Theatre
Humbug
Mark Amory
Waiting for Godot (Round House) Barnum (Palladium) 'Where were you? I stayed until after 8. Godot' has been scrawled on walls. When a middle-aged theatre-goer, confronted by a man in a dustbin, turns to his middle-aged wife in a New Yorker cartoon and says, 'Already I hate it', he may not know the name but it is the world of Samuel Beckett that he is reluctant to enter. The writer is famous but the play, like Idi Amin or James Bond, is known even by those who do not care for that sort of thing. It has apparently been more written about than any other of this century. Now it has to compete with its own offspring: are the jokes as sharp as those in Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead? Did The Caretaker get more mileage out of a tramp with ill-fitting boots?
Two shabby figures bicker and joke and play games, occasionally mentioning the fellow that we know from our programmes if not from experience is not going to turn up. As with The Caretaker, when it was first produced Godot's lack of story or apparent purpose seemed baffling and a natural reaction was 'What does it all mean?' various productions have suggested that the hidden theme was Franco-German relations, English oppression of the Irish or Beckett's admiration for Joyce. The director of this revival, Braham Murray, has written a programme note against such interpretation. I welcome that but it does not follow that the play is about nothing but two men waiting for another. Beckett's power comes from his persistent and authoritative gloom, a pessimism that makes the despair of others look footling. In spite of the name, some Biblical references and a description of his having a long white beard, Beckett denies that Godot has anything to do with God; in which case it was a perverse thing to call him and it is no excuse to point out that it was written in French. But even if they are not expecting a confrontation with the Almighty, the two tramps' behaviour suggests that there is nothing really worth doing, that being together is only marginally, if at all, better than being alone, that distraction from boredom is all that can be looked for. The lines 'They give birth astride a grave. The light gleams an instant. Then it's gone.'give the tone. Here we get only a tolerable cross-talk act with excruciatingly boring interruptions from Pozzo and Lucky, the master and servant who pass by. Comments that may refer to life or the play, like 'Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful,' are enjoyable, as are exchanges like 'That passed the time.' It would have passed in any case.' Max Wall has the timing and a battery of expressions, particularly an effective way of throwing his eyes to heaven with a shrug to imply 'God give me patience'; but he is unassertive and even has to watch Trevor Peacock having a success with his own speciality, a funny walk. Peacock keeps the show going with whining, bursts of aggression, la-di-dah accents, generally fooling around to good effect; but it is not enough to feel that a dull text is being rendered intermittently bearable.
There is hardly a text at all to Barnum, but humbug is discussed from time to time and there are references to flim-flam and the like. They are for it on the whole, which is as well, as the whole show — not a word I like but the mot juste here — is humbug, with noise, colour and movement distracting you from the fact that there is not much there and that what there is is not much good. The story — impresario makes good, impresario makes better — is true, which makes for awkwardness. Barnum is married too early so that any romance is unacceptably adulterous, and his upright Julie-Andrews' type wife, having steered him momentarily into politics, dies near but before the circus finale. Still, this is a happy show and what with juggling and monocycles and strewners and lots of yellow and red curtains and amazing things like elephants' legs coming out of the roof, nobody minds. It is uncharacteristic as well as prescient when Barnum says that small is beautiful, or to be precise, 'Small is Yankee Doodle, If you are in the moodle.'. Pace is all. Bustle takes the place, of dance. A momentary lull for Jenny Lino (whom Barnum wished to call not The Swedish Nightingale but the Singing Swede, and that is one of the better jokes) to sing a dreadful song called 'Love Makes Such Fools of Us All' makes you realise why they do not pause often. There are two assumptions: the first is that if people are doing something which it is known they cannot do — actors juggling for example — it is all right for them to do it badly. The second is that five mediocre acts are better than one and ten are better than five. Michael Crawford's considerable comic talents are suited to the portrayal of embarrassment and ineptitude; there is none of that here, so we get charm and athleticism instead. Assumption one produces the only thrill of the evening when he walks a tight-rope and you wonder if he will fall off. The audience loved that and practically everything else, but for the highlight of the biggest hit musical in town to be an act for which the shoddiest circus could not spare time, is, well, humbug.
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