The Theatre
" The Soldier and the Gentlewoman." Adapted from the novel by Hilda Vaughan by Dorothy Massingham and Laurier Lister. At the Vaudeville Theatre.
Fr is an axiom of a not negligible body of contemporary criticism, and on this occasion the assumption has not lacked support, that it is impossible to construct an artistically successful play from a novel of equal merit. Mr. Joseph Wood Krutch, the American critic, recently presented the case in an extreme form.- " A novel," he remarked, and his judgement provoked a warm glow of accordant repetition, " is no more reproducible in drama than a painting is reproducible in stone." The objection resides in the word, reproducible. Where the material remains the same, there can be no two ways of producing from it precisely the same effect. But the fact that one effect has been achieved by one method of arranging material dOes not preclude the possibility that another method may create an effect of equal intensity though dis- similar in the form it takes. Every art has its own cur- rency, its own system of presenting emotion, its devices by which character is projected and circumstances explained. It is the function of the adaptor, working in the second medium, to employ those devices which will, though the method of communication be varied,' produce an effect corresponding to, though not identical with, that achieved by the original. And in this Miss Massingham and Mr. Lister have without doubt succeeded.
Gwenllian Einon-Thomas is possessed by possession itself. Disinherited from the place in which she has spent her life by a will appointing a male heir, she maintains her hold on Dias Einon by marrying her cousin to whom it has been left. Dick, the cousin in question, an insignificant, charac- terless little man, whose delight at receiving a legacy which provides- him with a convenient bolt-hole from the alarums of urban life is tempered with a mild, uninquisitive remorse at dispossessing his cousins, is brought -with swift dispatch to the necessary proposal, whose accomplishment hardly anticipates The regrets it brings him. The pleasures of rural life, with a wife -whose feverish conservatism extends to demanding the status quo of the drawing room furniture, Drove less real than he had expected. For Gwenllian, once -her position is secure, discards the tolerance she has shown for a convenient instrument in favour of a scheming hatred for the obstacle to be removed. She is endowed with the hard, speculative malice of one of the greater cats. Though she can manage the servants, she can also dragoon her husband. Dick has acquired, too literally, a mistress of his house. There is a hideous irony in Miss Vaughan's title.
The birth of a son is his death warrant. What Gwenllian cannot share with the husband she detests, she may• with a son whose age will prevent any opposition to her choice. When Dick's_ illness supervenes on her resolution, she is ready to take the final, premeditated step in a manner as brutal as it is undetectable. Suspicion is possible ; but murder, we may be assured, in this case will not out.
Technically, the play reaches a high level of accomplish- ment. The background, as much by implication as directly, is skilfully established, with only the relevant intrusion into the affairs of the people it shadows ; the characters are economically drawn, though one of them is otiose ; there is action and to spare ; there is no surfeit of explanations. We may feel Dick's marriage, the , first irresponsible and arbitrary pebble that sets the avalanche in motion, a little difficult to believe in : once it is accepted, the sequel is inevitable ; desolation is spread in the most natural way in the world. Not a thesis but a theme is presented.
The acting was excellent. Praise must be given to Miss Grizelda Hervey for a brief but perceptive portrait, whose significance was not in proportion to its size ; to Miss Diana Morgan for the lively realism of her sketch of a prodigiously eloquent parlour-maid ; to Mr. Eric Maturin for a perform- ance rich in plausible malice. Mr. Frederick Leister and Mr. Brember Wills impersonated with effect a country doctor and a gardener (the latter the only dramatist's puppet of the piece), though their accents recalled Belfast rather than Carmarthen. Mr. Maurice Evans was excellent as the little, feeble man whom chance makes the victim of a tradition turned to acid. Miss Dix, in a performance of considerable virtuosity, suggested all the robust horrors that lurked in Gwenllian's brain. Mr. Guthrie's meticulously bleak pro- duction was impeccable. DEREK VERSCROYLE.
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