LOVE OR ART?

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 151, 30 June 1928, Page 21

LOVE OR ART?

"The Tragic Muse." A play. By Herbert Griffith. London: George Allen and Unwin. With considerable skill Mr. Griffith has adapted part of Henry James's .novel, "The Tragic Muse," for presentation on the stage, or for reading. The two characters taken from the novel ■to form the basis of the play are Miriam Kooth and Peter Sherringham. The scenes are laid in Paris and London. Miriam is introduced in1 the play as an inexperienced, passionately ardent aspirant for the stage. She is heard on an afternoon at Sherringham's rooms at the Paris Embassy, and, in a way, to be "tried out" before Madame Carre, who studied under Rachel at tho Comedie Francaise. The trial takes place- in the first act, and is the occasion for an amusing passage between Madame Carre and Miriam's mother when the latter, rather concerned for her daughter's sense of propriety, suggests to the French actress the possibility of Miriam having to represent "a bad woman." To/which Madame Carre replies:— "In England, then, in your plays everyone's immaculately good? Your writers must be even cleverer than I supposed!" Miriam begins her trial by reciting part" of Tennysftn's "Lotus Eaters" in a long, strong, colourless voice, beginning without emphasis and in a dismal monotony. Madame Carre's advice is summed up in three words, "work, work, work," and she finally agrees to take her and teach her, if she is teachable and ready to unlearn all she learned before. Miriam takes her fate in her own hands, rids herself of her mother's ideas of what is and what is not proper —and in time makes a tremend-r ous success of her. career. Peter meanwhile has fallen .in love with her. There is tense love scenes laid in the Foyer dcs Artistes of the Comedie Francaise in which Peter implores Miriam to give up her profession. She estimates the price, and with success in her hands prefers to continue on the stage rather than be wife to Peter, (who is promoted to be a Minister) and so to become (as she puts it), "a nasty 'official' woman, who thinks for ever she's a queen because she's ridiculous for an hour." No; Miriam will remain in tho theatre, her destined,world, and so she does, and inferentially marries an actor. Why? Because he is in her world. "The Tragic Muse" is well constructed, reads smoothly, and indeed is eminently suitable for reading to oneself or aloud.