" The Judgement of Doctor Johnson." At the Arts Theatre.—
THE THEATRE
"Ghosts." At the Duke of Yorks'. " The Master Builder." At the Westminster.
Ir was not surprising that G. K. Chesterton should have written one of his only two plays about Dr. Johnson. It came out in 1927, about fourteen years later than Magic and is equally characteristic of its author, although the shadow of Dr. Johnson's colossal common sense somewhat dims the circus-brilliance evident in Magic, and more natural to Chesterton, whose genius (if not his character) was very different from Johnson's. It was the definiteness of Dr. Johnson's opinions and his conservatism that appealed to Chesterton whose views on marriage and tradition were in many points similar ; and we find Dr. Johnson in this interesting and ingenious play presented as the annihilating exposer of much revolu- tionary humbug, put into the mouth of a young American idealist (admirably acted by Michael Warre) who is in England as a revolutionary agent at the time of the American War of Indepen- dence. The political theme of the play is most pertinent to our own time, indeed gives the play a lively relevance. The views on marriage are very like those expressed by Pastor Manders in Ghosts—the inadequacy of which Ibsen set out to reveal.
If to an audience today both plays date, it is because life has a way of by-passing theory and leaving both traditionalism and revolu- tionary idealism high and dry. Much of what Chesterton and Ibsen are saying—often brilliantly and sometimes profoundly—in these two plays is today accepted without fuss, but accepted from a totally different point of view, a point of view that has altered though not destroyed all the values. It may be true that in parts of Scandinavia, and English-speaking countries, there might still be found mothers as ignorant of that ravaging disease, syphilis, as Mrs. Alving ; but, luckily, their children are no longer in a state of unholy innocence. To most of our grandparents, and even to some of our parents, the subject matter of both plays presented moral problems. To us, and especially to the young, as may clearly be seen by any careful observer of the audience, there are no moral problems involved here but only medical, physical and sociological ones. As one who shares this attitude I have to add that therefore the plays have lost a great deal of their•interest as drama since knowledge and ideas (all of which become in time tedious) so predominate over human :haracter and psychology. There is, accordingly, little to say about the acting, except that it was good and efficient in both plays. Miss Beatrice Lehmann's very strong, exotic and almost sinister personality rather threw Ibsen's play out of gear, the character of Hedda Gabler would give far more scope to . her remarkable talent than does Mrs. Alving.
Time has laid no hand yet on The Master Builder, in which Ibsen was concerned with those individual human ambitions whose sources are deeper than man's immediate environment. It is an ever-fascinating play, partly because Ibsen did not altogether succeed in what was, perhaps, his most ambitious effort. But what a marvellous creation Hilda Wangel is, and praise must not be with- held from Rosalind Iden, who had a noble conception of the part and neither flinched nor wholly failed in her attempt to do the almost impOssible—that is, to do justice to Ibsen's heroine. As Solness, Donald Wolfit gave a highly intelligent and effective performance, but I have not yet seen the actor who can bring to this part what Ibsen could only hint at, filling his inspired but necessarily sketchy outlines with a living reality.
JAMES REDFERN.
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