STAGE AND SCREEN The Theatre
"Antony and Cleopatra." By W. Shakespeare. At the New Tins production of a tragedy not often seen in London Survived only four performances; and I am afraid it deserved most of the harsh things which have been said about' it. Why was this ? There was nothing wrong with the play, nothing wrong with the supporting players, nothing wrong (for once) with the public, who aspire to the New Theatre as resolutely as buck aspire to a salt-lick. The leading actress, it is true, had appeared in this country only once before, and then in polite comedy ; but it was a triumphantly successful appearance, and her Cleopatra was eagerly awaited.
She flopped. Any distinguished actress may do so on occasion; but the play, or, at worst, her reading of the part, is usually the scapegoat for her failure. This was not so with Miss Leontovich. She was told, not merely that she could not speak verse, but that she could not speak intelligible English ; she was told that the other players did very well, and she was told (by implication) that she had involved them in the various professional inconveniences of a disastrous failure.
The critics who told her these things all spoke the truth. Although unusually proficient at following broken English, I could only follow Miss Leontovich's at a distance ; so that while I was construing, the words lost their emotional impact. Not that they would have had very much, in any case ; badly cast, badly dressed, badly produced, altogether badly at sea, this Cleopatra was doomed from the first.
But she need not, she ought not, to have been doomed. She is an actress of proved accomplishment within a certain range. But as Cleopatra she was incomprehensible, she lacked authority, and she looked a guy. That, I submit, was not entirely her fault, and she has suffered unduly for it. In the programme we are told that "The production is devised and directed and the scenery and costumes designed by Kornisarjevsky." Well, take the scenery and costumes.
The not ineffective setting suggests a station on the new Moscow underground railway ; and it is not ineffective only if the acting is good enough to keep it in the background. This is not so here. From the outset the mechanics of the action arouse a fearful curiosity. Cleopatra at her first entrance negotiates a steep flight of steps with obvious difficulty ; for, though her abdomen is bounteously displayed, her skirts are not so much voluminous as encyclopaedic. (Her costume for the next scene is nearer Noel than the Nile.) At the opposite end of the play Antony's corpse is removed by half a dozen female art students whose ability or otherwise to perform their melancholy task gives rise, among the audience, to eager but distracting speculation.
The time seems all too soon when Cleopatra's next dress is awaited as eagerly as Mr. Chaplin's next film. Will it be— can it be—funnier than the last ? It almost always, as it happens, can ; and the penultimate climax comes when the two immortal lovers suggest—both heavily helmeted, both in gold and Eton blue—Mr. Hulbert and Miss Courtneidge buffooning some Utopian tire-brigade. Over the ultimate climax let us draw a shroud.
Now these things could have been prevented. So could the gaucheness and uncertainty of Cleopatra's favourite stance. So (with due training) her exotic cadences. So, above all, could the faults in the clothing of her fellow-players. The conflict in this tragedy is between war and peace without honour. Antony must be a soldier, and an obvious soldier at that, all Sam Brownes and sunburn ; his cuirass must seem incongruous on a couch. Mr. Donald Wolfit gave an honest performance in the part, with just the right hint in it of clumsy, conscience-stricken degeneration ; but his clothes were of the ballet, not the battlefield. Mr. Ellis Irving was effective throughout ; and Mr. Leon Quatermaine added a certain philosophy to the obvious charms of Enolarbus. Mr. Komisarjevsky, when all is said and done, was the villain of a piece of which he should have been—even though unavailingly—the hero. A great producer is one who, given a great play, ensures that his players are, is nearly as possible, adequate in their parts before he obtrudes idiosyn-
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