THEATRE
Amazon in diamonds
HILARY SPURLING
Carol Charming with Her Ten Stout-hearted Men (Drury Lane) The Government Inspector (Cinoherni Klub at the Aldwych)
Henry IV Part One-tMermaid)
For all the earnest tribute paid, in sterner circles, to the theatre's ritual significance, Drury Lane and the Palladium are the only ones in which the theory is regularly prac- tised. Carol Channing, appearing last week for the first time on any London stage, was greeted with a rapture which is pretty well automatic at this theatre: it comes from simply sitting, along with two thousand other people, in the presence of a star. It works infallibly because you know that whoever you are watching is a star, by the simple fact that he or she appears at Drury Lane; and any- one who doubts that it is a purely ritual satisfaction should reflect that, by the time stars reach Drury Lane, their former powers as often as not have dwindled, so that their lustre is no longer visible to the naked eye of any but the faithful.
Not that Miss Channing is of this com- pany: her virtue is for once both actual and symbolic. Evidence of past miracles in the programme—'grossed a staggering seventeen million dollars . . . made the box offices jingle . . . biggest grosses reported . . . new box office record . . . biggest ever money- maker . . .'—is amply borne out by present proof. One has only to watch Miss Channing singing 'Diamonds are a girl's best friend', draped in heavy, clinging silver, pale legs
snaking out from a sheath split almost to the waist, wild hair and wicked eyes brilli-
antly lit in blueish light: the song has that glittering excitement which gives the money numbers in American musicals—'Big Spen-
der' in Sweet Charity, the Wall Street chorus in Cabaret—a veiled, fierce, even brutal sexutlity.
The effect would be blatant, if it were not carried off with such exquisite timing and a cruelly sharp wit. This last is much exercised on the 'ten stout-hearted men' whose dainty hop-skip-and-jump routines suggest the kind of tame harem (Miss Charming even has a curiously flat song, pointing out their hope- less ineffectuality at all masculine pursuits) an Amazon might keep, for duty rather than pleasure. No wonder if the show at times is more than faintly lewd. And the famous skittishness, in 'I'm just a little girl from Little Rock' or 'Little jazz baby, that's me'. is not as disarming as it might at first appear; Miss Channing's favourite pose--skimpy frock, legs coyly straddled, girlish laughter and a Mabel Lucie Attwell smile, all teeth— suggests something positively wolfish lurk- ing beneath this cute Red Riding Hood.
Whatever it is comes beautifully clean in her sketch of a pouting. succulent, baby-doll Bardot in the bath: a transformation im- possible to analyse, except to say that it somehow centres on the lips. Even more un- canny, indeed almost awe-inspiring, is the moment when, bending forward and moving her arm as though peeling off a mask. Miss Channing raises her head again—and even while one watches, it is beyond belief--with Marlene Dietrich's face. There is no space for more, save to say that Miss Channing's ethnic selections (Haitian corn-grinding song. a weirdly tragic fragment from Orestes' funeral chant couched, for some reason, in the French of Vercingetorix) are as plausible as they are perfectly absurd. The show itself —all red plush, spangles, fairy lights and strenuous, sexless dancing—is a dismally vulgar setting for this rich and strange. in some lights even barbaric, transatlantic jewel.
Also last week the Cinoherni Klub from Prague ended their visit with five perform- ances of The Government Impector, a pro- duction which for its delicacy, rich detail, the humour wildly burgeoning in its under- growth. and not least for its subtle, expert running commentary on all possible types and states of drunkenness, one will not soon forget. Gogol's grim figment—a government inspector endowed with nameless hut evi- dently scarifying power who comes down. like a wolf on the fold, to wreak havoc among a defenceless small-town population —suits these Czechs to admiration. When Paul Scofield played the hero, the whole ludicrous imbroglio became a sinister dream emanating from the mad brain of Khlesta- kov; here. Khlestakov himself, a genial but somewhat baffled fellow, is caught up in a fantasy invented, given substance and worked out in fiendish detail by the entire town, acting on instructions from Pavel Landovsky as the mayor. This last was a sumptuous performance in a whole which made a spectacular finish to the company's visit.
Henry /V, meanwhile at the Mermaid, is a sober and agreeably straightforward production, made memorable chiefly by the odious sentimentality of Bernard Miles's Falstaff, and by an uncommonly dis- tinguished Henry from Graham Crowden.
Previous page
