" The Magistrate " and“ Misalliance." Ar the Arts Theatre.
THE THEATRE
I CANNOT join in the current fashionable depreciation of Shaw as a dramatist. It is natural that some good critics should be so shocked at his almost inhuman common sense as to do him injustice, while others are genuinely incapable of the sustained attention necessary to perceive that there is a main current of consistency in Mr. Shaw's ideas that exonerates him entirely from the accusation of being no more than brilliantly paradoxical. I have seen Misalliance described as a mere spate of talk. Do not let this deter you from seeing one of the most entertaining and ingenious comedies in the English or any other language. If there were nothing more than coruscating wit in Misalliance I would not praise it as a play ; but when great wit pours in an unfailing stream not deviating by more than a beautiful parabola from-its planned direction ; when the wit is both brilliant and purposeful, logical and unfaltering—besides being cunningly evoked by a constant dramatic invention of incident and character that illuminate designedly, not haphazardly—one can only describe the result as a great constructive achievement, even if it is chiefly an intellectual, not an emotional of aesthetic, achieve- ment. After all, the art of comedy, wattle that of tragedy, is an art of the intellect, and Shaw is not a tragic but a great comic writer. How great, one is able to see when one has a chance, as in the present season of comedy at the Arts Theatre, to compare his work with the masterpieces of the past. Farquhar, Wycherley, Congreve, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Wilde may have engaging human traits that Shaw lacks, but as masters of that pure intellectual art of comedy they are all children beside him. The present production of Misalliance is a good one. David Bird has the right gusto for Tarleton, Harold Lang struck exactly the proper pose as Bentley Summerhays, while Ruth Buchanan was a convincingly spirited Hypatia. Peter Jones added to his earlier success as Gunner, and one could not have wished for a better Lina Szczepanowska than Magda Kun. Those who think Shaw cannot create ordinary characters (limited, naturally, as comedic figures) should contemplate Johnny Tarleton in this play.
Pinero's The Magistrate was his first play. It is far superior to the majority of successful farces of the last twenty years, and is still very amusing. The present production does it full justice. JAMES REDFERN.
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