Contemporary Arts
Sneezing Assassin
MISALLIANCE. By Bernard Shaw. (Lyric, Hammersmith.)—RING FOR CATTY. By Patrick Cargill and Jack Beale. (Lyric, Shaftesbury Avenue.) Jr is rather sad how frequently excellent acting and more than adequate direction fail to make anything of a revival. Misalliance would hardly have been the Shaw play I should have chosen myself to mark the centenary of its author's birth, but I had never seen it and was prepared to enjoy it. Instead of which the first half sub- jected me to a tedium that was almost intoler- able. Why was this? Why did not I get on with this Shavian Cocktail Party? I suspect that it was because nothing happens. Moreover, the play lacks that element of imagination which lifts Heartbreak House out of the usual run of the drama of ideas. In Misalliance the talk and the clash of ideas are not sufficiently serious to be interesting, and there is nothing else. In the second half things do begin to happen, the comic assassin is funny and pathetic, the Polish female acrobat is merely funny, but again the humour is a little bit thin. There is nothing to equal the tea party in Pygmalion. Alas for H. M. Tennent's and their good intentions •
Alas also for Donald Pleasence who wastes a really magnificent performance on this play. His sneezing assassin exists in another dimen- sion from the rest of the characters. He is more real, standing out of the play like a carving out of a flat painted wall. This, after all, is a study in the classic humiliation of the nineteenth century, the small clerk or shop- assistant whom H. G. Wells portrayed with such understanding. Mr. Pleasance is a very
good actor. His every word tells, and he knows how to use his face. Not that the rest of the cast were behindhand. Roger Livesey and Ursula Jeans were good, but unequal as John and Mrs. Tarleton, Miss Jeans managed to get a North Country kindliness into her way of speaking, which made her appear a really pleasant person. It is not so easy to appear a really pleasant person on the stage. Mr. Livesey displayed a certain amount of Yorkshire in his behaviour, but did not exactly look like a successful manufacturer, He was too intellec- tual by half. I fancy John Tarleton's efforts at culture should be a great deal more blunder- ing. Still, his performance had a lot of vitality and in the scene with the assassin he was ex- cellent. On the night I saw the play the part of Hypatia was played by Anna Fulker, who took the opportunity given her by Ann Wal- ford's indisposition very well indeed. The pro- duction went smoothly and with pace, the set was good. What more could you want? Arms and the Man, perhaps?
The new play at the West End Lyric is about a TB sanatorium. The patients go through the evolutions of what is essentially a desert island theme, the melodrama is laid on hot and strong; tears are jerked. With good perform- ances all round (especially from Patrick McGoohan) and slick direction, this rather tawdry play, using all the lowest tricks of the trade and appealing to the most banal senti- mentality, kept me in my seat till the end. I wanted to see what happened. I was furious.
ANTHONY HARTLEY
Previous page
