THEATRE
Twelfth Night. BY William Shakespeare. (Old Vic.) MORE than most plays of Shakespeare, Twelfth Night depends on atmosphere: nothing much happens in the play, lovers meet, are deceived and finally united, the proud are brought low, the humble exalted and their cakes and ale along with them. All this takes place in the charmed circle of the poetry. Shakespeare has created his Illyria solely from words ... as he was later to create Bohemia and the magic islands - of his final plays. But here too there are serpents in the garden. A vein of melan- choly runs through the play, carried princi- pally by the characters of Feste and Mal- volio, both of whom have their own pathos. In Denis Carey's new production, Michael Hordern plays Malvolio as if he were indeed mad; his face is tortured; his hands, reaching out of the pit in the scene where Feste visits him as Sir Thopas, the curate, suggest the damned in the Inferno. The whole per- formance is too uncomfortable to be really amusing. One laughed, but one also shivered. Feste was nearer the gentle nostalgia which the poetry conjures up. Paul Daneman played him with the right pathos, though he might attack the songs with more confidence than he does at present. These two actors gave to their performances a style which was sadly lacking in some of the others.
Claire Bloom as Viola was captivating to look at, but her charm could not conceal her throwing away of lines, though it might buy her a free pardon. John Neville as Orsino made a complete massacre of "lf music be the food of love," which is harder to forgive and which I personally do not intend to forgive. Is it too much to ask of Shakes- pearean actors that they should learn to speak poetry? Is it too much to ask of producers that they should insist on poetry being well spoken? As it is, many of the actors at the Old Vic mumble their parts and those who are audible are often far from distinguished in the way they speak. This is the main trouble with Twelfth Night, as it was with King John. Otherwise the production is pleasant enough, although Richard Burton was monstrously miscast as Sir Toby. Mr. Burton is not a comic actor. He may become one in time, but he is not one yet, and no amount of acrobatics on the pillars of the horrible permanent set will conceal this. It was the producer's fault, as also was the excessively slow motion in which the play was performed. This was far from being the ideal Illyria of the imagination. 0, reform it altogether.
ANTHONY HARTLEY
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