Contemporary Arts
Dodos and After
TILE MULBERRY BUSH. By Angus Wilson. (Royal Court.)—TFIE COMEDY OF ERRORS. By William Shakespeare. Adapted by Lionel Harris and Robert McNab. (Arts.) ANGUS WILSON has revised this play since it was on at the Bristol Old Vic last year, culling
one nauseous character, cutting down on the vituperation, turning the first act right way up, and generally bettering it. In a certain sense, as young Raymond Radiguet pertinently ob- served, one can never do better, and one can never do worse; and the impact of the play remains the same. But what Radiguet was objecting to was 'the timid writers who dare not show their work while they hope to do better.' Angus Wilson had time for revision only because of the reluctance of West End managements to inflict an adult play on their audiences; he was compelled to ,wait until he found a sponsor in the English Stage Com- pany, now happily installed for its repertory venture in Sloane Square.
Now, if plays like The Mulberry Bush were coming on every week, criticism would be simple. Its main fault is obvious: the charac- ters describe each other, instead of revealing themselves. The old Padleys, admirably played by Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies and John Welsh, have a scene at the close when they realise their old don's delight of a world is crumbling round them: that their fussy do-goody radicalism with its campaigns and committees has become irrelevant. But not until then have they fully engaged our interest and sympathy. Earlier, their world has been explained rather than evoked; they have not been given the time in Act I, still less in Act II, to impose themselves.
Mr. Wilson, too, refuses To allow us to divide his characters into the usual sheep and goats. So much the better: but it entails a consistency in character-drawing that it does not get. He is anxious to teach us a lesson : that people in glass houses must throw stones, in order to break out of them. But his characters' emotions are too often aroused by the demands of his theme, not by their own development. And there are certain incongruities. By chance the old Padley mistress who comes and blows the gaff on them is a theatrical character, a piece of Edithevansery. The Royal Court audience clasped her delightedly to their bosom, just as Bristol audiences did, doing their best to laugh her into caricature. Agnes Lauchlan resisted the laughs much more successfully than her Bristol counterpart; but she cannot help being out of key—as is the impossible young refugee, Kurt, also toned down since Bristol, but still a character out of melodrama. These are the writer's faults, not the actors', who on balance do well, nor the producer's—though there were times when I felt George Devine had not pointed all Angus Wilson's arrows effectively.
Such would be my comments were Mulberry Bushes two a week. But they are not; and in place of criticism the temptation is to side with the Royal Court and baste anybody who dares to criticise. For here is a brave new venture, filling a humiliating deficiency in the London drama. it calls itself a writer's theatre. designed to give the likes of Angus Wilson a chance to develop craftsmanship through experience. Hut it is also obviously an actors' theatre; giving, 'ay, Helena Hughes (though she is not well suited to an extremely tricky part) and Alan Bates chances they could not hope to get, except at Bristol—and also, incidentally, re- minding us just how good are some established actors, like John Welch. it is not, praise be. a designer's theatre: the sets were ingenious but simple. Primarily, however, it is an audiences' Theatre. It is giving us a succession of plays— the next is The Crucible—that Londoners' tongues should be hanging out for; and The Mulberry Bush gets it off to a good start. So I can sympathise when the English Stage Com- pany, and all connected with it, hear the audible sniffs of critics who, in the past, have smacked their lips gleefully over such intellec- tual puff-pastry as The Cocktail Party, or The Dark is Light Enough. For them, boiling oil . . . but enough.
THE opening moments of the Arts show were as embarrassing as any I can recall in the Theatre: the stage appeared full of male impersonators roguishly playing musical bumps. It took most of the first act before the amiable ditties, pleasantly sung to Julian Slade's airs, restored sufficient faith in the operetta to lure me back after the interval; and the cast, it must be said, did so well by the preposterous story that it even began to take on the twisted fascination of a Dickens plot. A pleasant frolic, in fact; though hardly of Arts calibre.
BRIAN INGLIS
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