Perennial Problem
CYMBELINE. (Old Vic.) THERE is a perennial problem about minor Elizabethan plays—whether to produce them with a completely straight face, let the grotesque strands of plot and counter-plot weave themselves into heavy melodramatic folds hoping that the occasional gleams of cloth of gold will shine in a pleasant pattern; or whether to let lightness of touch, romance, even caricature bear the audience to the triumphant conclusion in the manner of The Gondoliers. Cymbeline presents this dilemma in an acute form, for the plot, a pallid union of Othello and The Winter's Tale, demands a whole act of confrontation and confession to sort itself out and it is not surprising that the play has been left in mothballs for so long. Michael Benthall at the Old Vic has tried rightly to steer a middle course in his revival, but the effort has left him and his actors in two minds—Barbara Jcfford as Imogen and Leon Gluckman as Leonatus act well enough in the tragic style. Derek Godfrey, on the other hand, plays a deliciously light-hearted and light-fingered lachimo with some of the flash- ing eye and sideways smile of the pantomime villain. The dangers of either approach carried to extremes are to be seen in Joan Sanderson's Queen, who is straight out of 'Snow White,' and John Humphrey's Cloten, who is an irritating pansy.
Audrey Cruddas's set has the right pre- historic anonymity but the costumes arc shabby and discordant.
V. w.
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