The Theatre
[" MR. PICKWICK." ADAPTED BY COSMO HAMILTON AND F. C. REILLY. AT THE HAYDIARKET THEATRE.] WHAT a cast ! What a crowd ! Thirty-nine names on the programme. Which is as it should te.
The ardent Dickensian is with us. He raises his beaming face at this season. Being ardent, he is, by consequence, undiscriminating. He loves all Dickens. He loves everything about Christmas. It is not for him to select and prefer. He may by chance sit in the stalls or the gallery near a thin Dickensian, who may be heard echoing a highbrow remark ironically made (you remember) in Messrs. Dodson-and-Fogg's office by Mr. Samuel Weller—" wery nice notion of fun they has, sir." He may be next a party of those abominable heretics who declare that, for them, Dickens begins after Boz and after Pickwick ; that much of Pickwick is, to their sense, more remote, more antique, than anything in Roderick Random or Tom Jones ; that many of the fantastic marionettes in this amazing comic-picaresque medley are infinitely less clear to him than the very real types of Chaucer's Prologue. On and on goes the semi-Dickensian, arguing with Mr. Chesterton (suppose) and asserting that never, never was there such an England as this of the White Hart Inn and Dingley Dell and Goswell Street. There is only one thing to do with him. Pummel him. Treat him as Mr. Pickwick was unjustly treated by the cabman at the Inn ; as Mr. Stiggins was justly treated on a famous occasion by Mr. Weller, Senior ; as everybody was apt to be treated at short notice, by every- body else, in the Pickwickian world of swift retribution and subsequent reconciliation. A black eye, a handshake, and an adjournment " for brandy-and-water, to which (with copious unvitamincd viands) everybcdy will " do ample tice jus " .
So we get rid of the lean Dickensian, on his diet.
The entire, plump Dickensian we don't get rid of so easily.
He isn't, obviously, a dramatic critic; but, in the Pick- wickian sense, he is critical. I said that he wants the whole show, and just now I mentioned Mr. Stiggins. Where lies he ? What is this ? Where, save for a brief appearance, is Bob Sawyer ? Where are Sawyer and Stiggins Thirty- nine characters on the programme and no Leo Hunters, no Jinks, no Dismal Jemmy, no Stammer, no Shirk, no Fizkin ! (What names !)
The Dickensian's beaming face begins to redden—not on account of brandy and water. He clenches his fist. He is going to pummel Mr. Basil Dean and the adaptors ; until, being at heart a good fellow, as are almost all the Pick- wickians, except the " aforesaid " Stiggins, he looks again at the programme and reads " Characters and scenes in the Pickwick Papers." Just so, as the unboiled lobster said when they told him he'd be done to a turn. Some characters and scenes : not all. Very well, then, as the convict said, when he was told the rope had broken.
But there is still a trial before the entire Dickensian. He must, he really must, adapt himself to this multitudinous adaptation. He must be prepared to compromise. If every- body that he wants to see isn't - in the play, nobody that he sees in it may be precisely what he wants. As Pickwick, Mr. Charles Laughton (husky in voice on the night I over- heard him) treads delicately as a dancer, appears' anxious to minimize his own rotundity, can't altogether abolish recol- lection of the sinister creeping characters in which one has seen and admired him—persons, criminals, the very thought of whom would have made Pickwick and Dickens swoon as did Mrs. Barden and Miss Wardle. Yet he does wonderfully well—considering that (dreadful discovery !) Mr. Pickwick dramatized turns out to be not a part, not a person, but a phantom or a peg on which to hang episodic rags.
Of these, the only credible, loud, full-blooded one, relatively uninterrupted by stage business and clatter off and on—by screams; and swoons and gunshots and laughter—is still the trial scene, of which that excellent actor, Charles Dickens himself, knew how to make a magnificent " reading." Here Mr. Bruce Winston as Sergeant Buzfuz at last (Act III, Scene 2) really found something to get his teeth into. We heard him. We applauded him. He was tremendous. The other " bit of fat " was the slim Jingle—an excellent piece by Mr. George Curzon. But Jingle is active. Jingle does things. Jingle—dare we say ?—is more of a character than Mr. Pickwick, who only gives orders, and falls into pits (orwheelbarrows) of his own contriving. Let us go back to
(or_ book and find out (if we've forgotten) who Mr. Pickwick really was. Let us also for a moment regret that the buxom Mrs: •Barden' appears, in Miss Mary Clare's performance, as unduly Mephistophelian, with acute eyebrows drawn like Joey's in the pantomime.
The other sort of pantomime; for this, too, is something of the same kind. A merry, bustling yet delaying and snippety entertainment, well adapted for a season when we are obliged to revert to an imaginary past, because—come now, honestly—a modern, mechanical, motor-ridden Christmas would be intolerable, please admit. Back to the past with Pickwick and Peter Pan, and all the others who won't grow up. It is the season of gaudy annuals. Like them, this Haymarket Pickwick is very pretty to look at—thanks to the charming " six scenes in colour " by Mr. Hammond. Jolly, very jolly ; yet, for entire Dickensian, as also, I suppose, for ignorants of Dickens, a little vague..
I have alluded to the unfailing Christmassy prcducticns always to be found cropping up each December. With the Dickensian, I have asked where the missing ones are. Where, above all, is the surely immortal Dr. Doolittle ? The answer is that he appears this year, and this Saturday, at the Rudolf Steiner Theatre, Baker Street (matinees for children and won't-grow-ups).
An excellent idea of Miss Jean Sterling Mackinlay's. We must have our Doolittle. It's all very well for the aged to go on about Alice and Peter. There are younger ones who assert that Doolittle is the best of the lot.
RICHARD JENNINGS.
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