Theatre
Between Two Schools
By BAMBER GASCOIGNE Platonov. (Royal Court.) —The Playboy of the Western World. (Pic- cadilly.—Mary Stuart. (Old Vic.) 11 has been a week on the big dipper—plunging below the surface of farce into tragedy and then jerking back up again with one's nerves jangling and the tension crying out to be punc- tured on the next peak of laughter. This combina- tionof the ridiculous and the serious was one , Synge's main aims in The Playboy, but I'm Ill, °re doubtful how far Chekhov intended it in His earliest known play, Platonov. , As presented by the Royal Court, this play bout a weak-willed Casanova amongst the already crumbling cherry orchards ends up as a. farcical satire on the contemporary cult of melodrama—with the powers of a future great dramatist already peeping through at unexpected .41°1/tents. This is the way we like our geniuses io bud, and after seeing Rex Harrison interrupt itlelodrunatic death with the surprised ques- ,1°11 'Can it be?' we were able to leave the theatre contented. From the debris of the old conventions the new dramatist would emerge. 'flYone could detect the genius—in retrospect. The question is, did Chekhov find it all as funny as we did? I think not. I'm unable to judge Russian the full text, which is only published in ussiao but David Magarshack (in Chekhov the 0romatist) writes of the death scene : 'Platonov's wn last words are purposely couched in a minor leY to heighten the tragic situation.' If this is so, Chekhov's thoughts were clearly not on satire. t IQ then neither, to do them justice, were those the directors of this production, George Devine and John Blatchley. They glossed over zt last-minute rescue from under the wheels of the inevitable Russian train and the prevention ol a murder by a highly coincidental entrance, of which could have been hilarious had 7ey Wanted it that way. No, the melodrama was clearly Chekhov's own. The directors merely had to it funny where they couldn't avoid its ue_ lag ridiculous, and then hope that the genui neLY good moments would survive. There ere enough of these to make the evening enjoy- le, and there was always the academic pleasure "4 source-spotting. But it's not worth pretending that the play should ever have been performed if it hadn't been by Chekhov.
Platonov himself is in many ways a Jimmy Porter of the 1880s. He treats women abomin- ably and they find him irresistible. He castigates everyone else's immoral uselessness and then does nothing with his own considerable talents except seduce women. He is loathsome and charming and irresponsible and full of regrets. Rex Har- rison's charm is his legend and he makes full use of it. He also plays this impulsive character with a deceptively easy naturalness.
The Playboy of the Western World is really about blarney. Synge's plays are full of the greatest blarney in the world and his lovers fall not for each other's eyes but for their fine talk. 'Any girl would walk her heart out before she'd meet a young man was your like for eloquence,' says Pegeen Mike admiringly to the playboy. But Synge knew that blarney has its dangers. Fine words can gloss over foul deeds. When Christy Mahon does on the spot what he has been so much admired for doing far away—kill his old dad with. a loy—the villagers are appalled. 'There's a great gap between a gallous story and a dirty deed,' says Pegeen. The atmosphere cracks into horror, only to be rescued again for farce when the old man crawls in once more, bruised even worse than before but still very much alive, and is confronted by Christy with, 'Are you coming to be killed a third time, or what ails you now?' The pie of life is tragedy with a thin crust of farce. The Playboy of the Western World heads an Irish tradition that comes down through O'Casey to Brendan Behan.
Synge never makes it quite clear why the vil- lagers admire so much the particularly unroman- tic murder that Christy Mahon lays claim to. He had been told the story as a true one, which perhaps explains his carelessness in making it seem likely. But once this difficulty is over, early in the first act, the play—and this excellent pro- duction of it—soars away on wide wings of words. Donal Donelly, a superb Christy Mahon, almost talks himself into a personal 'act of levitation.. With his sharp features and great beak of a mouth he preens himself in the new admiration of the girls like a rare bird in its spring plumage.
Even so, it is Siobhan McKenna's evening. Fierce and yet genuinely tender, her Pegeen Mike dominates the theatre with a huge raw voice that never becomes rough. She is truly what Christy &Scribes her as, with 'torment in the splendour of her like, and she a girl any moon of midnight would take pride to meet, facing southwards on the heaths of Keel.'
England's two most famous monarchs have been difficult old ladies. Schiller exaggerated the foibles of the first and made his Queen Elizabeth an impossible creature of contradictions—a bullet-headed politician with a heart of jelly. She snivels behind her handkerchief and plots be- hind everyone's back; she will believe anything from false Leicester and nothing from anyone else. In the Old Vic revival of Mary Stuart, Valerie Taylor, using the sharp, deep bark of a drill instructor, makes the virgin queen magni- ficent rather than convincing. When she finally meets the Queen of Scots it's like a clash between Mr. Punch's Judy and a heroine from Tennessee Williams. Gwen Watford, playing Mary with admirable simplicity, is very moving in her attempted humility, her fury at Elizabeth's lack of response, and her final peaceful acceptance of her fate.
Schiller's verse makes the mistake of falling between two schools—it has neither the profusion of Shakespeare's imagery nor the formal passion of Racine. It is intellectual without being par- ticularly tight or bright. Stephen Spender's trans- lation inevitably shares these defects.
Previous page
