Theatre
Smile on the Face
By II AMBER GASCOIGNE
The Art of Seduction. (Ald- wych.)—Play with a Tiger. (Comedy.) Boni The Art of Seduction and Play with a Tiger present us with people who destroy love for the sake of pleasure. In the former—adapted by John Barton from Laclos' novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, first published in 1782—the harm is done by the eighteenth-century obsession with sexual intrigue and scandal. The central charac- ters are two dissipates, who wage continuous guerrilla warfare on society. The Marquise de Merteuil's highest pleasure is to devise intricate plots which will ruin a man's reputation without even tinting her own, and the Vicomte de Val- mont sees himself as a ruthlessly efficient siege-engine which no feminine citadel can with- stand; he therefore finds virtue rather more stimulating than beauty.
The relish and skill with which these two plot their schemes had not been equalled in literature since Richard III set the murderous Machiavel to school, and Laclos was clearly as • much fascinated as repelled by their antics; but there is never any doubt in his novel that the misery of the victims derives directly from one way of life, one attitude of mind. There is nothing general or inevitable about .it. By contrast, the cruelty and the misery in Doris Lessing's Plyy with a Tiger are presented as an unavoidable in- gredient of life and of love.
Les Liaisons Dangereuses was written, like Clarissa, in the form of letters, and John Bar- ton's adaptation is merely a dramatised reading of some of the letters; but the very fact of per- formance alters the original in one crucial way. On the printed page it is impossible to tell whether the dissembling Vicomte de Valmont ever means what he says. The general effect is, therefore, consistently roguish. But an actor inevitably has to distinguish between sin- cerities and insincerities, and John Barton has directed Keith Michell in the role so as to leave no doubt that the Vicomte is at one point genuinely in love. It is only his own vanity, the code of libertinism and the viciousness of his circle which prevent him from accepting this love. He leaves the girl, taunts her brutally and drives her mad. This interpretation gives a more decisive shape to the story than the novel itself provides and is certainly very necessary in the theatre—elegant amorality by itself soon be- comes extremely tiresome. Diana Riggs is excel- lent as the choicest of the Vicomte's victims.
At its simplest and most successful level Play with a Tiger is a picture of a restless love affair between a rootless woman and a romantic young American beatnik, but we are continually being reminded by the author that her play has wider applications, that it is, in fact, about Sex —here, thereand everywhere. Every character in it is either at the giving or receiving end of callous emotional brutality, and when the central couple indulge in their prolonged self-lacerations the lights in their room are switched out and we see the lighted windows of houses and blocks of flats all round the set. In Death of a Salesman a similar gimmick had meaning and impact, since Willy Loman's predicament arose from the pres- sures and preconceptions of the society around him. In the context of Play with a Tiger it can only mean that the rest of the world is supposed to be like this central couple. In confirmation we get an occasional glimpse of the world outside. The American keeps telling his woman not to 'shut the world out' by shutting the window; yet each time she does open it, the sound chosen to symbolise the world is a lonely man wolf- whistling up at a girl in the house opposite. He stands there hour after hour, our heroine tells us, and he doesn't even know that the girl is a tart. 'Shall we go down and tell him the facts of life?' she asks.
But does Miss Lessing know the facts of life? Why, for example, would a tart allow a potential client to stand wolf-whistling for hours on the street? And how could a practised lover, the American, have an affair with, a girl and not notice for five months that she was pregnant? These are minor points, which slightly discredit Miss Lessing as a guide to reality, but the impor- tant question is whether her wider assertions about life hold true to the facts. She implies that her cruel and destructive tiger is the beast that lurks in all sexual relations; except, of course, in the drab procreative functions that the bourgeoisie are commonly supposed to indulge in—but then those are not to be graced with the title of sexual relations. I don't happen to agree with Miss Lessing's diagnosis, but neither do wish to imply that art always has to be sociologi- cally exact. I do say, though, that if Miss Lessing really believes in the assertions of her play, they should have moved her to write more powerfully, even perhaps with something of Hamlet's vio- lence of disgust. And they certainly haven't.
There are other weaknesses. The play is in- truded on by drab minor characters. The central couple indulge in flashbacks to their childhood which are far too pat as exercises in therapy (their avowed intention), and far too obvious as exercises in exposition. Siobhan McKenna's performance is too full of postures, though this may to a certain extent be the fault of the part itself. Alex Viespi, on the other hand, in the much more relaxed role of the American, ranges about with such adMirable ease that it is no surprise io learn he was once a professional rodeo rider.
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