Doctor Into Dramatist
John Knox and Other Plays. By James Bridie. (Constable. 10s.) MR. BRID1E is a tantalising dramatist. As a man of medicine who came to creative writing late in life, he brought to the art a trained and detached mind with an experience and background rarely found in the theatre's service. His equipment was vastly different from that of those ephemeral waterflies of the social world whose characters chase or are chased in "travelling suits" from watering place to luxury flats. Taormina and Paris are far cries from Edinburgh and Biblical geography. His imaginative fancy has ranged wide, and having discovered one formula for making comic rabbits he has never capitulated to the weakness of repetition because tre formula paid. He has a trained and stimulating mind, a sure touch for bringing his characters to life, and a theatre craftsman's capacity for contriving a rich seriei of dramatic situations. Mr. Clifford Bax has (a little daringly) called Tobias and the Angel" the most attractive comedy written since Twelfth Night," and has added (on firm enough ground here), "Second-rate Bridle is worth more than R., 0., or T. can offer us." And yet this gifted man has never written the first- class play which his varied talents would seem to warrant. Mr. Agate once defined a good play absolutely as one at which only a numskull would yawn and fidget. There could be no yawning at any Bridie play and he is far too calculating an entertainer to permit fidgeting. But the total impact somehow misses greatness. The mind is titillated but not enriched, and the emotions arc hardly engaged.
In Dr. Angelus there is triumphant evil in action, but the general effect is dissipated, so that what is by nature horrible becomes a spectacle which we behold as fascinated spectators but never as inside participants. The audience gets swung from one mood to another in the action, as well as in the_leaping changes of mood in the doctor himself, and can never be certain whether it is expected to laugh or cry. The sure pathos of the scene where Mrs. Angelus attempts to establish her rights in her own home, only to be exposed to physical assault at the hands of the cretinous and slatternly servant who is her husband's mistress, gets lost in what follows, and becomes just an incongruously sincere intrusion upon macabre material which Mr. Bridie chooses to treat in such a way as to excite laughter rather than horror.
Mr. Bridie has the reputation of being a great talker in an age when good talk is rarely heard and infrequently appreciated. What is a source of delight to his friends rnay be his undoing as a dramatist. A continuous flow of ideas, in conflict, inconsistent and challenging, can make an evening's delight, but when these are cascaded willy- nilly into a play, without regard foL the disciplined form which drama demands, the appeal of art is sensibly weakened. John Knox has much in common with his creator, and the play which bears his name is packed full with the preacher's eloquence. The speeches are splendid stuff, but are they dramatic dialogue ? It is unfortunate that there has been little opportunity for seeing this piece, for without that experience it is impossible to be certain either on this point or about the effectiveness of having three figures of this century serving as a kind of chorus and commentary as they watch the story of "the beautiful Queen and the hard old man." What is certain is that the spirit of Mary Stuart has eluded Mr. Bridle as she has many another dramatist.
The Forrigan Reel is styled a "ballad opera" but is in fact an "unconsidered trifle," which proved to have little life on the stage.
It Depends What You Mean is probably the most satisfactory play in
this volume, for even Professor Mutch is made to contain his garrulity, and the last lines of the play display a subtle economy of effect. The second act, where a collection of well assorted types make Roman holiday for troops in a brains trust, is Bridie at his most witty, resourceful and dramatically effective. One left the theatre echoing Barrie's words, "What's all this ado about edification ? Are you pleased or are you not ? " We were jOHN Gsaturrr.
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