ARTS & AMUSEMENTS
Arcibravo!
By HILARY SPURLING Love for Love. (Old Vic.)—Something Nasty in the Woodshed. (Theatre Royal, Stratford, E.) —Maigret and the Lady (Strand.)—Shelley. (Royal Court.) Rumor shows us as we Are' Congreve in- sisted, and thought it peculiar to the
English, probably something to do with their feeding so much on flesh. 'Affectation is gener- ally Mistaken for Humor' was another of his maxims, which Peter Wood has taken to heart. Mr. Wood, ,director of the National Theatre's Love for Love, has wiped his hands clean of the heavy froth of Restoration style. His actors speak and move as naturally as modern men; and inevitably cross voices have been heard inquiring where is the true Congreve, the light, fantastic persifleur? Why are we not in a continuous ripple of laughter throughout? But this is to confuse comedy with farce. Comedy raises more questions than it answers, and this production restores to Congreve the sense of asking them.
John Stride's Valentine is pasty-faced from long confinement, blue-jowled, wears a frowsy wig and dabs scent on his armpits without taking off his shirt. So much for. Lamb's 'dreamwhile or so' in a Utopia of gallantry. But Mr. Wood's method is only an extension of Congreve's own impressionistic use of realistic detail. Remember, the country cousin, in The Old Bachelor, who suddenly produced 'two apples, piping hot, out of her under-petticoat pocket.' Valentine is not one of your Benedicks; he has few passages of wit with his lady, confronts her seldom and then only to ask her to leave off play-acting and, 'hypocrisy apart,' confess her love for him. When the play begins he has already reached the seedy last stages of bachelordom. He has run through his fortune, discarded his mistresses and made up his mind for Angelica. The only uncertainty lies in whether or not she will have him, and this he wants settled without preamble.
If he had his way, we should have no comedy. 'Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing, and the over- taking and possessing of a wish, discovers the folly of the chase. Angelica's view is common to all Congreve's sophisticates. Only the simple- tons—Ben and Miss Prue—miss the point, that `courtship to marriage, is as a very witty pro- logue to a very dull play.' Ben and Miss Prue plunge straight for their goals and get nowhere. Angelica moves towards Valentine crabwise, scuttling back from the brink, teasing, lying, double-crossing—and not just for the hell of it since she finally arrives at a firm basis of mutual confidence (and an equally firm financial arrange- ment).
Uncertainty is important to Tattle for a dif- ferent reason. He has no real wish to arrive. 'I shall never be locked in a bedchamber again, never be locked in a closet, nor run behind a screen or under a table,' cries Olivier, and it is a vision of hell. Olivier's Tattle is Peter Pan in a Restoration setting, an ageing child without innocence who wants to play his worldly games for ever. When Tattle and Frail stretch out their hands for glittering prizes, they spare no thought for the consequences. Their end is horrible.
This production makes no bones, indeed licks its lips, over the melancholy not to say savage undertones of Congreve's comedy. Lila de Nobili has a single composite set for Acts 2 and 5, a street scene with park railings on the right, Foresight's house on the left, and a garden wall spanning the stage between. Worn stone, faded red brick and the green tinge of moss sug- gest damp evening air and autumn leaves choking the gutter. This is the setting for the first love- scene between Angelica and Valentine, which ends unresolved. Angelica (Geraldine McEwan), white- faced, fragile, obstinate, moves away to a bench at the back and Valentine slips off into the shadows. There is a strong sense of waiting for the next move to be made.
Suddenly a lurching figure appears in the mouth of the lane by the park, short, stout, top- heavy, weighed down by a lumpy kitbag and an incongruous, feather-light birdcage. At first glance he seems a dwarf, but this is because his trousers were built for a giant, snipped off raggedly below the crotch but still hanging ludi- crously loose and wide around his knees. This is Colin Blakeley's Ben. In an instant the stage bristles with relatives welcoming the sailor home from the sea. Stillness gives way to agitation as Ben boards the ladies one by one, greeting each with earnest, attentive, infectiously ad- miring salutations. There is a distracting whirl of coat-tails as Tattle, capsized by Ben's hand- shake, staggers to his feet, aggrieved, agile as an old cat, twirls round twice and saves himself at the other side of the stage. Meanwhile an- other figure has stationed itself at the mouth of the lane, a grotesque, expressionless, un- explained. Chinee. This figure reappears through- out, speechless, anonymous, apparently a servant of Sir Simpson's—perhaps on a hint from Hazlitt, who found this gentleman's characterisation 'in a vein truly oriental?' If so, it was an effective hint.
This is one passage taken at random from a magnificently orchestrated whole, a production to move about in and scarcely to be taken in at one visit. It has sculptural effects and cherry- stone carvings—the Foresight of Miles Malleson, whose mass of chins become the outward and visible sign of the vulnerable, wobbly inner man; Lynn Redgrave's Miss Prue, the last and most perfect of her studies in lumpishness; Robert Lang's unforgettable Scandal, the third pillar of the play. Perhaps Mr. Lang's finest moment is when the plot begins to dawn: 'Tattle and Frail leagued for eternity.' Light seems to irradiate Scandal's bleak, bony face as he savours the prospect, delighted, incredulous, like a child given the star off the Christmas tree: 'It is mag- nificent.' A shadow crosses his brow, humour is replaced by a maniacal fixity of purpose, we know that he would die in the attempt, even as he says: 'It must not fail.' An Iago stands revealed.
Complaints have been made of this production, that it doesn't stop at wit. Love for Love is a play
about three brisk young sparks: Mr. Wood's spirits aren't high enough and his personages are more than 'a kind of intellectual gladiators.' But .the great productions have always had an autum- nal air. Gielgud's in 1943—intellectual gladiator- ship at its noblest—cast 'middle-aged clubmen' in two of the parts, and Gielgud had a phenomenal success. So had Betterton before him, who was sixty when he created Valentine. At the National Theatre, Love for Love 'will go as it did, frost- nipped in a summer suit. 'Bravo! Bravo! Arci- bravo!
At Stratford East, Something Nasty is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, but not much. Maigret, at the Strand, is a poke in the eye with a broken reed. And of Shelley, more in our next.
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