" Les Fausses Confidences." By Marivatnc.- 44 Baptiste." (St. James's Theatre.) "STYLISATION,"
of course. Unused to it, how can we pass judge- ment on it ? Thus the general reaction, accompanied by wonder and an amazed shaking of heads. But it is a false respect ; the playing of the Compagnie Madeleine Renaud-Jean-Louis Barrault on their opening night was, by their own high standards, little closer to uniform stylisation than the contents of a bran-tub. The true article, a dictated crispness, lucidity and grace, is something to be watched for and hymned. In the performance of Marivaux's Les Fausses Confidences it scarcely raised its head. We forgive the creases in the backcloth, the frayed edges of the canvas, as indis- pensable to French theatrical custom. But when uneven staging and a disunity of acting styles are combined with—not absence of mind, but absence of heart—one blinks, and one's faith falters.
Marivaux's feathery comedy of intrigue is played before a gaily impressionistic setting by Maurice Brianchon—once sugar-bright, now a trifle shabby. The only performance to match its desinvolture is Mme. Renaud's Araminte, an amused and witty creature whose sophistication, supple and mature, is excitingly spiced with ginger. M. Barrault, as Dubois, 'the scheming valet, is inventive, fairy- skipping, a dainty rogue in india-rubber-g-all of these : but presented in a -style so incongruously magnified, so explicit, so anxious to reflect and mimic each most transient cadence of his colleagues' lines, that the actor hardly spares a glance for anyone else on stage. This is expository comedy, with too many stops pulled out ; every shrug and oeuillade is, by a tell-tale fraction, too large for the situation it mirrors. Agreed, M. Barrault acts from head to toe. No half- shut aye, no vision bisected by an intervening hat can take him in. The trouble is that one rarely needs to listen • he does the work of explanation twice over. In the three years that haye passed since I last saw his Dubois, it has grown alerter and more animated, but infinitely less appealing.
Baptiste was a disappoinment. After the Edinburgh performance in 1948 I remember writing that' it was one of the most beautiful small things I had ever Witnessed. Now, in spite of Kosma's jigging soprano saxophones and Mayo's tastefully scrawled decor, the mime tale of a woebegone clown and an unyielding lady irks wretchedly strained and clumsy. Where, I mourned, was the milk-white wry Pierrot, whose sorry aspirations lent me so many tears ? Where the flashingly sure transitions from buffoonery to agony ? Where the reticence, the golden fastidiousness ? M. Barrault once wrote, and bravely: "There should be, deep in every actor, an element of the robot." Through technique and artifice, in fact, to nature—a salutary challenge to Stanislavsky. But if the robot takes charge, what heartlessness follows! I am hoping that M. Barrault's later, more relaxed performances will prove me wrong. KENNETH TYNAN.
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