CONTEMPORARY ARTS
THEATRE “ Twelfth Night." By William Shakespeare. (Old Vic.) SHAKESPEARE'S fools are ignes fatui in pursuit of which even the most experienced producer is liable to go off at something of a tangent. Last time the Old Vic did Twelfth Night Mr. Alec Guinness, who produced, puzzled many and pleased few by making Feste a sort of wistfully melodious fakir, bearing on his shoulders, not merely all the melancholy which forms an undercurrent in this comedy, but pretty Well all the sorrows of the world as well. Now Mr. Hugh Hunt, ingeniously but legitimately re-interpreting Feste's status, has unwittingly introduced (or so it seems to me) an element of inconsistency into the rest of his production. Mr. Hunt sees the fool as an ageing entertainer in faded motley who, like the protagonist of a Night Starvation advertisement, is losing his grip and knows it • and he develops this idea very skilfully by making Fabian not the usual rather pointless bucolic understrapper, but a spruce and lively candidate for Feste's cap and bells. The play Is thereby enriched. But if you go to all this trouble to make the clown seem real you must, surely, do as much for his associates, and this is where Mr. Hunt is inconsistent. He treats Sir Toby and Sir Andrew— and indeed Malvolio—in much the same way that Mr. John Burrell treated the minor characters in his admirable Taming of the Shrew a few years ago—as if, that is, they were tremendously unfunny people who had at all costs to be made risible with the minimum of help from Shakespeare. This seems to me wrong. I greatly enjoy seeing Mr. Roger Livesey tumbling off ladders and Mr. Robert Eddison falling over for no particular reason, for they do this sort of thing with immense skill and gusto ; but I would enjoy even more seeing my old friends Belch and Aguecheek, who, though they behaved extravagantly when drunk, were at other times no more vulnerable to the laws of gravity, and not very much more disrespectful of the conventions, than ordinary members of society. Sir Andrew is a man in whom the mere act of drawing his sword ought to strike us as funny ; it should not be necessary to make the sword stick in its scabbard in order to raise a laugh. In the same way Malvolio's yellow stockings ought to be an isolated, significant aberration from a subfusc norm (like brown boots or a fancy waistcoat) ; there is no need to bring him on bedizened like one of the Ugly Sisters on her way to the ball. But if, in Olivia's household, there is too much straining after effect below stairs, the conduct of high life in Elyria leaves little to be desired. Miss Peggy Ashcroft's Viola is exquisite, and rightly misses none of the opportunities for side-stepping from romance into high comedy. Miss Ursula Jeans is an attractive Olivia, Mr. Alec Clunes an assured, well-spoken Orsino and Mr. William Devlin does his author proud in the small part of Antonio. So, taken all in all, the production worthily celebrates the company's return to its refurbished base in the Waterloo Road : though I feel I must record my distaste for the hey-nonny, ye-olde revels with which the natives of Illyria sought, all too frequently, to enliven the rather sombre seaside resort designed for them by Mr. Roger Furse.
PETER FLEMING.
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