THEATRE
VERY little in the West End at present is mare stylishly funny than this. Not only Shakespeare, but his creditor Plautus, must be wagging their heads for delight at the Cambridge A.D.C.'s Victorian presentation of their piece of mechanic sport ; admiring, too, the persuasive polish with which it is unfolded, for this is no charade, and the play suffers no doltish mutilation:
Mr. John Barton, the producer, keeps a wonderfully straight face ; offering us a period farce of misidentification, with no winks and nudges, but merely, from time to time, a salty smack of H.M.S. Pinafore. He ekes out the climaxes with excerpts from the sonnets and the other plays,' wittily set to echoes of Victorian ballads by the Rev. Geoffrey Beaumont. Sonnet CV, for instance, inspires a noble refrain entitled " Fair, Kind and True," and there is a glorious chorus-song beginning: " My name is Dromio--Dromi- omi-Omio ! " In this• framework much is clarified and enhanced.
This is an exercise in a rare kind: parody with respect. A joyful faith in the play underlies the irreverence, and the result is a brisk and intelligent corrective to bardolatry. You feel (such is their deference) that the A.D.C. would be the last people to suggest, as I do, that they have outshone their model. Only one hurdle trips them—Aegeon's long opening speeches of exposition—but, that dispatched, all is nimble. From a company of remarkable poise and vocal assurance, one performance cannot help standing out—that of -Mr. Angus Mackay, who plays Antipholus of Syracuse with an immaculate definition which, coupled with tact and unsentimental good looks, impels me to hope that here may be our long-sought young maestro of urbane comedy.
By the time this • notice appears, there will remain but four performances—two on Friday evening, two on Saturday.
KENNETH TYNAN.
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