THEATRE

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26396, 14 April 1951, Page 3

THEATRE

He P^ yS the K ' n? ' By Kenneth Longmans, Green and Co. The English Stage 1850-1950. By Lyn,,n S,~ dson ‘ George G. Harrap and VO. 443 pp. Pr °l? C n’ ® y c - B - P“rdom. J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd. 196 pp. Mr Tynan played Hamlet at 16 and at 23 is a successful theatrical producer. Now he has written one of the snarpest and most, outspoken books on the theatre for many a year. As anomer prodigy of the theatre, Mr Orson Welles, says in an introductory letter, Mr lynan knows how to cheer, is not alr . a * <l t 0 hiss > is audible (to put it mildly) and transparently in love—with the theatre. Mr Tynan is not ashamed to be a hero worshipper—he thinks the Czech, Frederick Valk, is the best actor in England, and says there is only one British-born actor—Sir Laurence Olivier—with the right pretensions to heroic stature on English stages. But Mr Tynan is also unawed by reputations. He attacks Olivier for » unsympathetic and clumsy direction of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire” and for his “technically pedantic, aurally elephantine” production of “Hamlet” for the screen; drips acid on every London critic except James Agate; and lambastes most of the actors and actresses. Only seven actors are worthy of Mr Tynan’s accolade—Valk, Olivier t‘u C Guinness, Sir Ralph John Gielgud, Donald Wolfit and Paul Scofield. Britain also has only three producers of international standing, Tyrone Guthrie. Michael Benthall and Peter Brook, another Oxford prodigy. Some of Mr Tynan’s views might give the impression that he is a brash young man seeking a reputation as a smasher of idols. But he writes of heroic drama, contemporary critics,, comedians, tragedy, and death withAwit, candour, erudition, and uncompromising sincerity. And any note of smugness or msclence m some of his judgments—iCr which he apologises in advance—can be forgiven in a writer who gives as his only excuse that of Winifred in Webster’s play: “May it please the Court, I am but a young thing, and was drawn arsie-varsie into the business.”

After Mr Tynan’s verbal fireworks Mr Hudson’s survev of the English stage in the last 100 years is a sober piece of work. But it is of particular interest to students of the drama because Mr Hudson concerns himself not with playwrights and their plays alone—they have been written about often enough—but with equally important factors in the evolution of the English stage—actors, producers, scenic artists, critics, great actor-managers, and the play-going public. They, says Mr Hudson, have supplied the richness and vitality that have enabled the theatre to continue and advance at times when the playwright has counted for very little. Mr Hudson ranges widely in his survey to show how the English theatre has overcome the religious prejudice and social ostracism against which it had to contend a century ago, and how it has grown in strength and He pays tribute to the actctr-managers, Samuel Phelps and Charles Kean, who brought back Shakespeare to the stage in the 50’s, and to Irving, who brought the actor back into a place of paramount importance in the theatre. Of necessity Mr Hudson does refer to plays and playwrights—the work of T. W. Robertson which started a new era in English corned?, Ibsen’s plays, and the Irish melodramas of Dion Boucicault which were favourites in the 90’s—but their importance in the evolution of the theatre is correctly assessed. Two points of interest which Mr Hudson makes in his absorbing book are the changes in the status of the actor and the dramatist in the last 100 years. Only 90 years ago was it admitted that a man could be both an actor and a gentleman, and .it was not until the 70’s that he need no longer apologise for his calling. As Mr Hudson shows, the dramatist, once an ill-paid hack in many cases, has risen like the actor to knighthood and his profession to an esteem equal to that accorded to any other branch of literature.

New Zealand dramatic societies, most of which cannot afford to employ professional producers, will find the new edition of Mr Purdom’s book of the highest value to their members. The first edition, published 30. years ago, may be in the libraries of some societies. If it is not, the new edition certainly should. This handbook for producers and players, which has had wide influehce among amateur draniatic societies in Britain, covers the entire field of stage work, and is written to assist the large numbers of people who take part in plays as amateurs and the few who have to become responsible for production. Mr Purdom deals with the role of the producer, the choice of a play, rehearsing, stage management, costume, wigs, and make-up, the audience, and the uses of criticism. There are most useful chapters on such technical matters as scenery, lighting, and the stage itself, and six new chapters covering acting in schools, preparing plavs for drama festivals, and other subjects. The book, which has been entirely rewritten, is comoleted with a glossary of stage and theatrical terms and a selected bibliography.

H. G. WELLS H. G. Wells. By Norman Nicholson. Arthur Barker. 105 pp. The attractively presented and reasonably priced English Novelists’ series, under the generaLeditorship of Herbert van Thai, will be found useful by both the student and the general reader. It already has a list of 13 books, some of which have been excellent. The policy so far seems to have been to concentrate on-minor novelists; Mrs Gaskell, Borrow and BulwerLytton have been done but not George Eliot, Jane Austen or Dickens. As a novelist Wells tod is a minor figure, as Mr Norman Nicholson seems to be uncomfortably aware. Perhaps we are as yet too close to judge of this for certain, but it is undeniably true that Wells “was only an artist by accident”; he admitted in a letter to Henry James that he preferred to be thdbght of as a journalist. He will probably be more interesting to posterity as an expositor of the gospel of science and the machine, and as the champion of the lower-middle-class who were to inherit the century. However, Mr Nicholson thinks there is a quality about Wells’s work that makes it seem enduring: , this quality is the sheer creative force of his imagination, and his great interest in life in all its manifestations. He traces Wells’s line of literary descent from the Gothic romances and “the Crusoe romance” to Jules Verne. But Wells was not content with his scientific romances: from science he shifted his interest to society showing how society thwarts the growth of the Kippses, the Mr Pollys and the Mr Lewishams (as it had attempted to frustrate Wells, the draper’s assistant). Then once again, he shifted his Interest, and abandoned his comedies for his discussion’novels. giving himself up to argument, propaganda and didacticism. From this point, as Mr Nicholson rightly observes “there was a loss of concentration... Wells could not be bothered to construct a novel solidly nor to work through it steadily from beginning tc end. The argument becomes more consistent 'than the imaginative content of the novel.” Finally, the pretence of fiction was almost entirely abandoned. Wells’s last work, “Mind at the End of its Tether,” is extraordinarily interesting—not as art, but as a revelation of the depths of pessimism into which he sank in the last years of his life, in sad contrast to the buoyant optimism of his earlier days. In a shrewd discussion Mr Nichqlson shows bow this utter despair was implicit in Wells’s earlier philosophy of life—though it may in part derive from the effects of old age and ill-health. In sbite of the frequent shrewdness in this book and its general competence in summing up the vast, body of Wells’s work, there is sometimes a general effect of looseness'of thinking and an uncertainty of attitude on the part of the au'hor. This is partly because. •>5 he emphasises, we stand too close to Wells to make a true assessment of him.