Contemporary Arts
The Theatre
THE MULBERRY BUSH. By Angus Wilson. ;(Bristol Old Vic.)
ANGUS WILSON'S chief motive for writing a play (a programme note tells us) was his con- viction that the divorce between the stage and literature in England is unhealthy. If he has failed to effect a complete reconciliation, it is because The Mulberry Bush blossomed in his mind as literature, and was only later trans- planted to the stage. He has taken a group of unpleasant Oxonians, each the victim of pre- conceived idea's or ideals, and thrust them into a crisis, leaving us to watch them sink or swim towards the shores of adulthood. The play is not, as has been suggested,. an anti-liberal tract : it is a diatribe against all forms of pro- crustean dogma, liberal or ultramontane; and basically the idea is stageworthy. But the author has chosen for his Procrustes-in-chief a man who is dead—whose overblown reputa- tion lingers on to rack the living, until it is deflated in the course of the play. This device would be better suited to a film, where the dead man could be resuscitated in flashbacks; as it is, the need to describe him at second hand keeps on bringing the play's action to a halt, a dilemma which Angus Wilson has insufficient theatrical experience to resolve. To offset this—and many other symptoms of the writer's inexperience—the play has one tran- scendent merit. Its situations and characters are painfully credible. These men and women behave as people really do behave; what is more important, as intelligent people behaVe. But ,because the type-moulding ladle has been rejected, it becomes all the more necessary that these characters should display an inner con- sistency. They do not. I suspect that the chief reason is Angus Wilson's facility for invective. He cannot resist putting in the gibe that comes to mind, even where it is out of key with the development of the character. But part of the responsibility must lie with the producer. The Mulberry Bush should excoriate its audiences; they should be left with the same acrid taste in the mouth that is left by Hemlock and After. To achieve this the cast need to play as if resentful that an audience is present, eaves- dropping on these private family rows; they should reject catchpenny concessions. Most of them do : Eric Porter, Mary Hinton, Marie Ney, Yvonne Furneaux. But some of the others have been allowed to drift into farcical comedy —tickling instead of shocking the audience into laughs with the help of the dreary old West End tricks. Worse, an important part—the ob- jectionable young Iago-Marchbanks—is played in a ludicrous off-German accent, and the actor is allowed to behave as if he was qualifying for Grand Guignol—boorishness that cuts across the grain of play and players. This being said, The Mulberry Bush remains a notable first play. It goes some way to achieve the author's expressed ambition : and in the circumstances to complain that the structure of his bridge is rickety is ungrateful. Yet that criticism needs to be made, if the play is to reach London. Its chances of success would be enormously increased if Angus Wilson can revise it ruth- lessly, in the light of the experience this Bristol production must have given him.
BRIAN INGLIS
1'
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