Theatre
Off Season By BAMBER GASCOIGNE Squat Betty. (Royal Court.)— Three at Nine. (New Arts.) The Blue Bird. (Lyric, Hammersmith.) NOTHING very theatrical has happened in the seven lost days between Christmas and the New Year, so I would like first of all to continue where I left off last week. A last-minute shortage of space brought me low when I had only discussed one half, the worse half, of the Waterhouse and Hall double bill at the Royal Court. I had argued that The Sponge Room is a faded example in a jaded style (post-Mortimer literary whimsy). Squat Betty, I was about to say, is a little better.
It could be described as a baby Huis Clos- `baby' because it has none of the fierce melo- drama of Sartre's piece. Three people are emo- tionally roped together in a mountain hostel. The warden of the hostel loves his wife, who loves a mountaineering advertising executive, who loves his job. Whenever the executive tries to leave the wife for his job, she threatens suicide; so does the warden whenever his wife tries to leave him for the executive. The emo- tional blackmail Clove me or I'll kill myself') is a good theme, and it seems only a pity that the authors didn't carry it further. At one moment we're given a glimpse of the chain of blackmail stretching away towards infinity; the executive says he is really in love with a girl in London who doesn't ldve him because she loves someone else (who doesn't love her), but that he sometimes feels like saying that if she doesn't marry him he will . . .
The image of this endless chain of unrequited love and threatened suicide is a horrifyingly successful piece of fantasy, but far too little is made of it. The authors' chirpy, almost coy, dialogue severs the play at the start from any hint of realism, so nothing would have been lost by giving the fantasy its head. As it stands, Squat Betty seems a little thin and repetitive. But the cast perform it well—George Cole, Jill Bennett and, in particular, Robert Stephens as the advertising executive, the best-written part of the-three.
The Three who are at Nine are Annie Ross, famous theatrically from Cranks and musically as a jazz singer; Roger Price, an American comic who used to be a gag-writer for Bob Hope; and Roddy Maude-Roxby, an English actor and revue artist. Annie Ross sings splendidly, and looks very much better in tights than in the long black drainpipe dress in which she starts the show and which appears to be standing firmly on the ground and supporting her under the armpits. Roger Price I found quite extra- ordinarily unfunny. He punctuates his shoddy gags with a nervous, barking laugh, and makes the unpardonable mistake of bringing up the house lights so that he can 'see his audience.' I much prefer my embarrassment for a man not to be made public; and whereas laughter from the audience at bad jokes sounds in the dark like kindness, in full light it seems much more like a hectic attempt to be seen to be 'with it.' Roddy Maude-Roxby was funny while he lasted, which was far too little.
The first production of Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird was by Stanislaysky at the Moscow Arts in 1908. A fairy gives two children a magic
diamond which enables them to see the 'spirit of things.' They set off with it to look for the blue bird, which symbolises all the secrets of nature, but their quest turns out merely to be studded with routine and sickly Victorian plati- tudes. This production at the Lyric emphasises the slushiness, and is for much of the time like some turn-of-the-century amateur spectacular, done on a well-stretched shoe-string. At every opportunity a group of dancers leap on (as `creatures of the night,' joys and happinesses' or `spirits of the trees') to execute a few basic steps of ballet. In the Gardens of Happiness we dis- cover a band of ladies in Grecian garb who step forward to meet the children, introducing them- selves as The Happiness of Being Well, The Joy of Understanding, The Joy of Maternal Love, and other such trusty friends. Maternal Love is, of course, the children's own mother, much spruced up. 'Mummy,' they exclaim, 'you're so beautiful.' Back comes the riposte, slow but sure: 'All mothers are beautiful when they love their children.' It is alarming what sentimen- tality can do to the tough tradition of morality plays—and I would love to know what Stanis- laysky made of the play in 1908 (and why). The chief pleasure of this production is the running battle between George Moon as a dog and Dilys Laye as a superbly feline cat.
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