CONTEMPORARY ARTS
THEATRE
SIR RALPH RICHARDSON'S Macbeth is radically different from any presentation of the part that one has either seen or imagined, but it s not easy—indeed, to be frank, it is impossible—to interpret his reading of the part into a coherent, let alone a convincing study.
• Sir Ralph seems to neglect most of what are generally accepted as the mainsprings of the character. His Macbeth is seen to be ambitious in rather the same way that he is seen to be a biped ; his ambitions, like his legs, are something with which he is fitted, which move him from place to place, but in which he appears to take no very direct interest. He never gives the impression of being, or having been, a good fighting commander, his attitude to Lady Macbeth is too distrait to suggest the realities underlying their guilty partnership, and the poetry is for the most part spoken in flat, measured, metallic cadences whose effect, though not without potency, is comparable to that produced by the distant shunting of trains. On the other hand, cruelty and remorse are both well portrayed, and the whole performance has a sort of tranced quality which chimes well with the supernatural undertones in the tragedy. But this quality has in the long run a numbing or nullifying effect, and I am afraid that this Macbeth, who to the literal-minded playgoer must give the impression of having been hit very hard on the head just before the curtain went up, cannot be accounted a success. It is in the convention of Charles Addams rather than of Sarah Siddons that Miss Margaret Leighton presents Lady Macbeth. Hers is a performance of conspicuous intelligence and great virtuosity. We recognise this creature of baleful beauty and serpentine grace as both deadly and doomed. But we watch it with fascination rather than with awe ; it is lethal, it is lovely, but it is not very large—a krait, perhaps, rather than a cobra. Mr. Raymond Westwell is an unusually good Banquo, Mr. Jack Gwillim distinguishes himself as Macduff and Miss Siobhan McKenna as Lady Macduff plays her brief scene admirably.
Mr. John Gielgud's tenebrous production was good without (I thought) being quite up to his usual standard. It was not helped by the costumes, whose silvered symmetry was really better suited to the Never-never Land of Illyria than to the stern, barbaric uplands
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