31 MAY 1968, Page 24

THEATRE

Ustiborne and Osnov

HILARY SPURLING

The Unknown Soldier and His Wife (Chiches- ter Festival Theatre) Time Present (Royal Court) The Shaughraun (Abbey Theatre at the Ald- wych) To attack Peter Ustinov and John Osborne as serious playwrights would be to take a sledge- hammer to crack a couple of nuts. Although, apart from Notl Coward of course, these two are pretty well our only serious playwrights— serious in the French sense of solid, substantial, in this context, commercially sound, not to say gilt-edged. Hence the combination of trust, respect and genuine admiration which binds them so powerfully to their critics and the public.

Hence, too, their invincible banality and smugness—the only appreciable difference being that, where Mr Ustinov is your friendly uncle and fulsomely approves the moronic Flower Person who toddles down the ages as his luckless hero, Mr Osborne is your grumpy Uncle, seldom less than apoplectic at the tiny targets—spots, lack of money, disrespect to elders, garish clothes—which he takes to stand for youth and all its ways. Not that any reason- able youth would necessarily object to these avunoular attitudes. As Mr Osborne's heroine put it, in Time Present, 'I don't mind people being old, so long as they're not bullying with it.' For myself, I don't even mind the bullying so long as they're not boring with it.

But the punishing, truly mind-boggling bore- dom of Messrs Ustinov and Osborne last week has to be heard, seen and felt to be believed. Felt is the word for it: thick, coarse and soft all at the same time. It is amazing to see how close these two have grown, to find in the cue as in the other the same touchingly unworldly faith in platitudes, the same crude humour and insipid language—alas for Mr Ustinov's legend- ary wit, alas for Mr Osbome's celebrated rant, now both dwindled to a whiff—the same clumsiness on personal relationships and the same absolute indifference to any broader perspective.

Admittedly, Mr Ustinov's Unknown Sol- dier and His Wife trundles from pre-Christian Rome to modern times to demonstrate some not wholly unfamiliar notions on the nastiness of war—all run by generals and encouraged down the ages by the Church, in the person of numerous naughty but lovable portly jokers all played by Mr Ustinov. But our author's (and, for that matter, director's) sense of his- torical or even theatrical period—never was anything so monstrously coy and leaden as his pastiche of Restoration style—only serves to date the whole more firmly among the fashions of some twenty years ago. Even the mediaeval lovers, burbling in verse, sound like substandard Patience Strong. As for our nameless hero (a manful but sadly sentimental performance by Simon Ward) who placates barbarian hordes single-handed on a Roman battlefield with a flowery posy, he does not improve or grow more plausible with time. In the end, as we plod thankfully home to Westminster Abbey in the 'sixties, the Tv cameras skip the Arch- bishop's speech to focus on the lurid birthpangs of our hero's wife, who has squatted down behind a tomb : a conclusion offered as cheer- ing evidence of the increased humanity and will to peace of our own times.

Meanwhile, back at the Court Mr Osborne has also worked in some thoughts on childbirth: only, since what Uncle Ustinov finds tasteful is by the same token invariably distasteful to Uncle Osborne, childbirth in Time Present stands to our heroine as further evidence for her dis- &untied outlook on the age. This testy lady (played with relentless shrillness by Jill Bennett) is an actress surrounded by a notably lacklustre, spineless and badly played bevy of doting friends and relations. Pamela spends her days in a strident, ceaseless carping which they seem to find as perpetually endearing. Neither Anthony Page, as director, nor any member of his singu- larly unappealing cast seems to have managed to summon much enthusiasm for their admittedly hard task.

After much pondering—and the play, being shapeless and repetitive, allows generous time for this—I can find only one explanation for this unlikely tale, which is to take it as a parable on the relationship between the successful play- wright and his critics. True, the play does not become any less tedious or predictable. But it does at least acquire a recognisable bearing on the world as we know it. Thus, the playwright feeling at his worst (Critic : 'Your worst can be pretty attractive!') sinks into a mood of self- abasement (Playwright: 'I'm stupid! '; Critic: `No, no, you're not, you're very perceptive!'), petulance and spite, growing ever more frenzied and pursued by fond, obstinate cries (`You know I admire you for what you do . . . You have formidable qualities' . . . I respect and admire you for what you are . . .'), till, with a last parting squeak of protest from the critic =Gosh, you really have got a beautiful body!'

--the playwright retreats from this unrewarding and one-sided dialogue to find temporary respite in the arms of his money-spinning agent.

But not before, noticing in a moment of un- wonted tenderness the wretched victim's plight, Pamela or the playwright has relented briefly: 'You look so damned fragile sometimes!' Damned fragile was what I felt on leaving the Royal Court last week.

Not so with the Abbey Theatre's ravishing Shaughraun, which brings us smartly back into the adult world, a world pervaded by that lugubrious and sophisticated Irish irony which is perhaps the noblest weapon ever known against pomposity and unction. No doubt the play was specially chosen for Boucicault's engagingly dim view of the English. At any rate, not least among the pleasures of this pro- duction—brilliantly directed by Hugh Hunt— is Donal McCann's English captain -with his dainty lisp, so dumbly heroic, so baffled and enraptured by the natives' subtle, superior charms.

Seas rage and loom in foaming arabesque, blue moonlight falls on castle walls where murderous villains lurk, plotters machinate, virgins despair in quivering cardboard shebeens, frail dungeon vaults •tremble at a touch (en- trancing flat scenery by Alan Barlow). The cast, led by Cyril Cusack on a high comic peak as the intrepid Shaughraun himself, is superlatively fine. Among countless scenes of horror and de- light, best of all perhaps is the Shaughraun's false funeral: innumerable stout parties crammed tightly and insecurely into a minute hovel and heaving on strong drink and strong emotion to the maudlin, throbbing rhythms of their chorus : 'Whydidjerdie? Oh, whydidjerdie?' We have seen nothing like this in the World Theatre Season since the Leningrad Gorki Theatre, in the first act climax of The Idiot—a roomful of Russians similarly swaying and keening in des- pair to see ten thousand roubles burning in the grate. Of the whole, one can only echo the Captain's fervent admiration and amazement, on meeting what he wrongly took to be an Irish milkmaid: 'What a delicious bwoguer