THE THEATRE
" The Old Man of the Mountains." At the Mercury. " The Thunderbolt." At the Arts.—" Exiles." At the Torch. " Big Boy." At the Saville.
MR. MARTIN BROWNE and the Pilgrim Players who are presenting a series of " New Plays by Poets " at the Mercury Theatre are to be congratulated on their hazardous enterprise. By no means all poets are potential dramatists, but they are more likely to be so than are novelists, whose failure in the theatre is notorious. But the literary sense is quite distinct from the dramatic sense and many fine poets as well as fine novelists have lacked the dramatic gift—just as many fine composers (Brahms, Bruckner, Vaughan Williams, for example) have not succeeded in opera. On the other hand most highly gifted poets have possessed a strong dramatic sense. Since the outstanding Elizabethans there are the examples of Wordsworth, Shelley, Brown- ing, Beddoes and Tennyson—all of whom made striking essays in the dramatic form, most of which have not yet had their due measure of performance. For it is certain that Shelley's Cenci ; Browning's Blot in the 'Scutcheon, Strafford ; Tennyson's Harold, and Beddoe's Death's Vest Book are still more alive than dozens of plays that have been successful in the theatre annually during the past fifty years but whose very names are now totally forgotten.
It is accordingly very interesting to compare Pinero's revived thea- trical piece, The Thunderbolt, with Mr. Norman Nicholson's The Old Man of the Mountains. Both plays share the fatal defect of being out-moded ; Mr. Nicholson's more obviously, perhaps, than Pinero's, since he has chosen to re-write an Old Testament story (the story of Elijah and Ahab) in terms of the Cumberland dales, making use of the supernatural and a miracle without succeeding in making us sus- pend our flat disbelief, whereas Pinero's story of the destroyed will and the rapacity of a dead man's brothers is still quite credible, although the conventionality of its emotional handling and its intel- lectual stuffiness and silliness combine to make it intolerably boring. Mr. Nicholson's poetry is occasionally exciting—as in the opening speech of the Raven (beautifully spoken by Martin Browne) but in general he does not offer us new wine in old bottles but merely a number of empty old bottles, and not all Mr. Robert Speaight's sonorous dexterity in dealing with them can-make them interesting. Whether a better production of The Thunderbolt could have made it more enjoyable is hard to say, but I thought Mr. Roy Malcolm as the only likeable brother and Miss Dorothy Reynolds as his wife both over-acted to a degree that toppled the play (wet into farce. Perhaps the producer was right, but then he should have been bolder and made a straight bid for farce from the beginning. The result would have been much more amusing.
James Joyce's Exiles is, as might have been expected, a remarkable play and it is brilliantly acted. Miss Hermione Hannen, who gave a delightful performance as Bertha, is a discovery and she was ex- ceedingly well supported by the rest of the cast. Big Boy, the new musical play at the Saville, would be quite worthless without the comedians Fred Emney and Richard Hearne, but they are both so brilliant that I can heartily recommend this show as one of the most amusing entertainments I have ever seen.
JAMES REDFERN.
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