Theatre
Word-Play
By BAMBER GASCOIGNE Cinderella. (Players' Theatre.) —Little Old King Cole. (Pal- lad i um.)—Puss in Boots. (Theatre Royal.) — Alice Through the Looking-Glass. (Lyric, Hammersmith.) — Treasure Island. (Mermaid.) CHILDREN, it would seem, are fascinated by words—or such is the assumption on which the Christmas shows are based. In The Marvellous Story of Puss in Boots the main characteristic of the leading child is an unbridled passion for circumlocution; semantics play a vital part in the humour of Alice Through the Look- ing-Glass; and Cinderella, a Victorian panto- mime, is a complete museum of laboriously pre- pared and outrageous puns, which wash over one like waves, each visible a long way out and crash- ing in its final impact. In the gaps between the word-play burlesque poeticisms are used to keep up the tone of donnish merriment. Puss in Boots contains more mock-poetic mock-philosophy than I have heard for many audience man-hours. Even Little Old King Cole, the large show with the little hero (Charlie Drake), can rise to the „poetic occasion; a good fairy gleefully refutes one of the villain's theories with 'Vain, deluded Rollo, 'tis not so.'
The Players' Theatre Cinderella was written in 1860. If one, rather unjustly, takes it and Little Old King Cole as each representative of its age, pantomime shows a sharp decline over the past century. The burlesque blank verse prevents Cinderella's young lovers from ever becoming seriously sentimental, whereas the lass and her swains in the modern extravaganza are nothing but sickly sweet. Above all, Cinderella's knock- about arises naturally out of the situation and the characters. There is a superb scene between the ugly sisters when they are making up for the ball, and Thisbe tries to get Clorinda drunk so that her own progress to the prince's heart will be unopposed. It is magnificently played by Brian Blades and John Heawood—pantomirne at its best.
By contrast, Little Old King Cole is theatre by recipe; take ten minutes of pageantry and massed effects, ten minutes of cross-talk, ten minutes of romance, ten minutes of slapstick (for this purpose the script-writers give Charlie Drake brief employment in a baker's shop—the shortest possible cut to the custard pies) and ten minutes of girls prancing about in feathers and tights; lay all these pieces end to end and repeat the process until you have concocted a full two and a half hours of tedium. Charlie Drake himself has a disarming way of suggesting by the odd shrug that he too can't think why he got mixed up in all this. I only hope, for the sake of everyone's Christmas outings, past and future, that this is a bad pantomime by any standards.
I have never before seen any of Nicholas Stuart Gray's plays for children, but from what I hear—for example, of The Princess and The Swineherd—I imagine that The Marvellous Story of Puss in Boots must be far from his best. The story is unimaginatively presented. Its chief theatrical originality would seem to be in having a totally unsympathetic central character in the cat. As played by the author himself, this creature became so nauseating that I, together, I suspect, with the gang of cigarette-smoking twelve- year-olds in front of me, was profoundly dis- appointed when the ogre failed to eat him at least two scenes before the end.
I didn't really enjoy Lewis Carroll as a child, but the children at the Lyric, Hammer- smith seemed to be responding fully to this version of Alice Through the Looking-Glass. The production has everything that a child's play should have. Instead of relying on a profusion of sets and costumes, like Little Old King Cole, or on the fey literary style of Puss in Boots, it sets Carroll's fantasy quite simply in the magic of the theatre itself. Such magic depends on in- ventiveness, but this remains primarily a technical matter, achieved by Toby Robertson's careful direction and by the smooth and highly planned conjunction of Michael Baldwin's delightful sets and Disley Jones's most intricate lighting. These three create a complete magical world, far re- moved from anything normally comprehensible, in which scenes appear and vanish quite mys- teriously and the audience is as much an amazed sightseer as Alice herself. The battle between Tweedledum and Tweedledee is par- ticularly well staged, and my only complaint about the whole evening is that we aren't allowed to see Humpty Dumpty falling off his wall. The lights black out just as he is rock- ing perilously backwards and forwards. Surely he could disappear backwards on to cushions without fracturing either his physique or our belief?
For those who are past the age of getting nightmares from violence on stage or screen--- and perhaps, with television in the living-room, most children are--Treasure Island makes good entertainment. It contains the most convincing stage death that I have ever seen. A buccaneer with a naked torso is walking towards the front of the stage after a fight. Suddenly he jerks; he claps his hand behind his back; and brings it forward again covered in blood. When he turns we see a dagger-hilt sticking from his bare flesh and blood streaming from the wound. In quieter moments, much enjoyment is had from rowing about on a revolving stage. Spike Milligan over- plays as the marooned mariner, Ben Gunn. His exaggerated gestures could be true to the charac- ter, since for three years the man has been trying to appeal to an audience of distant ships, but they are irritating nevertheless.
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