THE MULBERRY BUSH. By Angus Wilson. (Seeker and Warburg, 10s.
6d.) THE MULBERRY BUSH. By Angus Wilson. (Seeker and Warburg, 10s. 6d.)
READING Angus Wilson's play makes it easier to understand why it had so mixed a reception when the Bristol Old Vic put it on last year. Some critics were delighted with its freshness and freedom from theatrical cobwebs; others disliked it, for the same reasons. Its uncon- ventional merits and conventional failings stand out clearly from the written page. The intelligence and shrewdness of Mr. Wilson's appraisal of his horrid group of people is in- disputable; but the author does not make it sufficiently clear for ordinary theatrical pur- poses whether he means them to be horrid. In his determination to avoid wearisome blacks and whites, he allows each character to rationalise his or her unscrupulousness, pride, weariness, or silliness. Each commands respect, if not sympathy; and it would need a very highly skilled producer and a more than competent cast to bring out all the nuances sufficiently to content audiences. Even Shaw, after all, was careful to introduce sufficient caricature into his characters to leave his audiences in no doubt whether to laugh at them or hate them. Mr. Wilson plays so fair by his that it is hard to be sure, say, whether to congratulate Ann Padley on her escape from marriage with an alcoholic, or to commiserate with her on her engagement to an ambitious prig. The characters' rudeness to each other, too, is not always in character. Still, it is the sort of play that ought to be coming on every other week in London: and it is good to hear that it will soon be seen at the Royal Court
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