THEATRE
Uncle Vanya. By Anton Chekhov. (Arts Theatre.) UNEMPHATIC plays like this one defy all but the most emphatic productions. Vanya is unmanageable, and much given to sprawling : the producer who wrestles with it is up against an elusive customer, rather like Milton's Death, that appalling " other shape, If shape it might be call 'd that shape had none Distinguishable in member, joynt or limb."
Approach it, therefore, with ruthless clarity ; above all, with decision. You may play it as a melodrama, making Elena and Serebryakov the villains ; as a rueful tragi-comedy, in which case Sonia, Vanya and Astrov become unworldly incompetents or as a mood play, in which Russia itself is the protagonist. Mr. John Fernald's production, though quite pious and respectful, has shelved this problem of choice ; unwilling to commit himself, he has pre- sented us with a theatrical blank. Where there should be subtlety, there is wobble ; where inevitability, there is only drift. Mr. Fernald having provided me with no norm, I was reduced to basing my opinions of the characters on whether or not I liked their faces.
Another paradox about unemphatic plays is that they demand stars to explore and chart them ; and the economic organisation of the Arts Theatre does not run to star salaries. Astrov, the ensnared idealist, is played by Mr. John Justin as a perplexed Pinero lieutenant with amorous leanings : the moral fibre of the past is not there. Miss Helen Shingle seems quite undecided about Elena, who should remind us Of a sapphire needle, caught momentarily in a groove, but determined to wear it to a scratch before moving on : the actress gives us a generalised sketch .of repressed passion which settles neither of the questions which the part poses. Is she in love with Astrov ? And is her devotion to her husband false ? Finally Mr. Cyril Luckham, by concentrating solely on Vanya's fussy irrita- bility, makes only half a character of him ; and in Chekhov no bread at all is infinitely preferable to half a loaf.
It is a tolerable evening ; as long, that is, as you can forget that le mieux est l'ennemi du Bien, and that Chekhov's own reaction to it might have come closer to Dogberry's " tolerable and not to be
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