CONTEMPORARY ARTS
EDINBURGH FESTIVAL
Hamlet. (Assembly Hall, Edinburgh.)
FEW people know that under the somewhat complicated financial arrangements of the Arts Council the Old Vic Company may be said to have a responsibility towards Scotland as well as to England. Its visits to the Edinburgh Festival enable it to fulfil a duty besides reminding us of the natural authority and splendour of the English actor in what are his own national masterpieces before they became the common English speaking heritage. The Hamlet which I have just seen in the Assembly Hall is worthy of the great English tradition that there is nothing eccentric in the interpretation of the play. Broadly it is presented as a national theatre ought to present classics and stands there clearly for all to see in its magnificence.
The comments that I am about to make must be read as coming from a seat in the east gallery of the Assembly Hall in Edinburgh, an auditorium of which I have personal experience and know many of the _difficulties. For those who have never been there, perhaps I may explain that its true function is to house the secular deliberations of the Church of Scotland and that the audience sit round three sides of the oblong platform placed above the " well " of the court. So, when I say that speech was very often inaudible and players masked, I am quite ready to hear someone placed elsewhere say that I exaggerate.. Nevertheless inaudibility and masking were common, and, in my opinion, sometimes unnecessary. I do not feel that there is much sense in putting on Shakespeare at the Assembly Hall unless the production is for the Assembly Hall and not with one eye on the return to Waterloo Road. Shakespeare without hearing all the words is just as futile as listening to an orchestra from behind a door that is sometimes open and sometimes shut. For instance, Miss Fay Compton, who came close to my ideal of Gertrude, suddenly turned her back upon me and whispered, " There is a willow grows aslant a brook," in so low a voice that I scarcely got a syllable. Polonius, played by Mr. Michael Hordern, marred an excellent characterisa- tion by throwing away the end of lines in a way that would be heard in a proscenium theatre or may have been in the front row of the Assembly Hall but greatly disappointed the occupant of east gallery D.16. Also on this stage there may be plenty of excuse for masking when twenty characters are present. There is none when there are only two, yet Miss Claire Bloom was hidden from me continuously in one duologue with Polonius. I feel that Mr. Bentall produced from the front, and did not get round enough or test the audibility of his actors sufficiently. With the exception of Mr. Laurence Hardy, one of the finest Kings I have ever seen, the Old Vic had not mastered the art of speaking in this Hall. But when one man can achieve this diction and resonance, others can.
Now, leaving these grumbles on one side, I must quickly add that Mr. Bentall did achieve most splendid and sinister effects in the pin- ning of Hamlet after the murder of Polonius, and in the slow threatening advance of Claudius and his henchmen down the stage in the succeeding scene. The duel scene was most thrillingly man- aged, as indeed was the play within the play. Let it not be thought that one is ungrateful for such direction. There were, indeed, here and there inventions of a novel kind, some of which seemed happy, others less so. For instance, Hamlet's back towards the ghost he has come to lay struck me as artificial, but the business with the King's sword (which Hamlet takes up at the " now might I do it pat " speech) succeeded with me. Mr. Richard Burton's Hamlet is worthy to be discussed with reference to the best Hamlet of our time, which is a compliment. He looks a young Hamlet and seemed best whenever the play allows expression of a certain boyish poignancy. He is capable of sudden darts of excitement and of all the range of satire (most amusingly played with Polonius) to the manly tenderness required for his scenes with Horatio (William Squire, who expressed all the warmth and sanity of that immortal friend). But he seemed to me either not to present a large enough voice, or not to have completely gauged on the first night the acoustics of the place. The vocal force adequate for a proscenium theatre will not do here. Miss Claire Bloom, who so moved me as Juliet in this very place a year ago, failed to reach me with equal certainty as Ophelia. It was, I thought, in some respects a technical performance, in which she had to work too hard. The athletic Shakespeare we are so accustomed to today does time and again destroy the poetry. Does all this seem grudging ? Yes, I fear so. Then let me say in conclusion, would that we could see Shakespeare of this kind more
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