SHAW AND SHAKESPEARE.

Evening Star, Issue 21316, 21 January 1933, Page 12

SHAW AND SHAKESPEARE.

Made less by wireless, flying, and all the other inventions of the age, New Zealand’s remoteness from the heart of things is still sharply impressed by the realisation that it is nine years, within a few weeks, since Bernard Shaw’s great play ‘Saint Joan’ was first produced in London, and it is only now making its first appearance in this country. That seems incredible for a play by the chief dramatist of his time —possibly the greatest play that has been written in fifty years—but there are explanations. The years that have seen the climax and decline of the movies and the rise of the talkies—names ■ redolent of modernity—have been bad years for the ilesh and blood drama. And there is one great consolation. When wo do see ‘ Saint Joan ’ in a few days’ time it will bo seen properly, with the same actress, Dame Sybil Thorndike, in the title role, who filled that at its first production. So that we shall not only see the star play of its time, but wo shall see its chief character performed by a star of whom Mr A. G. Gardiner, with no disposition and with no occasion to act Mr Puff, and with this drama in mind, has said: “She belongs to the great tradition of the tragic muse with as high an authority as any English actress since Mrs Siddons.” It is ‘ Alpha of the Plough ’ who records that judgment in a volume not written about the theatre but about celebrities. While he docs not say that Dame Thorndike is equal loathe greatest actresses of the past, ho insists that she is of their company, with the distinction of being something more than an actress. “ Her art is not a selfcontained and excluding interest, sufficient in itself, intolerant of any competing passion. It is not an end in

itself, but a medium for the expression of something greater than itself.” It is as a tragedy queen, we are further told, that she finds the truest expression 1 ' of her genius. “ She alone among living actresses has brought back the fine flower of that culture to the English stage.” So much for Dame Sybil Thorndike, who, notwithstanding the title of honour which, she wears, comes to us in the very prime of her powers. What of ‘ Saint Joan ’ P That play most certainly is Shaw at his greatest. No work was ever written by him more seriously. Though his prejudices and his crotchets will break in at times—far less than in his introduction, which is not acted—and he guys for a time the English chaplain, with the last war in his mind, he has no idea of guying the Maid. It is an impressive character he makes of her, though he does make her talk like a modern hoyden, when she is not talking about her mission or her voices, as part of his method to make her alive. Shaw’s theory of her as the first Protestant and the first Nationalist may be right or wrong; there are historians who say that he mixes his history badly, attributing influences of one period to another, in the view he takes of the background of her time. A later age, unable to see Dame Thorndike in the part, may be as unimpressed by Shaw’s Joan as he is by those of Andrew Lang and Mark Twain, who impressed other times, and whom he derides. The play is impressive today in the reading, and should be infinitely more. so on the stage, being dramatic in all its seven scenes. It has a nobility of its own, and that quality is rare in post-war literature and plays. Dame Thorndike’s highest powers will be seen again in one of the greatest of all tragedies, Macbeth.’ But, to quote Mr Gardiner again, “ though she is the acknowledged tragedy queen of the English stage, it is not in tragedy alone that she has graduated and won fame.” Her lighter gifts will be seen in a typical Shaw comedy—and no plays are cleverer or more witty—and another comedy beside. It is a rare season of the flesh and blood drama that is promised.