The Farce Lobby
Don't Let Summer Come. (Mermaid.) — A Cuckoo in the Nest, (Royal Court.) Now this is an interesting development, for the present farce movement exists on two fronts. On the one hand, there are the straight revivals of the old Twenties farces, and, on the other, there are the works of• new playwrights which admit quite a lot of the old ingredients, but intro- duce a new element of horror and questioning. A Cuckoo in the Nest, now at the Royal Court, is an obvious example of the old, and both Mr. Henry Living's Eh?, which opens this week at the Aldwych, and Don't Let Summer Come, are of the new. Myself I never really thought the old farces very funny, though I recognise that it is partly a question of mood, and sometimes I give way to them more readily than others. I think about them much as Dr. Johnson thought about puns: that a pun was only a pun if the play on words had some semantic justification—i.e., if the words had developed from similar root and were not just alike by accident. So with farce : apart from the purely physical element, so much of farce depends on one line having no logical connection with the next that one must have a
connection of some other kind, otherwise there will be only a lot of characters blundering around and deliberately misunderstanding each other. Always, of course, the assumption is that they could understand each other if they wanted to. But in the new kind of farce this assumption can no longer be made. Indeed, in many modern plays of this kind, it is quite plain that direct com- munication by conversation is right out of the question. People talking are not necessarily people communicating. The old farce took non- communication and misunderstandings as a con- vention; the new school accepts these things as facts.
In a recent interview James Saunders made the point that his plays weren't about a breakdown of communication at all but a breakdown in logic, and this is very true not just of his own work but of so many others. It is the starting point of the new kind of farce. In Don't Let Summer Come there is a connection between one line and the next which, though it may not be understood by the characters, is fully apparent to the audience. It is what is loosely called `psychological' and in Eh?, for instance, there is a delightfully comic use of psychological terms, guying psychology perhaps but still show- ing a distinct recognition of its existence. One can see this most clearly in lines at which an audience may laugh but at the same time ex- perience some feeling of terror as before a vacuum. Thus the old recipe is recalled but put to a new end, with even the old physical knock- about re-summoned not for its humour but because it can so easily be extended to turn sour and cruel.
I would hesitate to call Don't Let Summer Come a better play than A Cuckoo in the Nest, if only because the old principle of a well-made play deserves some respect. Yet I found it fascinating to watch the way the old conventions had been transformed. Its acquaintance with psychology is primitive to say the least, and it makes unending play with symbolic tunnels and undergrounds, basements and the desire to re- turn to the womb. The story, however, of two girls continually changing character (from shop- girls to models to policewomen and more) in an effort alternatively to please and terrify one simple man has some excellent moments and it is acted with a precision unusual in that theatre.
A Cuckoo in the Nest is unsatisfactory for other reasons than those which may be peculiar to me. One is simply that Nicol Williamson's style is made for plays far more complex and emotional. Only Arthur Lowe, who played the other solicitor in inadmissible Evidence, is really at home and his part is small. Another reason, as John Osborne himself admitted on the BBC, is that farce depends on a widespread acceptance of a prevailing moral system. The whole situa- tion of the present play depends on a man being forced to spend a night in a room with a woman who is not his wife. She lies there in an enormous bed as he tries to find a comfortable spot on the draughty floor; the situation now, however, seems to have nothing to do with morals, only with charity. If she cannot invite him into it, she could at least invite him on to it. Indeed, there's a lesson here which I wish more people would recognise: that while modern playwrights and audiences may admit far more cruelty than in the past, far more subjects that were once thought untouchable, the range of sympathy has been enormously extended.
I am very glad to hear that A Scent of Flowers, whose poor houses I have mentioned previously, is now doing excellent business. .
!VIA LCOLM RUTHERFORD
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