‘Mask and the Face'

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 508, 10 November 1928, Page 24

‘Mask and the Face'

When is a Repertory Play Not Repertory?

Beerbohm Tree once provided question and answer for the saying, “When is a repertory play not a repertory play? When it’s a success.” What Tree’s saying indicated was that if a play did well as a repertory piece it was likely to be transferred to a “commercial” theatre for a long run, and thereby lose its repertory character, for among the main theories of repertory are those of short runs. In London a piece often goes from repertory or from a small “producing house” to a commercial stage. A play with qualities to appeal to any audience is “The Mask and the Face,” a free adaptation by C. B. Fernald from the Italian of Chiarelli, which was staged by the Melbourne Repertory Theatre Society at the Playhouse for four nights recently. Whether it was “highbrow” or not in its original Italian form, it has been turned, in English, into a good light farce, welcome when more than a few of the farce# we see are of the tiresome heavy variety. Those who wish can search for symbolism and significance in the play, but it can be more happily taken as an entertainment. It satirises a modern form of hero-worship, and talks a little of the human inclination to pretend in certain matters, but chiefly it serves to amuse by its ingenuity. Synge showed us in “The Playboy of the Western. World” a man who was made a hero because he boasted of having committed a murder. When he was proved to be innocent of the crime his glory vanished. There is some similarity in the plot of “The Mask and the Face.” Count Mario Grazia is confident that, though there is much decadence in his circle, his honour is safe. Disgusted by a revelation concerning another household, he declares that if ever he has reason to think his wife unfaithful he will kill her. Later his attention, is guided by a jealous woman to facts which convince him that his wife Is not true to him. All his visitors become aware of the scandal, and they recall his murderous declaration and observe his seemingr frenzy at the discovery of his wife’s seeming guilt. When they have gone he does not kill his wife, but he causes her to depart secretly for London. Grazia is arrested for the murder of the missing woman, but he is acquitted when, after many months’ delay, the trial is held. The audience is not present at the emotional court scenes, or at the displays of heroworship which are directly associated with the trial, but it witnesses simile episodes when Grazia returns to his home. His friends have new esteem for him, and the women new affection. Flowers and letters arrive from everywhere; Grazia is hailed as a cave man and a sheik, and he is invited to qppear in moving pictures and in politics. Then, heavily veiled, the “murdered” woman returns, and her husband perceives that if her presence becomes known all his new fame will vanish. Gradually his friends become suspicious that he is not a genuine murderer, and he decides to renew their faith by announcing that the body has been recovered, and that there will be a funeral. Preparations are made to bury a plaster cast of Niobe, and Grazia's veiled wife enters the house of mourning as a mourner for herself.