EDINBURGH FESTIVAL
THEATRE
" WHAT," asked an earnest South Briton as we were emerging from the new Bridie, is the message of this play ? " It was odd to hear this critical question from English lips and in the midst of a Scottish audience which had been so obviously revelling in this flow of soul rather than feast of reason. But the remark, I think, discovered the essential difference in the way this play has been received by two different kinds of mind. " We are arguing in circles," says one of the characters in The Queen's Comedy. "It's the only way to argue," is the reply she receives from her lover. Well, some of us agree with that, others do not. To us in Ireland and Scotland an argument that reaches a conclusion has failed. Others of you prefer an end to all things—even argument. The Queen's Comedy is a witty tragedy upon war, the atom bomb, upon the agony of helpless but seldom hopeless humanity at odds with itself, but pathetically not always at odds with the gods, and upon the gods themselves, heartless, eternal and superb, looking down upon the distresses and the dreams of mortals with an idle near- indifference. It concerns the Trojan war ; and the scenes are placed " in Heaven, on the Earth and under the Sea." The plot is about the change of fortunes that occurred in the Trojan war as a result of Heavenly intrigue. We are shown the bickering machinating gods, the helplessly struggling human beings who are their playthings, and in the end hear Jupiter's benignly mannered but profoundly heartless account of how, through a childish whim of his, the whole cosmic mess came about. We emerge into the. floodlit Edinburgh night end, observing the posters about the Korean war, seek what comfort we can from his assurance that there is an infinity of time to make things a little less intolerable, a little less ineluctably unreasonable. He may have another shot at making the world again.
Though the gods speak in the manner of modern ladies and gentlemen, they are presented in the formal classical style. The Greek forces, however, are a unit of the British Army ; the officers are all of the officer class, and the soldiery come from the poorer quarters of Glasgow. The author intends thus forcibly to remind us that the problems of the Greeks and the Trojans and the gods are as old as humanity, and will last as long as humanity lasts.
The strength of the play lies not so much in its argument (which, despite its occasional brilliance, sufferi, from occasional longeurs), but in the wealth of its words, the intoxication of its eloquence. It is one of Bridie's greatest gifts to have preserved a schoolboy's gusto in words, and to have enriched that gusto with the luxuriance of his maturity. This play shows that gift at its most abundant. Whether or not we rate the argument as highly, The Queen's Comedy, in its glorious profusion of reasonable and exciting words, is Bridie's Man and Superman.
The weakness of the play lies in the moving speech of the denownent, finely delivered by Mr. Walter Fitzgerald. In this speech Bridie calmly changes Mr. Fitzgerald's role from that of the wholly credible mythological Jupiter to that of a fortunately incre- dible Calvinist Almighty of Mr. Bridle's imagination. There are not many good things about 1950, but one of them is that there are very few Christians left believing in this kind of God. Apart from a very few members of obscure sects, all Christians now, and for the most part of the duration of their faith, have ascribed to their God along with infinite justice, infinite compassion and pity. It really will not do to pretend that you can put forward God' as Jupiter just a little older. But this is really only one of those naughtinesses which, though they may infuriate the non-Bridieites, arc taken by those of us who admire him with a laugh if they do not touch upon one of our foibles or with an impatient shrug if they do. God happens to be one of my foibles. Amongst the actors, Mr. Fitzgerald's noble voice has already been mentioned. Miss Sonia Dresdel, with her partly repellent, partly attractive, partly feline and partly disjointed grace, presented an unusual Juno. Messrs. Eric Woodburn and Roddy MacMillan as the two Glasgow soldiers at the walls of Troy add to their natural and remarkable type-acting gift the touch of a true and studied art. Miss Dorothy Primrose, the hospital nurse, moved me deeply. The god Vulcan put on a lifelike and brilliant imitation of Mr. Duncan Macrae. Mr. Lauwnce Hardy, as always, orna- mented everything-.he touched.
The prime merit of Mr. Tyrone Guthrie's production was the excellence of the rhythm and pattern he provided for eye and ear.
MORAY MCLAREN.
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