A PLAY PRODUCED B C.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12707, 9 March 1912, Page 3 (Supplement)

A PLAY PRODUCED B C.

LONDON, January 19. London this week haa teeeft a play which was' played to men 400 years before Christ was born. The Times, describing the production of "CEdipus Rex," by Professor Reiriliardt and Martin Harvey, at Convent Garden, says : — . I "Whatever one's main impression upon entering Convent Garden Theatre and looking round upon a crowd of eminent politicians, fashionable dames, and the other familiar components' of what is called a •brilliant' playhouse audience, it is not an impression of awe. A CROWD RUSHES IN. "Here we are, you say, the same old set, all flagrantly people of A.D. 1912. But there rushes in, pell-mell, another sort of crowd, clad this one in old Greek dress, loudly wailing and violently gesticulating ; they shout for 'CEdipus,' and from the bronze door at the back slowly advances a gracious white-robed figure to greet them — and. f roim that : moment until two hours later, when this same figure staggers out, blind and bleeding, you are taken, far away from 1912, away from yourself, away from the fashionable dames and the eminent politicians; away to 425 8.C., there or thereabuots. "And then it is you get your impression of awe. You think of the generations of men through all those centuries who have seen in one form or another this same 'CEdipus Rex' and have more or less after the same fashion, in essentials', but with infinite variations of minor mood, been thrilled by it." "The tragic fate, the malign destiny, that makes the wise afid brave King CEdipus of Thebes unwittingly murder bis own father and wed his -widowed mother, in fulfilment of an oracle; his subsequent despair and remorse culminating in self-inflicted ' blindess ; the whole sequence (of events, in which the noble humans are but puppets in the hands of a power as cruel as it is relentless — all this would be positively unbearable- on the v stago were it not for the sublime art of the dramatist who knew how to clothe unspeakable horror in a garment of classic beauty. Parricide, suicide, self-mutilation, anguish of the soul, the bitter injustice or wholly undeserved suffering emotion, and deeds that would tear at the spectators' heart strings and cause intense pain, are here presented with such purity of form, noble rhythm, perfect construction, classic serenity, that tha marvellous beauty of the form triumphs over the horrors of the dramatic material," aays tha Mail. v lni : the management of his crowds Professor Reinhardt has cut clean across tho established concepts of classical tragedy," says the Morning Post. "He has t put Yio trust in slow and stately movement as the vehicle for the tragic. The first players to appear come rushing full speed on to the stage, long-limbed and suggestive of . the Greek enthusiasm for the lissomeness and strength of youth. And in such realism as Professor Reinhardt thus attains "he brings the audience into closer intimacy with the tragedy he has to .unveil. As in his other productions, so in 'CEdipus,' he shows a. sure control of his . v monster crowds comparable with that which the few great masters have of the full orchestra." j "At the present moment the work of Reinhardt demands special attention," says R. R. Buckley in the World's Work," because he is the first man to emphasise drama as a vision, as in 'Sumurun'j as a gigantic spectacle, alive with music and color, in the 'Miracle' ; and in 'CEdipus' Rex at Covent Garden. WHAT REINHARDT DOES. "By relegating the spoken word to its proper place, by using music for atmosphere, and by employing aright the qualities of color and decoration, he has done much to reconcile the intellectual and popular appeal. "The Reinhardt who can show, to the great public something of life's immensity, something of the majesty that lay behind the Greek theatre, and may in the future move the world, is worthy of study, for, through him, we may learn that secret of combining the intellectual with tine emotional appeal that made a Shakespeare .and a Wagner."