THE THEATRE

THE HERO AS SAINT

M. HENRI GnioN, whom Sir Barry Jackson has just " dis- covered," has been engaged for some years in helping to restore the Poetic Drama in France.

In his book of criticism, Nos Directions, published fully Steen years ago, he announced that the time was come for the

theatre to profit by the inspiration of " the new poetry,"

which may surely flourish in dramatic, as well as in lyrical, form, if its adepts care to turn their attention to the stage.

Industriously, religiously, M. Gheon set himself to the task of

contribution. A few years ago the. Vieux-Colombier gave his version of the life of St. Alexis—Le Pauvre sous rEscalier. I confess that I found it much too long, very monotonous, and rather dull. Now comes The Marvellous History of Saint Bernard at the Kingsway. This also is too long, a little mono- tonous, but on the whole—and thanks to the acting and the production—not dull.

I do not know whether M. Gheon intends to work through the whole of the Acta Sanctorum, in his efforts to adapt

mediaeval legend to modern use. If so, he may discover a fact, distressing to the dramatist, about the lives of the Saints ; which is that, with whatever differences of detail, they are almost all of them framed on the same model. St. Alexis, for example, in the play just mentioned, left his bride on his wedding day, to return as a beggar years later and live and die unknown to those who loved him. St. Bernard also received his call at the awkward moment of betrothal. It was the way with these holy, predestined mortals to win high places in Heaven by causing infinite inconvenience to their kinsmen on earth. (Modern seekers after sanctity—Tolstoi, for example—have the same home-upsetting sincerity.) And inevitably—so weak is mortal flesh within the walls of a theatre —much of the sympathy, won at first for the Saint in his struggle, is transferred to his imploring friends, as they stand uncomprehending, but so very comprehensible, in his way.

Another objection to the Hero as Saint is that he can, by definition, have very little real human character. He is but a marionette moved by supernatural strings. Here, at the Kingsway, in the pretty blue-backgrounded lunette, above the house of St. Bernard's parents, you see the manipulators of the strings—the Virgin, St. Nicholas, St. Gabriel—be- nignantly watching the obedient movements of their puppet., You know that spiritually the dice are loaded in St. Bernard's

favour. He must- win. Thus the miracle-playwright has to

renounce a fruitful source of suspense. Naturally, with these assistants overlooking him, -St. Bernard will easily defeat the pantomime demons who have strangled a pilgrim in an earlier scene. He succeeds, where the other failed, perhaps because, though he did not fear the demons, he believed in them ;

whereas the pilgrim, equally pious, was sceptical about them, and, besides, was not specially " chosen." It was part of divine injustice in those days to take one and reject the, other, and, generally, to forgive almost anything but unbelief.

All this sounds immoral, certainly.; but M. Gheon treats his theme with the disarming simplicity of a mediaevalism

only modernized by style. His style is conventional—never strung up to the height of such ardour as breathes in Paul Clawlel's masterpiece, V Annonce faite et Marie. And so, in hii-St. Bernard, we discern nothing of the great statesman who was to influence the counsels of all Europe—nothing, either, of 'the contemplative type who, in the Paradiso, titters that fainous prayer to the Virgin. We see only a hesitating youth, in need of constant nudging from above.

On those lines Mr. Robert Harris plays the part, with a gentle monotony. Always refined, never forcing a note, he has not yet the mastery to move us greatly in his long appeal for celestial guidance. Miss Gwen Frangcon-Davies has this power. Pale, " dainty thin," like the forlorn heroine of Rosetti's Staff and Scrip, she moves us indeed so much, as Bernard's betrothed, that she-adds to Our growing impatience With Bernard: And, amongst the iminortals, how lovely a picture of the Virgin is given by Miss Valerie Taylor—a picture not unworthy to rank in memory with that of Maria Carini in The Miracle years ago. Exquisite, too, is the incarnation of an old monk by Mr..H. 0. Nicholson. We love these three. St. Bernard we love less. But he would not have cared : his

thoughts were on " higher things." R. J.