THEATRE
Old stagers
ROBERT CUSHMAN
The Proposal and Arms and the Man (Chichester) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Old Vic) Returning to Chichester for the first time in five years I find, to my dismay, that my arteries have hardened. I've gone reactionary. At all events the very sight of that platform stage no longer inspires in me the joy of long ago. I now worry about sight-lines, and the vast gulf between my seat in Row J (if you please) and the action. And this was before the entertainment even started.
When it did, I began to fret about audi- bility. And while I could see no pressing reason to revive Chekhov's The Proposal (here done as a curtain-raiser, apd the fact that at Chichester that is-obviously not the correct term, and that I couldn't think of an alternative, did nothing to improve my temper) I could not see why, if the thing were to be done, it should be frittered away in a' mess of rush-and-mumble. Only Edgar Wreford, of the three actors concerned, man- aged any sustained effectiveness, and the playlet's one cruel joke was thrown away by allowing the heroine to be young, person- able, and in no desperate need of a proposal to start with.
One thing was clear. The open stage may seem to invite hectic direction, but (unless the words of the piece matter not at all) it is fatal for the invitation to be accepted. And the main portion of the evening, being relaxed and easy on the ear, proved my point.
All the same. I wonder about Chichester. It has sent its best productions to London often enough for one to have formed some impressions. and it comes to look more and more like the one remaining repository of all that used to be considered distinctive and distinguished about the West End (which, in recent years, has seen little to match The Cocktail Party and The Magistrate). Good luck to it. But what are all those respected performers, and their respectable plays, doing on an apron stage? And why, if report may be trusted, do they so often come unstuck with plays (like the Caucasian Chalk Circle or Peer Gynt) which ought to seem most at home there? I must return a few more times before deciding either that the theatre is in the wrong hands, or that we have mistaken its nature all this while and that it is really .nothing more than a super-proscenium.
In the meantime Arms and the Man comes up as evidence of Chichester's speciality— the transformation, by skilled direction and extravagant casting, of pleasing repertory perennials into major sources of comic de- light. That, at any rate, must have been the idea. But though John Clements' hand has lost none of its cunning, it has been forcibly tied by the loss through injury of his leading man. Laurence Harvey is not my favourite actor but I can see that he might have been a magnificent Sergius; most roles are built on the contrast of appearance and reality, but with this Byronic windbag the appear- ance is immeasurably the more important and it needs the aspect of a star.
Mr Harvey's absence throws an uncom- fortable burden on the remaining leading man. Captain Bluntschli, the chocolate-cream soldier, has all the best lines (a surprising number of them, though dated, are still funny) and nobody could deliver them with more aplomb than John Standing. But he is also, inescapably, the most glamorous actor on the stage, and by no means the essential bourgeois Shaw prescribes. Sarah Badel, by contrast, is a tougher kid than the adoring Raina can afford to be; by the end she has no claws left to unsheath-so the final reversal goes for nothing. These are two immensely attractive players, and the production plea- surably fraces their relationship, but it is left to Margaret Courtenay, in the under-written role of the play's matriarch, to hit dead centre.
Meanwhile, back at the National Theatre, Edward Hardwicke and Ronald Pickup are dead. Mr Hardwicke cannot match the grace or (surprisingly) the comic aplomb of John Stride's superb original performance, but he is doggedly endearing. And Mr Pickup, though lacking Edward Petherbridge's crush- ing superiority of manner and foregoing a few laughs through a praiseworthy refusal to be merely imitative, makes lighter weather of the play's more solemn and re- grettable moments. He is a very open actor; he could play the Shakespearean Guilden- crantz withbut looking pushy, but he could also play Hamlet (either one).
This is now the senior production in the Waterloo Road repertoire, and it is in excel- lent shape: only Mary Griffiths' Gertrude remains from the opening night, and she is as willingly gracious as ever.
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