the Sea who was not even a bit damp) and a minor tor non-Playboy) Synge, The Well of the Saints. This proved a tart and disturbing experience, grafting on the tale of an old blind couple, miraculously restored their sight, not merely a heap of predictable ironies about illusion and reality but some cruel observations of the limita- tions of compassion. Humankind cannot bear very much affliction, especially other people's. The inevitable crowd of peasants became. in Hugh Hunt's adroit production, a sounding-board for sentimentality. This took the tinker's curse off the play and cleared it for some admirable performances. A valuable evening (with us, regrettably, for only one week), summarising what we can take from Ireland and what we had best leave alone.

Tuesday to Hampton's Court. Christopher Hampton's The Philanthropist begins with an exhilarating bang, and ends with an in- sinuating slow burn. This puts it two points ahead of most plays, and sundry other vir- tues beguile the time between.

The play is an updated reversal of Moliere's Misanthrope; the programme is strewn with clues (title. sub-title—"a- bour- geois comedy". epigraph) and the text itself manages an insouciant reference. Anyone who has watched Gtinter Grass's Plebeians groaning under the self-imposed weight of its inert and useless Coriolanus references and groaned in sympathy will welcome the deli- cacy of Mr Hampton's recourse to Moliere; it is there when needed and can be disregar- ded when not.

Where Moliere's Alceste lost friends by his obstreperous attempts to influence people Mr Hampton's Philip, a harmless and prob- ably unnecessary don, attains the same un- wanted end by a steady refusal to take any sides at all. Earlier this year David Mercer presented such a loser in After Haggerty.

Mr Mercer's Link was a drama critic, but even these scarifying depths of impotence are insufficient for Mr Hampton. Philip, avoiding even the minuscule commitments of criticism, is a philologist to whom any arrangement of words can give pleasure and whose passion, logically enough, is for ana- grams. We watch him lose, like Alceste, three women in turn; his fiancée, a passing nymphomaniac (that she should correspond to Moliere's prude Arsinoe is Mr Hampton's wit at its best) and 'a quiet girl' (a descrip- tion which amused me and probably has the actress in stitches) whom his best friend seduces the moment he becomes aware of her.

Philip is as great a step forward for Mr Hampton as was Link for Mr Mercer and he receives as impeccable a performance. Alec McCowen is ideally equipped to convey both Philip's joy in words and his agony when they fail him. There are few actors with such a command of absurdity, and such a command over it; but his perform-

ance is so much better than anybody else's as to raise doubts about the play. For if its structure is classical, its tone is often disre- putably romantic. To be exact it recalls Os- borne (and, in its humorous reliance on place-names and dismissive adjectives, Os- borne's master, Coward.) It is the same kind of monodrama as Hotel in Amsterdam and it gives its subsidiary characters as raw a deal. There is a constant and wearing note of near-witty facetiousness about the dia- logue which only Mr McCowen transcends. Charles Gray rides with it, doing a slightly faded version of his own thing as a fleshy, fleshly novelist; Jane Asher goes right under as the fiancee. The others float or flounder, the virtues and vices of each performance compounding those of the writing.

Well, classical comedy is a hard game for both parties, and bearings are easily lost. I gagged at Mr Hampton's exaggerated satire on the remoteness of academe, then decided that the mockery was itself a put-on. It would be nice to be sure.

Thursday, as it happens, brought comedy at its highest. I am indebted to the RSC for two of the most pleasurable evenings of my life: the Michael Elliott-Vanessa Redgrave As You Like It and John Barton's All's Well that Ends Well. To these I must now add Mr Barton's production of Twelfth Night. I say this with the more emphasis since, when it opened last season at Stratford, I took several exceptions to it. I found it chilly, unfunny, and largely undercast, so intent on exhibiting the play's themes and imagery as to lose sight of its human content.

Mr Barton has now met every one of my objections, and while I can hardly believe that he has done it just to oblige me, I could scarcely be more delighted if he had. Virtu- ous he may remain, but he now permits cakes and ale. Leslie Sands's Sir Toby has a relish in self-indulgence which makes its transitori- ness the more stabbing. Barrie Ingham's Andrew makes rare bagpipe music and Elizabeth Spriggs's pawky Maria gets her mart without having to dig his grave to do so. Donald Sinden's Malvolio thus has a comic context to move in, and the results are im- measurably richer. His merry madness, as the text demands, equals Olivia's sad: Lisa Harrow's performance, improved beyond recognition, makes the girl's gawky advance

to womanhood the central movement of the play. Richard Pasco has the full measure of Orsino's self-pity but something else besides; he is mocked most elegantly by Emrys James's Feste but he is worth the steel of so practised an artist. Judi Dench's Viola wat- ches their encounter with gravely compas- sionate eyes; these silent moments are her finest since her vocal command is now so con- sumate as to appear over-studied. This, though, is to find fault at the highest level. I have sometimes found this company guilty of playing a single mood to the prejudice of a complex whole, but here they do full justice to an incomparable play.

After which, Friday was inevitably a let- down, though instructive. Alan Ayckbourn's How the Other Half Loves has disabused me of the idea that there might be such a thing as pure farce. Mr Ayckbourn's ingenu- ity is staggering but he puts little store by character and less by dialogue. Robert Mor- ley compensates in both departments by being Robert Morley. Otherwise, I laughed a lot; but I hated myself.