University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

A Historical Study Of Oral Interpretation In London, 1951-1962 As A Form Of Professional Theatre

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A Historical Study Of Oral Interpretation In London, 1951-1962 As A Form Of Professional Theatre

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Content A HISTORICAL STUDY OF ORAL INTERPRETATION IN LONDON, 1951-1962 AS A FORM OF PROFESSIONAL THEATRE by James Reive Lindsay Linn A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (Speech-Drama) August 1964 UNIVERSITY O F S O U T H E R N CALIFO RNIA GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY PARK LOS ANGELES 7. CALIFORNIA This dissertation, written by .......Jaxoe.a.Reiye. .LiRdsay..Lixu;....... under the direction of his Dissertation Com mittee, and approved by all its members, has been presented to and accepted by the Graduate School, in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y ..... ' * Dean D a<e....A ugU J& fc,...i..9.6.4.............................. EE Chairman TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE PROBLEM AND DEFINITION OF TERMS USED .... 1 Statement of the Problem ..................... 1 Significance of the Problem ................. 2 Review of the Literature..................... 5 Limitations of the Study....................... 17 Methods and Procedures ....................... 24 Preview of Remaining Chapters.............. 30 II. THE INFLUENCE OF THE FIRST DRAMA QUARTETTE . . . 32 The Reception of the T o u r ..................... 34 The Uniqueness Seen in the F o r m .......... . 54 The Reception of Dragon1s M o u t h ...............62 Summary........................................ 74 III. EMLYN WILLIAMS' READINGS AS CHARLES DICKENS, 1951 AND 1952 77 ". . . Merely Players", 1951 . . .............78 The First Dickens Program, 1951 80 Bleak House, 1952 93 The Uniqueness Ascribed to the Programs . . . 102 Summary and Conclusions ..................... 118 IV. ACTIVITY ON THE FRINGE, 1950-1954..... ....... .. 122 Solo Performances in the West E n d ............123 ii 1 iii CHAPTER PAGE Activity in Club Theatres, Drama Auxili aries ....................................... 129 Rehearsed Readings in the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Etc........................150 Poetry Readings of the Apollo Society, Etc. . 156 Summary and Conclusions ..................... 169 V. THE THOMAS MEMORIAL READINGS, 1954, AND DYLAN THOMAS GROWING UP. 1955 176 The Thomas Memorial Readings ................. 177 Concert Readings, 1955-60 ..... ........ 187 Dylan Thomas Growing Up, 1955 . 195 Summary and Conclusions.......... 218 VI. POETRY READINGS, 1955-60, AND THE AGES OF MAN. 1959-60 225 Poetry Readings on the Fringe................ 226 The Ages of Man, 1959-60 ..................... 246 Portraits of Women, 1958 ..................... 273 A Lovely Light, 1960 ......................... 276 Summary and Conclusions .............. 281 VII. SOLO PRODUCTIONS, 1955-1960, INCLUDING THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING OSCAR, 1960 289 West End Solos, 1955-1956 .......... 291 Solos on the Fringe, 1955-1960 ............... 294 / Mark Twain Tonight, 1960 . .......... 311 The Importance of Being Oscar, 1960 315 iv CHAPTER PAGE Summary and Conclusions....................... 334 VIII. READING-DRAMAS, 1958-1961 ..... ............. 341 Love and Lectures. 1958....................... 343 Dear Liar, 1960 348 Abelard and Heloise, 1960 .................. 363 Kreutzer Sonata, 1961 369 Summary and Conclusions....................... 375 IX. THE HOLLOW CROWN. 1961, AND A F T E R ............... 384 The Hollow Crown, 1961 ....................... 385 Our Little Life. 1961, and Occasional Read ings, 1961-62 404 The Art of Seduction, 1962 ................. 412 Poetry Readings, 1961-1962, and The Vagaries of Love, 1962 ........ ................... 422 Summary and Conclusions....................... 434 X. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS........................ 443 Summary..................................... 444 Conclusions...................................453 Suggestions for Further Study ........ 455 BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................... 460 APPENDIX.................................. 471 CHAPTER I THE PROBLEM, THE LITERATURE AND PROCEDURE I. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM The general purpose of this study was to describe the status of oral interpretation as a form of professional theatre in London during the eleven seasons from June 1, 1951 to May 31, 1962. Accordingly its problem was divided into the following constituent questions: 1. Was there a significant number of productions of oral interpretation in the professional London theatre during this period? 2. Were the productions of oral interpretation cri tical or popular successes? 3. What influence, if any, was exerted by the early productions of oral interpretation upon those that followed? 4. What influence, if any, was exerted by American productions of oral interpretation? 5. Were the productions of oral interpretation in the London theatre chiefly solo performances? 6. What connection, if any, was established between the commercial theatre and the recitals of poe try reading by professional actors? 7. Did the theatre reviewers consider the produc- 2 t tions of oral interpretation to be a distinct form of theatre with its own traditions, tech niques and terminology? 8. Did the reviewers’ attitudes toward oral inter pretation programs change as the period contin ued? 9. Did the reviewers consider the productions of oral interpretation to be evidence of a popular trend in the professional theatre? 10. What production of oral interpretation, if any, did the reviewers cite most often as an example? II. SIGNIFICANCE CF THE PROBLEM The problem of this investigation was thought to be significant for the following reasons. It was believed that in any viable art the works of its leading professional practitioners, and the critical re sponse thereto, is a subject of legitimate scholarly con cern. Inasmuch as London is generally acknowledged to be one of the theatre capitals of the English-speaking world, the use of oral interpretation in its theatre might be of general scholarly interest to students of oral interpreta tion and of drama. High standards of artistic excellence have been as cribed by American drama critics to several postwar British productions of oral interpretation that have visited the United States: Emlyn Williams' two programs of readings as Charles Dickens, for example, or his A Boy Growing Up; Sir John Gielgud's Ages of Man or the Royal Shakespeare Compan y's The Hollow Crown. The quality of such performances might imply the existence of a vigorous tradition of oral interpretation in the postwar London theatre. Conversely, the fact that most of these British productions were solos, and the fact that the published collections of theatre re views by British critics— unlike those of their American counterparts— almost never refer to a postwar "habit" or "fad" or "spate" of reading,1 might imply that postwar Bri tish productions of oral interpretation have been the iso lated result of individual creativity rather than the flower ing of a tradition. The testing of either hypothesis would be of significance to American students of oral interpreta tion. What has generally been considered the first major postwar reading in the United States, Don Juan in Hell, opened in New York exactly a month after the first major postwar British reading, Williams' "Mixed Bill" of Dickens 1-Eric Bentley, The Dramatic Event: An American Chron icle (New York: Horizon Press, 1954), pp. 83-85, 123-27; John Gassner, Theatre at the Crossroads: Plays and Play wrights of the Mid-Century American Stage (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960), p. 286; George Jean Nathan, The Theatre in the Fifties (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), pp. 36-37, 39, 117, 216. stories, opened in London; hence the postwar revival of in terest in professional oral interpretation may have begun in both theatre capitals at the same time. Indeed, that pio neer American postwar reading, the First Drama Quartette's Don Juan in Hell, toured Britain between its first cross country American tour and its opening in New York; the re vival of interest in both countries may have come from a single source. Moreover, in addition to the British visi tors to the United States, cited above, there have been sev eral American productions of oral interpretation that sub sequently visited Great Britain: Hal Holbrook's Mark Twain Tonight, Jerome Kilty's Dear Liar and Dorothy Stickney's A Lovely Light. Such parallels might imply that the postwar revival of interest in professional oral interpretation de veloped in similar fashion in both countries. Even if each of these hypotheses were rejected on other grounds, the present study of oral interpretation in the London theatre might be expected to shed light indirectly upon the status of oral interpretation as a form of professional theatre in New York. Sources of data about the British theatre have been neither as fully centralized as American sources,2 nor otherwise made as readily available to American scholars. ^Among the obvious examples, there was at the time no British equivalent of New York Theatre Critics' Reviews, or Dissertation Abstracts. 5 Hence the problem of the present investigation might acquire increased significance insofar as it led to the assembly and presentation of data that would otherwise remain scattered among several London libraries. A general investigation of the status of oral inter pretation in the London theatre might assist in the narrow ing and focusing of subsequent investigations. A section, "Suggestions for Further Study," concludes Chapter X, below. But the significance of the present problem may lie partly in its location of such areas for future study while the sources of primary data are still available: while the act ors most directly concerned are still available for inter view, and before the files of some potentially significant organizations have been destroyed. Ultimately the data elicited in the present investi gation, combined with those gained in others, might form the bases of further comparisons of contemporary oral inter pretation in Britain with that in the United States, of pro fessional technique in oral interpretation with the academic theory thereof, and of actor with poet as popular model of interpretative technique. III. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE No evidence was found of a previous systematic study of professional oral interpretation in London during any 6 part of the eleven-year period.3 The only attempt at such a history encountered in the study, a four-column article in The Stage, has been reproduced below, as the Appendix. The published abstract of E. M. Sivier's disserta tion, "A Study of Interpretive Speech in England, 1860- 1940," suggested that hers might be a study similar to the present one, and hence might illuminate the background out of which current British practice may have arisen. The ab stract noted that "three principal movements were revealed": the elocutionary; the "golden age of poetry speaking," fos tered by poets; and the psychological movement which incor porated oral expression into the school curriculum as part of social adjustment.4 The preface to the study, which closely resembled the abstract, described the method in part: An arbitrary selection was made of the works which JIn additxon to the standard American sources, such as "Doctoral Dissertations Accepted by American Universities" in Dissertation Abstracts (through April, 1962) and the an nual lists compiled for Speech Monographs (through August, 1963) by Franklin Knower, Clyde Dow, and Jeffery Auer, and for the Educational Theatre Journal (through May, 1962) by Franklin Knower and Albert Johnson, some standard British sources were consulted, such as: Magda Whitrow (ed.), Index to Theses Accepted for Higher Degrees in the Universities of Great Britain and Ireland, Vols. I-X (London: Aslib, 1950- 1961); The Player's Library: The Catalogue of the Library of the British Drama League, 2nd Edition (London: Faber & Faber, Ltd., 1950), with three supplements (1951-56). ^Clyde W. Dow (ed.), "Abstracts of Theses in the Field of Speech, XVII," Speech Monographs, XXIX (June, 1962), pp. 113-114. 7 would offer a specific contribution to an understanding of prevailing philosophies. In this way, many manuals and works with repetitive theories and techniques were read and noted, but not included here.^ Dr. Sivier did not identify the many manuals and works from which the arbitrary selection was made, and rather severely limited the number to be selected. There was some tendency to accept the manuals1 strictures as prevailing practice and the manuals' advice as prevailing philosophy, so that the work may have been weakened by circularity. Accordingly no attempt was made in the present study to relate its data to the three principal movements discovered by Sivier. Comparatively few studies were encountered concern ing the individuals whose performances may have affected the course of professional oral interpretation in postwar Lon don. John Gielgud's autobiography, Early Stages, concluded with the opening of his New York production of Hamlet in 1936, although the "New and Revised" edition of 1953 appends a list of his appearances to 1948.6 A pictorial biography compiled by Hallam Fordham also concluded well before the period in which Sir John was seriously concerned with oral interpretation in the West End.^ Morton Zabel's account of ^Evelyn McCurdy Sivier, "A Study of Interpretative Speech in England, 1860-1940" (unpublished doctoral disser tation, Wayne State University, Detroit, 1961), p. iv. 0 John Gielgud, Early Stages: A New and Revised Edit- ion with a Preface by Ivor Brown (London: The Falcon Press, 1953). ' ^Hallam Fordham (comp.), John Gielgud: An Actor's 8 Ruth Draper was, as its title suggests, a collection of her scripts, prefaced with Zabel's "memoir"; this last was a popular biography concerned more with the early years of struggle than with the analysis of the mature art form, and far more detailed in its accounts of American critical re sponse than British.8 Somewhat similar was Loganbill's un published dissertation upon Cornelia Otis Skinner.8 It too had a good deal of biographical incident, and although it contained no scripts, it did give detailed plot summaries of two productions, The Wives of Henry VIII and Paris '90. It relied rather heavily upon Miss Skinner's scripts as its historical and sociological authority, so that its analysis of the realism of the characterization may have been some what circular. In its analysis of technique, the writing became diffuse, as in this "evaluation" or conclusion: As a performer, her accurate attention to detail, her technique, grace, and acting ability tend to capti vate the public. With her monologue-dramas, she fur thered the solo-performer's position in theatrical art. Unaided, she became the leading theatrical solo-perform- sr • Biography in Pictures, with Personal Narrative by John Giel gud (London: John Lehmann, [1952]). O Morton Dauwen Zabel, The Art of Ruth Draper: Her Dramas and Characters, with a Memoir (London: Oxford Univer sity Press, 1960). Q G. Bruce Loganbill, "Cornelia Otis Skinner and Her Art-Form of the Monologue-Drama" (unpublished doctoral dis sertation, Michigan State University, East Lansing, 1961). ^ •8Ibid., p. 238. Singer's The Charles Laughton Story offered many anecdotes about Laughton's experiences as a reader, and indeed gave more emphasis to his reading than to his acting; but it was too boisterous and uncritical an account to serve as more than an introduction to the subject.H More valuable than the foregoing works were Theatre World Monographs, a series of short and semipopular critical biographies, each written by a London critic about a British actor or actress: Eric Keown's study of Peggy Ashcroft, for example, or Kenneth Tynan's of Alec Guinness and of Eric Portman. Although generally far more discerning than such purely popular stage biographies as Felix Barker's The Oli- 1 2 viers, the individual volumes appeared to take their focus more from the interests of the critic-biographers than from a discernible editorial policy or other statement of criti cal assumptions. Hence few reliable inferences could be derived, for example, from the fact that Hobson's study of Ralph Richardson lists more readings than does Trewin's of 13 Edith Evans. However, the series appeared to be a good ■^Kurt Singer, The Charles Laughton Story (London: Robert Hale Ltd., 1954). l^Felix Barker, The Oliviers: A Biography (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1953). 1 O - L~ > Harold Hobson, Ralph Richardson: an illustrated study of his work with a list of his appearances on stage and screen (no. 10 of Theatre World Monographs, general editor Frances Stephens. London: Rockliff, 1958). J. C. Trewin, Dame Edith Evans: an illustrated 10 introduction to the recent history of British acting, and a fairly revealing survey of the informal critical tenets of those who write the established drama columns in the weekly and monthly periodicals.^ One member of that series, however— Richard Find- later' s monograph of Emlyn Williams— gave more extended and perceptive treatment to the problem posed in the present study than did any other single work encountered.15 it offered a cogent and reasonably thorough account of Wil liams' readings from Dickens and Dylan Thomas, and although it did not document its sources, the research appeared sound. The examples of reviewers' reactions to the three productions were few but well chosen, if somewhat too sharp ly limited in number? and the analysis of technique was reasonably thorough in what aimed, after all, to be a semi- popular study. Findlater's purpose was not, of course, to examine Williams' contributions to reading; rather it was to give a unified account of the diverse talents that made Wil- study of her work, with a list of her appearances on stage and screen (no. 2 of Theatre World Monographs, general edi tor Frances Stephens. London: Rockliff, 1954). 14 Unfortunately for the newcomer's breadth of vision, these critics, and not the daily reviewers, are usually the people who write the theatre histories and collections of reviews. 1 5 Richard Findlater, Emlyn Williams: an illustrated study . . . (no. 8 [6?J of Theatre World Monographs, gener al editor Frances Stephens. London: Rockliff Publishing Corporation, 1956). 11 liams a major actor and also at one time perhaps the leading playwright of his generation. Inasmuch as those readings had occupied Williams for the five years previous to Find- later ' s publication, their success must have threatened to obscure^— if only in the monograph— what seemed to Findlater, at the time, to be Williams' far greater contribution, real and potential, as a dramatist. Given such beliefs, and given some of the impatience with the then current British playwri£ing that made Look Back in Anger seem in 1956 a long-overdue revolution, Findlater's account of Williams' readings was remarkably objective. Histories of the recent London theatre did not shed much light on the professional reading that was done during the years under question. That omission might in itself be significant, even though the histories made little pretense to completeness, being for the most part collections of some of the author's past reviews, assembled from his weekly or 17 monthly column; after all, similar collections by New 16 r - See R. B. M.[arriottj's review of the monograph, in The Stage. January 17, 1957, p. 8, for a statement of this view. It said, in part: "One sincerely hopes that Mr. Findlater is right . . . and that Mr. Williams will soon re-emerge as a force in the contemporary theatre. For de lightful, clever and original though his readings from Dick ens and Dylan Thomas may be, Mr. Williams has in the last year or two been moving away from the playwright's theatre he once showed vigorous signs of dominating." 17 Collections of daily (in contrast with weekly or monthly) reviews were scarce; this study encountered only one: W. A. Darlington, Six Thousand ahd One Nights: Forty 12 York reviewers contained a number of references to, and some times examinations of, professional readinglS— and their British counterparts might be expected to do the same. In stead, the British collections of reviews tended to be or ganized around two or three perennial issues about which a good deal of heat could be generated: the comparison of Gielgud and Olivier as Shakespearean actors; the angry young men of the Royal Court Theatre; the ensemble playing and the Marxist politics of the Theatre Royal, Stratford East. How ever, inasmuch as two of those controversies might be re garded as belonging to a social if not an artistic revolu tion, the comparative silence about reading might indicate only that it was not controversial. Such critics as Kenneth Tynan and Laurence Kitchin, for example, were clearly polem- 19 lcists. Audrey Williamson was much less partisan, but her review was limited to three years; she gave some account of Years a Critic (London: George G. Harrap & Co., Ltd., 1960). 18 In addition to those of Bentley, Gassner and Na than, cited above on page 3, see the following: John Mason Brown, As They Appear (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1953); John Gassner, The Theatre in our Times: A Survey of the Men, Ma terials and Movements in the Modern Theatre (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1954); Walter Kerr, Pieces at Eight (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957). ■^Kenneth Tynan, He That Plays the King: a view of the Theatfe (London: Longmans, Green, 1950); , Cur tains: Selections from the Drama Criticism and Related Wri tings (London and New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1961); Laurence Kitchin, Mid-Century Drama (London: Faber and Fa ber, 1960). 13 the readings that followed upon the death of Dylan Thomas.20 But the ignoring of reading by the somewhat omniverous com mentators, such as Darlington or Trewin, might be taken as negative evidence.^1 Those histories which were not collec tions of reviews tended to be rather partisan accounts of some special movement: John Russell Taylor's description of the "angry" playwrights is perhaps a familiar e x a m p l e . 22 The great value of such limited histories— as opposed to 2 ^ such general surveys as Trewin'sJ— was to serve as back ground, particularly for the period immediately preceding that of the present study, where the scarcity of annual re views and the random scattering of the surviving primary data increased the value of almost any eyewitness account, however biased. Donald Wolfit's rather aggressive autobio graphy, for example, was often at variance with Landstone's history of the Arts Council, which in turn contradicted 20 ^Audrey Williamson, Contemporary Theatre, 1953- 1956 (London: Rockliff, 1956). 21 W. A. Darlington, op. cit.; J. C. Trewin, A Play Tonight (London: Elek Books, 1952); J. C. Trewin (ed.), Theatre Programme (London: Muller, 1954). 22 John Russell Taylor, The Angry Theatre: New Bri tish Drama (New York: Hill & Wang, 1962) published in Bri tain as Anger and After: A Guide to the New British Drama (London: Methuen, 1962). ^J. C. Trewin, The Theatre Since 1900 (Twentieth Century Histories. London: Andrew Dakers Limited, 1951). 14 Dean's history of E.N.S.A. and received general corrobora tion from Guthrie's autobiography; but from the four toge ther might be extracted a fairly firm impression of the Brit ish theatre during and immediately after World War II, and some idea of the kind of solo performances that were sent out on tour.^ Norman Marshall's history of the non-commer cial theatre contained some useful data about the early theatre clubs.25 With the exception of the two major theatre annuals, The Stage"Year Book and Theatre World Annual, the historical reviews of a given year were valuable to the present study in much the same way as were the theatre histories and the collections of reviews. The Arts Council report on the Festival of Britain, or Trewin's reviews for the British Council, or Ivor Brown's survey of the 1954-55 season, tend ed to be no more specific than the usual stage history or than the theatre section in such general reviews as The An nual Register; hence they were used chiefly for background 24 Basil Dean, The Theatre at War (London: George G. Harrap & Co., Ltd., 1956); Tyronne Guthrie, A Life in the Theatre (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1959); Charles Landstone, Off-Stage: A Personal Record of the first twelve years of State Sponsored Drama in Great Britain (Lon don : Elek, 1953); Donald Wolfit, First Interval: The Auto biography (London: Odhams Press Limited, 1954). 2 S Norman Marshall, The Other Theatre (London: John Lehmann, 1947) . 26 John Andrews and Ossia Trilling (eds.), Dobson1s Theatre Year-Book, 1948-49 (London: Dennis Dobson Ltd., 15 The two major theatre annuals were of far more di rect value. The Stage Year Book claims to list the title, author, producer, cast, theatre and opening date of every production, amateur and professional, that opened in the British Isles during the previous calendar year.^7 Theatre World Annual confines itself to West End productions; it is a more popular review, containing more pictures but fewer 28 data. As a supplement, a section in successive editions of Who's Who in the Theatre, carries the playbills for Lon don productions since the previous issue.But none of 1949); _______ (eds.), International Theatre (London: Samp son Low, 1949); The Arts Council of Great Britain, Festival of Britain 1951: London Season of the Arts, May-June 1951 (London: Lund Humphries, 1951); Ivor Brown, Theatre 1954-5 (London: Max Reinhardt, 1955); Harold Hobson (ed.). Inter national Theatre Annual No. 5 (London: John Calder, 1961); Ivison S. MacAdam and Hugh Latimer (eds.), The Annual Regis ter: A review of public events at home and abroad for the year (London, New York and Toronto: Longmans, Green and Co., 1945-1962); J. C. Trewin (ed.), The Year1s Work in the Thea tre 1948-9. 1949-50 (published for the British Council. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1949-50). ^ The Stage Year Book, 1949-1961 (London: Carson and Comerford, Ltd., 1950-62). ^Frances Stephens (ed.), Theatre World Annual (Lon don) : A Pictorial Review of West End Productions with a record of Plays and Players, nos. 1-11, 1st June, 1949 to 31st May, 1960 (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1950-60). 29 John Parker and Freda Gage (eds.), Who1s Who in the Theatre: A Biographical Record of the Contemporary Stage, Edns. 10-13 (London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1947, 1952, 1957, 1961). 16 these works pretends to the sort of completeness that might be used confidently as the basis of broad inference: for example, the fact that The Stage Year Book listed nine "re hearsed readings" for 1954 and only one for 1956 might re flect a change of editorial policy, a change of terminology, or merely secretarial inefficiency somewhere in the offices of the reporting organizations. Accordingly the data gleaned from these lists of productions were invaluable to the present study— but chiefly as starting points. Finally, passing mention should be made of some of the works which supplied peripheral data about the promi nence of public reading. The Annual Reports of the British Council listed readers and other solo performers who had been sent abroad during a given year, and the recordings that had been made under council sponsorship.Descrip tions of individual theatres or their histories sometimes included lists of productions. Sometimes the scripts of # reading productions were available, and, somewhat more fre quently, the recordings. In summary, the present investigation encountered no Report on the Work of the British Council, 1934- 1955 (London: The British Council, 1955); Report on the Work of the British Council for the year ended 31st March 19f50- 54, 1956, 1958] . 31 The Arts Theatre Club Annual (1956, 1957); Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson, The Theatres of London (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1961). 17 previous studies of reading in the professional London thea tre for any part of the period 1951-62, except for the news article appended to the present study. Histories of the theatre and collections of critical reviews sometimes con tained amended reviews of individual readings; biographies of individual actors sometimes mentioned particular readings of theirs; but only Richard Findlater's monograph of Emlyn Williams contained an extended and perceptive analysis of a reading, or an attempt to generalize upon reading as a thea trical form. Accordingly these works were used as back ground; the present study began, in effect, with the lists of productions contained in the two major theatre annuals, and proceeded from those to the primary data— the newspaper reviews and the theatre programmes. IV. LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY Inasmuch as this was believed to be the first study of oral interpretation in the postwar professional London theatre, it attempted to be comprehensive rather than exclu sive. Accordingly its definitions were broad. Oral inter pretation, in addition to the conventional textbook defini tions, was allowed to subsume the costumed lecture-recital, such as The Importance of Being Oscar, and the sort of im personation which Emlyn Williams, in make-up and beard, gave of Charles Dickens; it included the drama of letters, such as Dear Liar, and sometimes— as perhaps when John Gielgud, 18 in Ages of Man. howled over an invisible Cordelia in his arms, and rather clearly when Nel Oosthout, in 1956, did St. Joan single-handed— the definition included solo acting as well. The intention, then, was to include just about everything that might reasonably be advanced as similar to oral interpretation in its broadest definition, and to pro vide information sufficient to enable more narrowly discrim inating students to reclassify those productions according to their more rigid standards. Geographical limits were only slightly less elastic. Most of the productions described below were mounted if not in the West End, then in the areas immediately adjacent: in Bloomsbury or Soho or Mayfair or Westminster. A few were as far out toward the suburbs as Hammersmith or Stratford. But the present investigation went outside the limits claimed by the London County Council, and reported notable productions that were probably intended for London but did not arrive: the First Drama Quartette's Don Juan in Hell, for example, or Hal Holbrook1s Mark Twain Tonight or Peggy Ashcroft1s Portraits of Women. Perhaps six such productions were in cluded in the present study, on the grounds that their omis sion would be a greater distortion of the status of oral in terpretation in the London theatre than would their inclu sion. In part, then, the term "London" is to be understood as mere caution: the present study was concerned not only with productions that appeared within the geographical or 19 administrative boundaries of London, but also with those in the provinces that were prominent enough in themselves— or had sufficiently prominent artists— to earn the attention of the London critics and to be reported to their London read ers . The term "professional theatre" was interpreted as including live performances by professional players in thea tre buildings or under the sponsorship of public organiza tions associated with the theatre. "Live performances" ex cluded radio and television programs: the great number of poetry readings on radio, and the fact that story reading is a recognized and much-used form of radio programming in Brit ain, has very probably exerted considerable influence upon live readings, but the sheer quantity of the data would ne cessitate a separate study. "Professional players" was intended to eliminate the public exercises of drama schools and the showcase productions before invited audiences, as well as the (presumably amateur) readings of poems, especi ally unpublished ones, by promising young authors under the auspices of, say, the National Book League; but in fact this study took for granted the professionalism of many of the productions described below. If the management was known to produce professional shows, or if some of the leading players were known to have appeared in the West End or in a theatre club known to employ professional talent, then the reading in question was assumed to be professional. Giel 20 gud's tour with an early version of The Ages of Man was classified professional, although the British Council said it paid only his travel expenses; Christopher Hassall, for another example, was assumed to be professional because he often shared reading programs with Dame Edith Evans. "Pro fessional," in short, often meant the absence of a clear presumption to the contrary. And in the last phrase, con cerning sponsorship by "public organizations associated with the theatre," the limits were even more clearly arbitrary. Judging from their names and from one-line descriptions of their activities, there were in London in 1951-53 over a hundred organizations that may have sponsored periodic readings, poetic or dramatic;32 the two or three selected for investigation could hardly be expected to prove repre sentative. However, the Institute of Contemporary Arts has been listed in The Stage Year Book as the site of a number of "rehearsed readings," and as it was one of the few lit erary societies to list poetry reading as a major activity,33 its files were examined in the present study. References to the Apollo Society turned up often enough in the early stages of the study that it too was investigated.3^ The 32 • Literary. Debating and Dialect Societies of Great Britain, Ireland [and France] 1951-54 (London: the five sec tions are by various publishers, 1951-55). 33 Perhaps significantly, only 3 of the 1,057 soci eties were listed as sponsoring readings. Ibid. 34Lack of time precluded a similar investigation of 21 data thus gained were useful in piecing out the status of public reading in the years between major productions. The time limitation, expressed in the title as "1951-62," and subsequently narrowed to "June 1, 1951 to May 31, 1962," is too clumsy to result from anything but compromise. Ordinary neatness would suggest "postwar," or a conventional number of years: seven, ten, twelve. But the first clearly significant date in the study was October 29, 1951— the opening of Emlyn Williams' first Dickens produc tion; by extension, that opening date might be moved back to February 4, 1951— when Williams gave a short reading at a gala matinee. And for the conclusion of the study, a fairly tidy date might have been June 12, 1961, when The Hollow Crown entered the repertory of the Royal Shakespeare Com pany; however, the following season saw the failure of three productions modeled upon The Hollow Crown, and to omit those failures would clearly distort the ending. Accordingly, the terminal date was placed at May 31, 1962— the date used by Theatre World Annual to mark the end of the "1961-62 sea son." The temptation to call this a study of the "postwar" the Poetry Society, which also sponsored poetry readings by professional actors. The choice of the former was made on the bases that its presentations were more clearly its raison d'etre, and as it turned out, the Apollo Society, but not the Poetry Society, was fairly often reviewed in the press. 22 theatre arose out of the very scarcity of data for the years 1946-50; the supposition grew that if there had been any reading which attracted any critical attention during those years, the present study would have encountered references to it somewhere.35 But although the presumptive evidence might support the provisional conclusion that there were no major postwar readings before Williams'— unless the perform ances of Ruth Draper and Cornelia Otis Skinner be allowed— and that there was no large body of minor ones, that evidence would not preclude the existence of a potentially signifi cant number of widely scattered minor readings. The avail able records for the years before 1950 became too scrappy; nor was it feasible, within the time available, to exploit other sources of data.36 And after all, though a demonstra tion of the proposition would be far outside the bounds of this study, it might be hazarded that the terminal dates of 35 For example, in The Times1 Index or The Annual Register for the appropriate year; in the "London Playbills" section of the 10th and 11th editions of Who1s Who in the Theatre, op. cit., or the 1947 playbill listings in Dobson1s Yearbook 1948-49. op. cit., and the listings, 1948 to date, in The Stage Year Book, op. cit.; in one of the stage his tories of the period, such as Harold Hobson's Theatre (Lon don; Longmans, Green and Co., 1948), Theatre Two (1950), Verdict at Midnight: Sixty Years of Dramatic Criticism (1952), or the histories cited above, page 16; particularly in Marshall's 1947 account of the non-commercial theatre, op. cit.; or in the appropriate files of the Enthoven Col lection. 36 For example, if time had permitted, all the weekly copies of The Stage might have been searched. 23 the wartime British theatre in no way correspond to those of the war itself, and that as a consequence 1945 would be no more "natural" a starting point than would 1951. ■ And so, in the absence of alternative time limits that would be clear, historically significant and stylistically economi cal without endangering the reliability of the results, the study limited itself to that period for which its data were most nearly complete. Finally, a major limitation of this study lay in its reliance upon printed sources for its data. It made almost no use of the personal interview, and none of the question naire. As the preceding discussion may have suggested, this reliance upon newspapers and magazines opened it to possible circularity. The data consisted of news; news was whatever was noticed; and doubtless often enough, what was noticed was that which was familiar enough to make good copy. This The great wartime companies, for example, disper sed very gradually: Olivier and Richardson left the Old Vic in 1949, and its New Theatre policies were finally abandoned in 1950; Wolfit's company toured till 1948; Gielgud's Hay- market troupe re-formed in 1946 and 1947; Alec Clunes re mained at the Arts from 1942 to 1952. The playbills seemed to show a similar continuity in the kind of play performed; but if the awakening of interest in modern verse drama be taken as a sign of the postwar theatre, then several dates are possible: 1935, Murder in the Cathedral; 1939, The Fam- ily Reunion; 1945, This Wav to the Tomb; 1946, A Phoenix Too Frequent; 1948, The Lady's Not for Burning; 1949, The Cock tail Party; 1950, Venus Observed. Even in politics the transition was not altogether sharp: wartime austerity was abandoned in 1951; the pound was devalued in 1949; the Fes tival of Britain, to mark a new era, was held in 1951. 24 ability of news to generate itself may have clustered the data unnaturally: the difference between a lean year and a rich year may have depended more upon the activity of the press than upon the activity of the theatre. But to find an adequate external counterweight, perhaps in the form of in terviews , would have more than doubled the scope of the study; and insofar as this was indeed a pioneer study of the status of reading in the London theatre at that time, the public press was an obvious way of measuring that status, and probably more reliable than the reminiscences of the performers themselves. V. METHODS AND PROCEDURES The gathering of the data entailed a twofold in quiry: productions which might have been readings had to be identified and their approximate dates and locations estab lished; and then the press reaction, if any, had to be dis covered and verified. These were usually separate proce dures in the investigation of any one production, but inas much as the researching of one production often turned up data about another, they were not separate stages of the entire investigation. The identification of possible readings depended largely upon finding and consulting enough lists and index es. The playbills listed in successive issues of The Stage Year Book, Theatre World Annual, and Who1s Who in the 25 Theatre were examined for references to "reading," "rehear sed reading," "production without de'cor," "solo performance," and indeed, for productions with small casts. The lists of "appearances on stage and screen" appended to each of the Theatre World Monographs were scanned for readings, concert appearances, performances as "narrator" or "speaker," es pecially in small productions. The Times1 Index was searched for similar references, and for references to poe try reading and verse speaking as well. And other hints were sought in the annual reviews-of-the-year, in the col lections of theatre reviews, in the theatre histories, and other such works cited in the Review of the Literature. Much of this perliminary research was done at the Central Reference Library of the Westminster Public Library, in St. Martin's Street, and at the library of the British Dra ma League, in Fitzroy Square— both of which have very large theatre collections. Other works were found in the Croydon Public Library, the British Museum, and the U.S.I.S. Library at the American Embassy. In addition, access was gained to the files of the Apollo Society, at St. George's Terrace, and of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, in Dover Street; the files of the former consisted mainly of programmes and advertisements dating back to February, 1954, and those of the I.C.A. were chiefly back issues of its Bulletin, com plete back to January 1953. Attempts to gain similar access * to the files, if any, of the Royal Festival Hall were unsuc 26 cessful. Further work in the identification of possible read ings, and a good part of the tracing of press reaction, was done in the rooms housing the Gabrielle Enthoven Theatre Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum, on Cromwell Road. According to George Nash, the officer in charge of this collection: It contains,.over 1,000,000 playbills and programmes and over 6,000 engravings as well as a wealth of news paper cuttings, prompt books, and autographed letters. These are arranged chronologically under the name of the theatre to which they refer, thus building up a history of the London Stage from the beginning of the eighteenth century. Since 1925, with the co-operation of the London theatre managers, the first-night pro grammes and newspaper criticisms of every new produc tion have been added to the f i l e s .38 Mr. Nash's last sentence above is probably to be interpreted more as a statement of purpose than a record of practice; the present investigator found large gaps in some of the theatres' files of first-night programmes, and a noticeable variety in the thoroughness with which newspaper criticisms had been collected. Nevertheless, the Enthoven Collection was invaluable to the present investigation, for it permitted of a reasonably quick consultation of several reviews of a performance, whose continued candidacy as a potential oral interpretation could then be decided with fair confidence. Moreover, the files of some of the most likely theatres, and 38 George Nash, "Centres for Theatre Research," Who's Who in the Theatre, 13th Edition (1961), p. 1540. 27 particularly of the theatre clubs— some by then defunct— could be examined for further candidates; and in this way some productions were discovered which apparently were never reviewed in the press, and which consequently would other wise have been omitted from, this study. The data gained in the Enthoven Collection had to be verified and supplemented at the National Newspaper Library, housed at the Colindale branch of the British Museum. The advisability of verification was suggested by the filing procedures in the Enthoven Collection: newspaper reviews had been clipped out, often without, headings or other con text, and glued to cardboard mounts, where they were iden tified by pencil or ink notations such as "0 9/24" or "ST 3/13." By looking up a copy of the original newspaper in Colindale, it could be established, if somewhat laboriously, that the Enthoven ascription was nearly always accurate; nevertheless, the verification was continued for all re views. At Colindale too a search was made for further re views of all the productions. This search, at its widest, was not very free of chance: if, for example, The Observer for July to December were being consulted to verify an Ent hoven clipping marked "O 9/24," the volume would be checked also for references to all other readings which had been identified as occurring within that time span; but a minor production the following January might not be researched in The Observer at all, because the clippings to be verified 28 for that period came from other newspapers. Since there were a great many verifications to be made, from a wide variety of sources and a wide variety of dates, the likelihood ap peared strong that most of the probable readings were re searched in four or five periodicals— and those which oc curred near major productions were checked in ten or twelve. But it was not feasible to check all candidates in all per iodicals. All productions identified as possible readings were investigated in at least The Times and The Daily Tele graph. the two papers which appeared to have given the greatest coverage to the theatre and to other recitals. In summary, the dates and locations of productions which might have been readings were gained from annual lists of playbills, lists of actors' appearances, stage histories, The Times' Index, the files of likely theatres and theatre clubs in the Enthoven Collection, and the files of the Ap- pollo Society and the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Re views of each of these productions were sought in appropri ate issues of at least The Times and The Daily Telegraph at the National Newspaper Library at Colindale; further press comment upon many minor and most major productions was se cured in the Enthoven Collection, and verified by reference 39 This personal xmpressxon was rexnforced by statxs- tics about the space devoted to musical criticism by the 15 major papers in February and March of 1961, Tables I-IV, Royal Festival Hall, Monthly Diary, June Concerts, 1961. 29 to the original newspapers at Colindale. After the verifi cation of a particular review, within the bound volume of back issues of the cited newspaper or magazine, additional comment was sought for all other productions which had oc curred within the time limits of that particular bound vol ume; hence reviews of most productions were sought in at least four sources, and reviews of some were sought in twenty-f ive. Additional information about some of the productions was obtained from their published scripts,40 from recordings of the performances,or by attending some performances in person.^2 40 "Don Juan in Hell," for example, or Ronald Duncan, Abelard and Heloise; A Correspondence for the Stage in Two Acts (London; Faber and Faber, 1961); Jacquetta Hawkes and J. B. Priestley, Dragon's Mouth; A Dramatic Quartet in Two Parts (London; William Heinemann Limited, 1952); Jerome Kilty, Dear Liar; A Comedy of Letters Adapted from the cor respondence of Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell (Lon don; Max Reinhardt, 1960). ^ Ages of Man (Columbia, OL-5390); The Art of Ruth Draper (Spoken Arts, SA-779, 800); Don Juan in Hell (Colum bia, SL-166); Homage to Dylan Thomas (Argo, RG-29); The Im portance of Being Oscar (Columbia, OL-5690); The Jupiter i Book of Ballads (Jupiter, JUR-00A3); The Loves of Charles II (Spoken Arts, SA-813); Mark Twain Tonight (Philips, ABL 3316; Columbia, OL-5440); Michael Redgrave Reads Tales from Hans Christian Andersen (Caedmon TC-1073); Paris *90 (Col umbia, ML-4619); Emlyn Williams as Charles Dickens (London, A-4221). 42 Ages of Man (Brighton, May, 1962; New York, April, 1963); Apollo Society concerts (London, February-April, 1962); The Art of Seduction (London, March, 1962); The Hollow Crown (London, November-December, 1961, February, 1962; New York, March, 1963). 30 The data were assembled and analyzed, and will be presented in roughly chronological order in the succeeding chapters. VI. PREVIEW OF REMAINING CHAPTERS Chapter II will try to assess the probable influence of the provincial tour made in 1951 by Charles Laughtons' First Drama Quartette in Don Juan in Hell, and of Dragon1s Mouth, the 1952 "quartet" that it inspired. Chapter III will discuss Emlyn Williams1 three readings as Charles Dick ens: at the 11. . . Merely Players" gala matinee and in the "Mixed Bill" of Dickens stories, 1951, and in Bleak House, 1952. Chapter IV will indirectly continue the assessment of Williams' influence, with an account of the performances, 1950-54, in the club theatres, drama societies, poetry read ing societies and other such institutions that made up Lon don's theatrical fringe. Chapter V will discuss the Dylan Thomas Memorial readings, 1954, subsequent concert readings, 1955-60, and Emlyn Williams' solo performance, Dylan Thomas Growing Up, 1955, together with its 1958 revival under the title, A Boy Growing Up. Chapter VI will describe the poet ry readings of 1955-60 and Sir John Gielgud's The Ages of Man, 1959, 1960; it will deal briefly with Dame Peggy Ash croft's Portraits of Women, 1958, and Dorothy Stickney's A Lovely Light, 1960. Chapter VII will continue the account, begun in Chapter IV, of the nonpoetric solo performances on 31 the theatrical fringe, 1955-1960; it will discuss briefly Hal Holbrook's Edinburgh performance of Mark Twain Tonight, 1960, and then deal at some length with Micheal Mac Liam- mcSir's The Importance of Being Oscar, 1960, 1961. Chapter VIII will consider four "reading-dramas" of 1958-61: Love and Lectures. 1958; Dear Liar. 1960; Abelard and Heloise, 1960; and Kreutzer Sonata. 1961. Chapter IX will discuss The Hollow Crown. 1961, and the Readers Theatre productions that derived from it: Our Little Life. 1961; The Art of Seduction and The Vagaries of Love, 1962. Chapter X will offer a summary, the conclusions, and suggestions for fur ther research. CHAPTER II THE INFLUENCE OF THE FIRST DRAMA QUARTETTE In the summer of 1951, immediately after their first national tour of the United States and before their equally successful New York run, the First Drama Quartette— Charles Laughton, Charles Boyer, Agnes Moorehead and Sir Cedric Hardwicke— briefly toured Great Britain with their concert reading of Don Juan in Hell, from Shaw's Man and Superman. Their itinerary was this: the Palace Theatre, Manchester, June 18-23; the Theatre Royal, Birmingham, June 25-30; the Empire Theatre, Edinburgh, July 2-7; the Empire, Liverpool, July 9-16; and the King's Theatre, Glasgow, July 16-18. Thus they played five cities in as many weeks, giving four performances in Glasgow and eight in each of the others. Because John Clements' full-length production of Man and Superman had been awarded the London rights, the Quartette did not appear in the capital. The Quartette’s importance to the history of con temporary public reading in the United States is so gener ally acknowledged that their British tour, though outside the geographical limits of the present study, could not be safely excluded therefrom. They followed the tactics that succeeded so admirably in the United States: a barnstorming 32 33 national (in British, "provincial") tour that generated pub licity for an assault on the theatre capital. The omission of the final assault— which may at first have been merely deferred— need not preclude the publicity; and so there was a chance that the Quartette's influence upon subsequent Bri tish readers, either directly or through the critics, might prove comparable to that which they exerted in America. In deed, there was a chance that the contemporary reading tra ditions in the two countries might prove to have had the Quartette as their common origin. The present study found little positive evidence to support such a thesis: as Chapter III reports, British critics were likely to see the beginnings of current British reading' in Emlyn Williams' solo performances as Charles Dickens.^" Accordingly the present chapter is concerned with inferential data; it explores such questions as these: What is the evidence of an enthusiastic response by the critics or the audience? what is the evidence that the critics or the audiences saw in the production a new or unusual form of theatre? did other productions attempt to exploit the form, and if so, what was their reception by the critics? From those answers it attempts to infer the probability of the Quartette's having exerted an influence on subsequent Bri tish reading. ^See below, p. 77. 34 I. THE RECEPTION OF THE TOUR J. B. Priestley, writing to acknowledge his debt to the production, said that he knew little more about the British tour than that it had been "rather sourly noticed in 2 England"; however the English "notices," in the national press at least, were characterized less by their sourness than by their scarcity. Apparently it was not reviewed at all by The Times or The Daily Telegraph, the two national dailies which ordinarily give the fullest coverage of the drama. Of course 1951 was the year of the Festival of Brit ain, and a great deal was going on. But during the period of the tour The Times had room to review productions osten sibly far more limited in potential appeal— one at the New Bolton's theatre club, for example, and another in Hands- worth Park, Birmingham; further, in addition to the unusual festivals at Colchester, Oxford, and Chester, it covered the apparently routine ones at King's Lynn, Norwich, Cheltenham, and Brighton. Nor does inspection of other London periodi cals of the day suggest they were starving for newsprint. ; Among others, The Daily Telegraph. The Sunday Times, The Observer, the Evening Standard and The Illustrated London News sent critics to Stratford for Michael Redgrave's open- 2 . ^Jacquetta Hawkes and J. B. Priestley, Dragon's Moutht A Dramatic Quartet in Two Parts (London: William Heinemann Limited, 1952), Preface, p. vii. 35 ing in The Tempest, but not to Birmingham, some twenty miles farther north, for Don Juan in Hell the previous night. Even J. C. Trewin, who had devoted a perhaps disproportion ate amount of space to Charles Laughton in a book which ap peared that year, and who had there called him "as much the hope of the everyday theatre Qin England during the thir- tiesj as Gielgud of the classical stage,"^ reported vaguely, and by hearsay, that "a quartet from America . . . is tour ing the north" and reading the stage directions.^ This silence is all the more curious when one re flects that the situation had all the makings of a first- rate scandal. John Clements' Man and Superman, which had been playing since February in the usual shortened version, first at the New Theatre in London and then at the Princes, added the Hell scene on June 2, a little over two weeks be fore the Quartette opened in Manchester. After June 9 he played the full version once a week, and omitted the scene the rest of the time. Cecil Wilson said in the Manchester (but not the London) edition of the Daily Mail that the Quartette was not going to London because "John Clements forbids them to appear in any part of the play in competi- 3 The Theatre Since 1900, in the series Twentieth Century Histories (London: Andrew Dakers, Limited, 1951), p. 240. ^The Sketch (hereafter cited as Sketch), July 4, 1951, p. 26. 36 tion with his own West End production." Alan Bendle, a Manchester critic, was more detailed: [[The showj is not going to London because of John Clements' production .... I am told that the sugges tion that Laughton Boyer Hardwicke and Agnes Moorehead should play it in London every night except Saturday (when Clements plays it) has met with no success. As a result, a big party of London theatre representatives will see the Drama Quartet in Manchester.6 In Glasgow, Ramsden Greig got a human interest story out of Charles Boyer's gallantry in praising Clements' performance when "it is the Clements production of Shaw's play which is keeping . . . ([the QuartetteJ out of the West End."^ And on the other side, The Times reported, much earlier, that Clements had been denied permission four years previous, when there was a chance that Maurice Evans might bring his production from New York. It is unlikely that so many op portunities for righteous indignation went completely unno ticed, especially by those papers to whom the pose was al most customary. Ironically, of the national papers sophis ticated enough to have regular drama reviews, the two to whom moral outrage seems to come most easily, the Daily Ex press and the Daily Mail, were the ones that contained the sour notices to which J. B. Priestley almost certainly was 5 Manchester Daily Mail, June 19, 1951, p. 3. Manchester Evening News, June 16, p. 2. 7 Glasgow Evening Citizen, July 17, p. 2. ^January 12, 1951, p. 8. 37 alluding. Under a four-column heading, "But Manchester wasn't over-excited about this kind of star set-up," John Barber, of the Daily Express, reported: Manchester is not easily excited. The four names of Charles Boyer, Charles Laughton, Cedric Hardwicke, and Agnes Moorhead caused no traffic jam last night. There were empty seats in the 2,200-seat theatre, perhaps because prices were doubled.^ Furthermore, he added, no autograph collectors stopped the stars on their way to the theatre. His elaborate reluctance to dwell upon all this bad news is, of course, a familiar device; what is curious is his choice of target, for at least three Manchester papers had already reported scenes of considerable enthusiasm.10 Barber did not say much about q Daily Express, June 19, p. 3. l^For example, the Manchester Daily Dispatch, June 18, ran a three-column front-page story, complete with picture, under the heading, "Crowd Mobs Boyer": "Hundreds of people mobbed Charles Boyer . . . when he arrived in Manchester yesterday .... The crowds went Boyer-crazy. They tried to break through the barriers. Police had to force a way through to get him to his car. . . ." On the same day, the Manchester Evening News said on page 3 that the Quartette "... received the sort of wel come— a crowd at the station and a reception at their ho tel— that might have greeted an international peace confer ence . . . ." The Manchester Evening Chronicle, June 18, page 2, carried an excited account of the crowded press reception. See too the Manchester Evening News, June 19, p. 2. And Cecil Wilson's Daily Mail references to the declaiming of Bradshaw, cited below, suggest some partiality in the audience. 38 the performance itself; he referred to the "lecture-hall atmosphere" of the "recitation," and conceded: Take your brains along and you will participate in Shaw's greatest oral duelling. Forget them, and you will still be swept up. . . . H His conclusion was, "But I felt cheated of the panoply of the theatre." Perhaps even more remarkable is the contrast between the two versions of Cecil Wilson's review, as they appeared in the London (national) and the Manchester editions of the Daily Mail. The former began: Four Hollywood stars in evening dress stood or half sat on cocktail stools before plain black velvet cur tains last night and declaimed Shaw to an audience that would probably have felt honoured to hear them declaim Bradshaw. Apart from the glamour of their personal appearance and the subtle variety of their voices, the First Drama Quartet, as the Hollywood visitors rather artily term themselves, offer us Shaw in the raw. 12 The Manchester version read: Four Hollywood stars in evening dress stood before black velvet curtains last night and declaimed Shaw to an audience that would probably have paid just as gladly to hear them declaim Bradshaw. They call themselves the First Drama Quartette; a 1^-One of the elements one would be swept up by was "Agnes Moorehead's curious ugliness." In this regard the Edinburgh Evening Dispatch was more chivalrous, if hardly more coherent: "her performance was a supremacy of talented personality," July 3, p..3. A^The (London and national) Daily Mail, June 19, p. 4. 39 somewhat obscure group label for such glamourous box- office names .... Their plain-clothes version of the "Hell" act . . . has played to L 250,000 since it began touring the Uni ted States four months ago.l^ Quite clearly London received a sourer report not only of the production but of the audience as well. The Manchester Guardian, last of the national papers to review the Quartette, was unfavorable, but hardly sour: . . . In some ways it is a brilliant attempt, and one wishes that it had been wholly successful, for a school of production, and even of play-writing, of this kind would be worth establishing. But as a production it is a little too uncertain of itself. . . .14 The piece was written by a "J. W.," and not by the paper's chief drama critic, Philip Hope-Wallace; so perhaps it should be considered a provincial review. Whatever the classification, it was easily the most perceptive criticism accorded the Quartette in the British press, and must be discussed more fully later. Finally, the national theatre weekly The Stage car ried a two-column picture and a brief favorable review. It quoted Charles Laughton as describing the production as "ah experiment in drama, about to be seen in England for the first time," but offered little in the way of corroboration: The playwright could not have wished for better min isters to preach his sermon of Progress Versus Pleasure, 13 Manchester Daxly Mail, June 19, p. 3. ^June 20, p. 3. 40 Peace versus Purpose. Charles Laughton is an impish, lovable Prince of Darkness . . . A superb performance by Charles Boyer is marred slightly, as his thick French accent occasionally renders a phrase indistinct. . . .15 It praised both of the other players in turn, and.concluded with a perfunctory reference to the bare setting. The national press, then, was generally silent about the Quartette's opening in Manchester, even though the dis agreement with John Clements might have given the reviews additional news value. Two national papers, the Daily Ex press and Daily Mail, ran hostile reviews; a third, The Manchester Guardian, was sympathetic but unfavorable. The theatre newspaper, The Stage, praised the performers but did not criticize the production. No explanation is offered for the silence of the others.^ Almost as remarkable as this initial silence was its ^June 21, p. 10. ^There may be some hint in a recent Guardian arti cle which referred to ". . . arrangements by which new shows are not reviewed by national papers until they reach the |West End. There is apparently an 'understanding' to this effect between the Society of West End Theatre Managers , Ithe Critics' Circle and the Newspaper Proprietors' Associa tion— though it is not apparently a public document. A spokesman for the Critics' Circle, for example, said he re garded it as a private matter and even refused to explain the reason for the 'understanding' being reached in the first place." The Guardian (prior to August, 1959, The Man chester Guardian; both hereafter cited as Guardian or Guard.), January 20, 1962, p. 6. The existence of the alleged "understanding" in 1951 is of course another matter. 41 continuation. The national press did not review the Quar tette's openings in other cities; and Trewin's hearsay re port, cited earlier, seems to have been almost the only use of an alternative strategy— the passing reference to the Quartette in a review of another show. The Manchester pa pers were almost unanimously enthusiastic, as was the local press in each of the cities of the tour. But these provin cial reviews apparently did not arouse the curiosity of the London critics. London indifference to provincial reviewers and their enthusiasms was doubtless partly justified. Of the thirteen consulted in the present study, only four had by lines— which may be a minor indication of the way they were assessed locally.^ Indeed, most of the newspapers in the tour cities customarily reviewed the week's new productions in a single issue, Tuesday's; the practice must have re quired the dispatching of five or six reporters to the vari- ious Monday night openings, and then leaving them unemployed (as drama critics at least) for the rest of the week. Cer tainly some of the reviews were maladroit. "W.C.G." of the Glasgow Evening News took the four characters1 sitting at reading desks as an example of Shaw's daring."S.H." of ■^The argument cannot be pressed with any confiden ce: all articles in The Times are anonymous, and a good many of those in The Guardian are merely initialed. 18July 17, p. 7. 42 the Liverpool Evening Express recorded that he entered the theatre "with a certain amount of wonderment," noticed that the National Anthem had been "played as it should be," and was finally reassured: Those who had had trepidation for . . . success . . . were soon put to ease for each of the artistes bril liantly kept alive the interest of the listener, even though there towards the end there was a tendency to wearisomeness probably because the interval was limited to one. At another extreme of sophistication, "R.A.C." of the Liver pool Echo took a broad, international line: It may be foolish to regret that Americans are glut tons for that special type of punishment known as lec tures, since the craving helps appreciably our exports, but it is relevant to point out that our preferences have altered radically since Dickens moved the faithful with readings from his books.20 This sort of thing (written a scant three months before Em lyn Williams began his enormously successful Dickens read ings) might lead one to forget that some of the provincial critics had had, at very least, a lot of practice: Norman Holbrook, of the Birmingham Evening Despatch, could choose his assignments that week from among eleven professional and five amateur productions in the area, including those of the 19july 10, p. 5. Only ellipses supplied. It might be added that the chief critic reviewed something called What a Man. 20 . July 10, p. 4. This was the second of six reviews of various shows and by various hands, in that issue. It concluded, incidentally, that the performance was "a triumph and "a new, thrilling experience" for the imaginative in the audience; hence it is assumed to have been intended as favor able. 43 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford. Presumably a London critic who set himself to follow the provincial thea tre could soon find the most reliable guides. In the present instance such discrimination would be hardly necessary, for the consensus of provincial reviews is almost inescapable: of the thirteen encountered in this 21 study, none were hostile, and ten were clearly favorable. Of the remainder, two were probably intended to be favor able; but as the citations above have indicated, their point is blunted: that in the Liverpool Echo by a supercilious chauvinism, and in the Liverpool Evening Express by a prose that rambles along the edge of incoherence. Only Alan Ben- dle of the Manchester Evening News expressed enough reser vations to render his a mixed review. His opening sentence was equivocal: "Whatever your personal reaction this was a Norman Holbrook, Birmingham Evening Despatch, June 26, 1951, p. 4; "C. L. W.," The Birmingham Mail, June 26, p. 2; "T. C. K.," The Birmingham Post, June 26, p. 3; Edinburgh Evening Dispatch, July 3, p. 3; "R. G.," Glasgow Evening Citizen, July 17, p. 3; "W. C. G.," Glasgow Evening News. July 17, p. 7; The Glasgow Herald, July 17, p. 3; I Liverpool Daily Post, July 10, p. 4; "R. A. C., Liverpool Echo, July 10, p. 4; "S. H.," Liverpool Evening Express, 'July 10, p. 5; Ernest Lewis, Manchester Daily Dispiatch, June 19, p. 5; Fred Isaac, Manchester Evening Chronicle, June 19, p. 10; Alan Bendle, Manchester Evening News, June 19, p. 2. Additional comment was found in The (Birmingham) Sunday Mercury, June 24, p. 10; Glasgow Evening News, Satur day Supplement, July 14, p. 6; Glasgow Evening Citizen, "Ramsden Greig's Show Newsreel," July 17, p. 2; "Northern Window," Manchester Evening Chronicle, June 18, p. 2; and especially "Show Gossip: Fred Isaac's Round Up," Manchester Evening Chronicle, June 23, p. 2. 44 Great Occasion, with capital letters." He balanced a com plaint about the play's being taken out of context with praise that began: "But once under weigh this [isj bril liant, witty, pungent stuff . . . ." Then, getting to his central point, he said that "its success must vary with in dividual needs": if one wanted "pure Shavian argument su perbly delivered," it would be an "unforgettable joy"? but if one sought "glamour"— and this was unexplained— he would find- the production "chilly." He commented favorably upon each of the actors, and ended with a complaint about the use of microphones, "a major miscalculation.1,22 Some of these crit icisms, and others, were leveled in the other reviews as well; but Bendle's was the only review that contained almost as much blame as praise. It should be added, perhaps, that the Glasgow Evening News, whose review was favorable if mud dled, had earlier printed an article raising— and not com pletely resolving— the question of affectation in the pro duction, and that Fred Isaac followed his favorable review in the Manchester Evening Chronicle with a weekend piece to aay he hoped and believed that the Quartette would fail to set a new dramatic trend. Both articles are discussed later;22 they are mentioned here to indicate that even by the most stringent reckoning, the Quartette was praised in 2^Manchester Evening News, June 19, p. 2. 22See below, pp. 50, 60. 45 the provincial press about twice as often as it was cen sured. The general content of the thirteen provincial re views may be summarized briefly. Five indicated that the performance had been approached with misgivings, although two of these seem to have been using the rhetorical Rever sal; at the other extreme, two reviews said the audience was keyed up from the start. Four agreed that the audience had to concentrate; seven commented upon the brilliance of the lines, and seven said those lines were improved by the ex cellence of the performance: "It is not often the quixotic Shaw gets the labyrinths of his argument threaded with such magnificent lucidity."24 Seven said that the experiment or the gamble was a magnificent success-with, as had been in dicated— one dissenting. Agnes Moorehead was praised in seven reviews; her eloquent silences and her beauty were mentioned most frequently, but the Manchester Daily Dispatch called hers the most inspired performance. Sir Cedric Hard- wicke was mentioned favorably in six, but Norman Holbrook's note that he "wastes not a gesture or an inflection" was probably the strongest praise accorded him. Charles Laugh ton was highly praised in seven, including Alan Bendle's view that his was "perhaps the perfect interpretation." Charles Boyer was given special praise in nine reviews, 24 Liverpool Daily Post. July 10, p. 4. 46 three of which indicated that his movie roles had led them to expect much less. "Here he acts 11,25 Two mildly demurred his accent— (the only negative criticisms of any of the per formers)— but the Liverpool Daily Post said it "seemed to heighten the realism of a Juan who is usually an English John Tanner." This last, incidentally, was the only one to approve the separation of Don Juan in Hell from Man and Su perman ; three deplored it in vague terms. To what extent the production was seen as unique is a question for later discussion; but here might be noted the three complaints about^ the use of microphones— and a subsequent article ex plaining but not defending it.^6 Nine reviews concluded with something to the effect that this was a landmark in the theatre. In rough summary: of the thirteen reviews in prov incial papers, six were detailed enough in their supporting evidence and strong enough in their expressions of approval' as to be reasonably called enthusiastic; four others were clearly favorable; two were probably intended as favorable but were diluted with inconsequentials; and one was so hesi tant in its praise and so clear in its misgivings that it should probably be considered mixed. The detailed reviews ^ B i r m i n g h a m Evening Despatch, June 26, p. 4. ^"Northern Window, " Manchester Evening Chronicle, June 20, p. 2. 47 somewhat resembled each other in their choice of elements for praise and blame. This relatively close agreement might be expected to compensate for the apparent absence of per sonal prestige in all but a few of the reviewers, but it did not lead the national papers to break their earlier silence. Perhaps it becomes important only when coupled with other evidences of the extent of public interest in the Quartette. ence size, were somewhat confused. Mention has been made of the difference between the Daily Express' report of public indifference in Manchester and the descriptions of public enthusiasm carried in at least three Manchester papers; again, the favorable review in the Manchester Daily Dispatch said that two thousand people were present at the opening, where the Daily Express preferred to say: "there were empty rows in the 2,200-seat theatre." Preconceptions color the account of even the Guardian, which began by stating that the Quartette was trying to reach "the ordinary music-hall audience," and concluded with this: This is a short evening, but there have none the less been several cuts. And it seems unnecessary to simplify Shaw's vocabulary— "woman" for "crone," "dupe" for "gull," "politicians" for "Ministers," "poisonous" for "mephitic." Neither helps the delicacy and direct- . which— to its great credit— the production re- Unless it be agreed that the delicacy and directness of Accounts of audience reaction, and indeed of audi- ^"J. W.," Guard., June 20, p. 3. 48 "mephitic" would be apparent to the "ordinary music-hall audience," at least one of these assumptions about the com position of the audience should probably be abandoned. Sim ilarly there would seem to be some implication in the dif ference between Wilson's jibe in the national Daily Mail that Mancusians would have "felt honoured" to hear Bradshaw and its version in the Manchester edition, where they would "have paid just as g l a d l y . "28 But after due allowance is made for preconceptions, there seems little reason for doubting that the Quartette was received enthusiastically in Manchester prior to the opening, that about two thousand people attended the opening and that there was no newsworthy change in attendance figures during the week, that the audi- 29 ence listened "intelligently, and . . . with enjoyment," and perhaps even that "it was a triumph."30 The Evening Chronicle thought public interest sufficiently high to war rant devoting two subsequent articles to the Quartette dur ing the week, but the other papers seem to have passed on to other matters. In Birmingham, the Post reported that "last night's audience rose to Mr. Boyer with punctuating applause"; The Sunday Mercury predicted a full house but did not review the ^®See above, 2Q ^Fred Isaac, Evening Chronicle, June 19, p. 10. •^Ernest Lewis, Daily Dispatch, June 19, p. 5. 49 performance; and The Birmingham Mail said that "an audience which was live, intelligent and receptive to an unusual de gree was completely captivated and absorbed." In Edinburgh, according to the Evening Despatch, "The large audience . . . were keyed up to a theatrical occasion from the start." One Liverpool critic referred to "the adventurous few," and con tinued: Let us hope the prolonged applause prefaces better support, despite the ill-judged price arrangements. .... [.The imaginative} may be fewer than the cast deserve, but for this habit as well as economics may be blamed.31 The Liverpool Evening Express offered this in corroboration: All that seemed lacking was for one of the four to respond to the numerous encores at the close .... Apparently, then, the first-night audiences in Birmingham, Edinburgh and Liverpool were appreciative; the Edinburgh audience was large and the Liverpool small. The Glasgow re ports were contradictory. The Herald said, "There was a large audience"; the Evening News said, "What a pity Glasgow is so empty!" The Evening Citizen introduced a new issue: It has been stated— unfortunately, often— that the First Drama Quartet’s production . . . is a reading, that the players sit solemnly at their lecterns, that there is little acting. Nonsense .... 31 "R.A.C.," Liverpool Echo, July 10, p. 4. This was the review which began with the snobbish reference to Bri tain's exporting lectures to the U.S. See above, p. 42. 50 The prices are high. But at curtain fall few put anfc. s.d. assessment on the evening's entertainment. The defensive tone leads one to suppose that if the audience had been conspicuous either in size or behavior the fact would have been seized as supporting evidence. The sugges tion of a whispering campaign, especially toward the end of the tour, might be significant if there were any supporting data; failing those, perhaps the safest assumption is that the review was sniping at the rival Evening News' article of the previous weekend, describing the production as seeming "in advance.rather like a piece of affectation." Some hint of the composition of the audiences may be gained from the prices charged. Three reviewers commented adversely upon the increase;3^ and indeed the claim that prices had been doubled may be a shade conservative. At the Palace in Manchester tickets ranged from one guinea to ten shillings, with Wednesday and Saturday matinees at seven- teen-and-six to five shillings; Judy Garland played the Palace that summer for ten shillings down to three-and-six — : or less than half as much as the Quartette— and Rose Mur phy, "America's Famous Chee-Chee Girl," commanded five 32r . £amsden?J G.[reig?J, Glasgow Evening Citizen, July 17, p. 3. 33It is entirely possible that the defensiveness was entirely stylistic, to give the effect of crusading. 3^The Daily Express, the Liverpool Echo, and the Glasgow Evening Citizen. See above, and pp. 37, 49. 51 shillings to one-and-six. Miss Murphy's would seem to have been the going rate at the Palace— Gipsy Rose Lee cost no more— and so the prices would appear to have been quadrupled for the Quartette. Advertisements in the Liverpool Daily Post indicated that prices at the Empire just before the Quartette's arrival were 5/-, 4/-, 3/-, and 1/6. For the Quartette, stalls were 21/-, 15/-, 10/-, 7/6; circle seats were 17/6, 15/-, 7/6; the balcony was 5/-. Top for Judy Garland was 10/6. During the Quartette's run at the Empire, the Liverpool Playhouse was charging from one shilling to seven-and-six for Pirandello's Henry IV and at the Royal Court Party Manners, Val Gielgud's political satire, drew from one-and-six to eight-and-six; a week later Alec Clunes in the Old Vic's production of Henry V cost from three-and- six to twelve-and-six. At very least, prices in Liverpool were raised to"twice those charged for competing shows. Top price in Birmingham was even higher— twenty-five shillings; Michael Redgrave in The Tempest at Stratford had a top of twelve-and-six, or half as much. In Glasgow the prices ranged from four shillings to a guinea, or much more than twice the usual one-and-six to eight-and-six. In view of these prices— 200 or 250 or 400 per cent of normal— the Guardian's reference to "the ordinary music-hall audience" appears somewhat naive. It may be a little surprising that the Quartette managed to draw anyone at all. The summer of 1951 seems to 52 have been a difficult one for the theatre. Five days before reviewing Don Juan in Hell. Norman Holbrook of the Birming ham Evening Despatch wrote the following: The men who dissect the theatre balance sheets are worried. They have a wholesale slump on their hands and they do not quite know what to do with it . . . . High summer and the long evenings are always box office poison and this year the trouble has been fierce in deed. 35 Charles Landstone, formerly the associate director of drama for the government's Arts Council, says that "the theatre, and especially in the provinces, had its most disastrous box-office takings in years."36 Part of the trouble, he says, was the competition of other events in the Festival of Britain; the Manchester Sunday Chronicle quoted as the com plaint of West End managers: After several hours at the Festival people are either too tired to go to the theatre, or have no money left.37 Computations in The Times of about that period suggested that the South Bank exhibition in London was drawing from thirty-one thousand to eighty-five thousand people per day, 38 and the Festival Gardens up to 120,000. Therefore, 36"On and Off Stage," June 21, p. 4. 36Charles Landstone, Off-Stage: A Personal Record of the first twelve years of State Sponsored Drama in Great Britain (London: Elek, 1953), pp. 185-86. ^"Ken Smith Show Talking," June 17, 1951, p. 3. 36The Times (hereafter cited as Times), June 18, 1951, p. 2. 53 according to Landstone, the Arts Council grants to about twenty provincial repertory companies, ostensibly to encour age attractive Festival programs, actually worked out to be compensation for the damage done them by the Festival. In such a situation, any conclusions about the suc cess of the Quartette's tour are likely to depend more upon the weight ascribed to various facts than upon the facts themselves. But pending a more thorough investigation than was possible within the bounds of the present study, the case would appear to be briefly as follows: The First Drama Quartette toured the British provinces during a very bad summer for the theatre, charged very high prices, and still managed to secure attendances that were neither so good nor so bad as to elicit sharp comment. Audiences were reported to be enthusiastic. Of that part of the provincial press that reviewed the production, about half were enthusiastic and almost all were favorable. For no reason discovered in the present study, the national press ignored the show: of the four exceptions, two papers were hostile and a third regretful but unfavorable. Presumably the most responsible members of the national press would have amended this early indifference if there had been unusual popular acclaim in the provinces; apparently the provincial reviews were not adjuged unusual, and almost certainly the high admission charges would have precluded a broad base of popular sup port. And indeed the provincial press devoted its attention 54 to the Quartette, if at all, just before its local opening or in a review of that opening;' very rarely were there any follow-up stories. Apparently the Quartette did not arouse in Britain the abiding enthusiasm which it engendered in its cross-country American tour and which secured it an advance sell-out in New York. At this stage then, the chances of the Quartette's having affected the course of subsequent British reading would appear to rest less upon a pervasive enthusiasm that got everyone talking and comparing and reminiscing than upon, first, a fairly clear perception by critics and audi ences of the crucial differences between the Quartette's production and the conventional stage play, and second, upon their recalling those differences when assessing later plays. The next section of this chapter discusses the evidence of such perception; the third section describes the national critics' reception of the only British play which claimed to be modeled upon the Quartette's production. II. THE UNIQUENESS SEEN IN THE FORM Doubtless the previous discussion has indicated already that much of the commentary elicited by Don Juan in Hell might as easily have centered around a completely standard production. The praise accorded the cast, for example, would have suited that of an ordinary play— al though the five references to the delicacy or economy of the 55 gesture were perhaps more than might be expected, and Charles Boyer's feats of memory were noticed oftener than they might have been in a costume part. Even the comments about the bare stage set rarely went beyond the mere descrip tion of a novelty as novelty. Charles Laughton was quoted thus, near the end of the tour: All four of us, in our way, are devoted— one might almost say dedicated— to the spoken word. . . . The per formance of the evening is Shaw's, not ours. . . . [sicj We deliberately suppress everything that may de tract from the play of voices and ideas— scenery, cos tumes, the lot.39 Presumably he said much the same thing in earlier press con ferences, but few critics offered any explanation for the bare setting, except for the somewhat aphoristic: "the triumph of words over scenery," "a case of words speaking louder than actions," and so forth. Only the Guardian at tempted an analysis: . . . what Charles Laughton, the producer, has tried to do is, by concentrating almost entirely on the speak ing of Shaw's text, with little acting in the normal sense and no scenery or costumes, to bring home to the ordinary music-hall audience a closely woven argument of a good deal more depth than Mr Eliot's "Cocktail Party." But having gone so far, the reviewer adopted what seems to be another set of critical assumptions/ for his central case became: The real fault, though, is that the whole background has been forgotten: the episode has been too thoroughly •^Glasgow Evening News, Saturday Supplement, July 14 p. 6. * 56 cut away from the play that should precede it. Hence Charles Boyer was held to be miscast, because he had "nothing of Tanner, and in consequence too little of Shaw." Then, with no hint of paradox, he continued: It is only because Mr Laughton is so sly and pointed a Lucifer that the whole plan nearly succeeds.40 The major emphasis was thus attributed successively to the Shavian argument, to a part of Man and Superman, and finally to a scene in Hell; nevertheless, for at least a part of the review, the bareness of the set was seen as a way of focus ing attention upon the text.4*- The extent to which the Quartette succeeded in thus shifting the focus from themselves to the text they were interpreting— one of the touchstones of contemporary theory of oral interpretation— must unfortunately remain a matter of speculation. Without having sampled the reviewers over an extended period of time, the present investigator can 40 The obvious question arises: if Boyer failed be cause his Juan had too little of Tanner, did Laughton suc ceed because his Lucifer had so much of Mendoza— a bit part iin the full play? Conversely, if a particularly sly and pointed Lucifer could nearly carry the whole plan, might not his load be lightened if there were less Tanner and more Juan? And to return to the original point, would not mat ters be improved by a more nearly perfect Void? The critic of the Liverpool Daily Post thought Boy er 1s Continental pronunciation heightened the realism of a Spanish Juan, but he too ended by mixing the two plays: "It may be a long way off the high Sierras and the utter void." (^Italics added.J ^He objected to the microphones as dissipating the focus. 57 report only that here they seemed to place more emphasis upon the author than might be confidently predicted of the average review. It is not often the quixotic Shaw gets the laby rinths of his argument threaded with such magnificent lucidity.^2 There are five stars of coruscating brilliance . . . the Quartette and Shaw h i m s e l f .43 Assuredly this Shavian memorial to Shaw's genius marks an Occasion in the Birmingham t h e a t r e .44 The whole emphasis is on Shaw.^ None of these is as explicit as the Times1 criticism of the John Clements version, that the dialogue was dissipated on the stage and hence did not "sound as wonderful as it AC reads. ° Whether the provincial press meant to imply that the Laughton production permitted a special fidelity to the text is a matter of dubious inference; what is reasonably clear is that they were conscious of the author. Seven reviews commented upon the manuscripts or the reading stands. The Glasgow Evening News took them errone ously as examples of Shaw's daring, and the Manchester ver sion of the Daily Mail mentioned the "green, leatherbound 42 Liverpool Daily Post, July 10, p. 4. ^ Birmingham Evening Despatch, June 26, p. 4. 44 Birmingham Mail, June 26, p. 2. 45 Manchester Evening News, June 19, p. 2. ^June 4, p. 2. 58 volumes" perfunctorily; the other five took some pains to say that the lecterns were not needed. The Liverpool Daily Post said merely that the performers "sit on stools at reading-desks, but they don't read"; the Birmingham Evening Despatch referred to "scripts which they do not use anyway." The Guardian said: "The music-stands are an affectation, for the players are not reading," and this view was offered as a prediction in an advance story in the Glasgow Evening News. The Glasgow Evening Citizen used them as a basic issue: It has been stated— unfortunately, often— that the First Drama Quartet's production . . . is a reading, that the players sit solemnly at their lecterns, that there is little acting. Nonsense. True, there is little action. But there is more acting in Charles Laughton's little fingers and in Charles Boyer's eyebrows than we have seen in many a whole week's playing. The Glasgow Herald was less defensive: "readers" is really a misnomer, as the four speakers . . . know their words, and merely turn the pages to create an illusion. What the illusion was, or its purpose, went unexplained. With the lone exception immediately above, none of the reviews called the performance a reading— and even the exception put the word in quotation marks and called it a misnomer. Six reviews, furthermore, explicitly denied that the performers were reading. Four said they were acting and two versions of another said they were declaiming; one called the performance a recital, another a recitation "in a lecture-hall atmosphere," a-third a "quadrilogue, or four 59 sided argument," and one called it merely an experiment. Part of this caution may have stemmed from Laughton; just before the premiere, a Manchester columnist reported: [[Laughton' s^ one worry is that people will imagine that "Don Juan" is some sort of play reading, which it is not. It's a proper performance, but without scenery — rather like the original Greek theatre . . . .^7 His Greek analogy was quoted again in the Manchester Daily Mail. For whatever reason, none of the reviewers claimed to see the production as an example of reading. Finally, of the thirty-odd news items— articles, reviews and reports— about the Quartette's visit that were encountered in the British press of this time, only two dis cussed the possibility of Don Juan in Hell's having any im plications for subsequent productions. The Manchester Guardian was the more detailed: In some ways it is a brilliant attempt, and one wishes that it had been wholly successful, for a school of production, and even of play-writing, of this kind would be worth establishing. But as a production it is a little too uncertain of itself. [[The stands and mic rophones are unnecessary] . . . and there seems no con sistent rule when the actors are to play to each other, when to speak directly to the audience before them. This last sentence was perhaps the only one to touch upon a problem unique to Readers' Theatre as distinguished from conventional drama. But the review moved away, to find "the real fault" to be the omission of three acts of Man and "Northern Window," Manchester Evening Chronicle, June 18, p. 2. 60 Superman. The other discussion of the Quartette as pioneers is less perceptive, but perhaps equally revealing. At the end of the Manchester run, Fred Isaac commented in his week end column: Charles Laughton and his stage foursome— have they started a new trend of plays without production? I think not and I hope hot. The Laughton appeal is star appeal. We went to see the stars— and enjoyed what we saw. I suppose other actors could do it. A play reading (it's the only thing you can call it) for instance by Olivier, Richardson, Vivien Leigh and Robert Morley. Or Nellie Lucher, Rose Murphy, A1 Read and Lena Horne The implication of the music-hall stunt is fairly clear.^9 The present study found little evidence to suggest that the British reviewers saw any major differences between the Quartette's and any other first-rate production. Some noticed the economy of the gestures and the subtlety of the reacting; and a number described the set, usually without trying to assign a reason for its plainness. They rather i 48 "Show Gossip: Fred Isaac's Round Up," Manchester Evening Chronicle, June 23, p. 2. 49 The Palace Theatre in Manchester was usually a music-hall with a five shilling top— a fact which may have suggested the Guardian's "ordinary music-hall audience." Whether it similarly colored the reactions of London critics summoned to the Midlands right after Whitsun to see an un usual American production by four Hollywood stars is of course pure speculation. 61 objected to the reading-stands, because the performers had memorized the material. Only one reviewer called the per formance a reading, and he explained that the word was a misnomer? six said it was not a reading. Two mentioned the possibility of further productions in this form: one aban- > " doned the discussion for an irrelevancy; the other said that the Quartette's uniqueness lay in its star appeal. In short, little evidence was found to suggest that the Quartette gained any wide critical or popular following in Britain, or that much attention was paid to the unique ness of the form. They were locally successful in each of the tour cities, but their departure from each went unre corded: for all that could be learned from the contemporary accounts consulted in this study, the Quartette might have vanished without a trace.It seems likely that if some one were to bring to London a production which he claimed was based on the Quartette's production, few of the critics would be able to weigh the claim. Fortunately the hypothesis can be tested. The idea ^®A year later, Harold Conway of the [London] Even ing Standard began a review of Alec dunes' costume version of Don Juan in Hell as follows: "After those static evening- dress 'recitals' given around the country by Charles Boyer and Co., it was an enjoyable restoration . . . ," Sept. 9, 1952, p. 5. J.C. Trewin's reference, in The Observer, Sept. 14, 1952, p. 6, to "a more decorative Void than usual," may be recalling the Clements production instead. Roy Walk er, reviewing Williams' first Dickens readings, mentioned the Quartette's memorizing, Theatre Newsletter. Nov. 24, 1951, p. 11. i 62 ! . j Which struck the Guardian's reviewer, that "a school of pro- i jduction, and even of play-writing, of this kind would be i Worth establishing," occurred also to J. B. Priestley, who |at that time was regarded in Britain as one of the three or I four major British playwrights still productive. In collab oration with Jacquetta Hawkes, he wrote Dragon's Mouth, "a dramatic quartet in two parts" for Laughton to produce; but because of his "impatience" he decided to bring his own pro duction of it to London.^ He freely acknowledged the source of his inspiration; indeed, he had to insist upon it, be cause he thought the critics were getting it wrong. III. THE RECEPTION OF DRAGON'S MOUTH Dragon's Mouth, "a dramatic quartet in two parts," was written by J. B. Priestley and Jacquetta Hawkes; with Michael Denison, Dulcie Gray, Rosamund John and Norman Wool- and as its cast, and J. B. Priestley its producer— (i.e., its director)— it toured small provincial towns for a month of one-night stands, and then opened at the Winter Garden on I May 13, 1952. It ran for fifty-five performances, and closed on June 28. The play concerns four highly articulate people quarantined aboard a yacht in the tropics: the owner, "a man ^J. B. Priestley, "The Story of 'Dragon's Mouth'," Everybody's magazine. May 24, 1952, p. 12. 63 of great wealth and power," his wife, "a woman with a genius 52 for the enjoyment of life," and two guests, a scholarly 53 aesthete and a career woman in the owner's employ. A crew member has died of a mysterious disease, and while the four await the results of blood tests they discuss themselves and their philosophies. Each claims to have discovered the ideal existence until they learn that one of them— they know not which— must perish. . . . Then, realising their true failure, they each claim the prior right to die. ^ The set consisted of four stools, and four microphone stands that were strung together with white rope to suggest a ship's rail; there were a few offstage sound effects, and a few minor light changes. Except for two exits, "no movement £wasj permitted the actors but to sit, stand, gesture, or rotate upon their axes."^ During the longer speeches there was, according to Priestley, "free use of an oratorical style." However, the production "dropped all pretence of reading, the feature of the Laughton production . . . 52w. a . Darlington, The Daily Telegraph (hereafter cited as Telegraph or Tele.), May 14, 1952. 53 In the Epilogue to the printed version, op. cit., p. 89, Mrs. Hawkes identifies them as representing Jung's "functions" of personality: intuition, sensation, thinking, feeling. 54 Cecil Wilson, Daily Mail (hereafter cited as Mail). May 14, 1952, p. 6. 55"j .c .b .," Guard., May 15, p. 5. 64 £priestleyj had liked least."56 Of the fifteen national reviews discovered,^ only Kenneth Tynan's was hostile; almost all of the others ap peared at least sympathetic. Harold Hobson was so taken with it that he reviewed it twice, in successive issues of the Sunday Times; W. A. Darlington, of the Telegraph was even more enthusiastic; the Times and The Observer both were favorable. As a rough computation, three were enthusiastic, four favorable, one noncommittal, two somewhat favorable, four unfavorable and one hostile. At worst the reviews divided evenly; it might be more accurate to say that the reception was cordial. Jacquetta Hawkes and J. B. Priestley, Dragon1s Mouth: A Dramatic Quartet in Two Parts (London: William Heinemann Limited, 1952), Preface, p. x. 57 Arranged very roughly in order of increasing hos tility: W. A. Darlington, Tele., May 14, p. 6; Harold Hob son, The Sunday Times (not related to The Times; hereafter cited as Sunday Times or Sun. T.), May 18, p. 7; May 25, p. 7; Ivor Brown, The Observer (hereafter cited as Observer or Obs.), May 18, p. 6; Harold Conway, Evening Standard (hereafter cited as Standard or Stand.), May 14, p. 5; Times, May 14, p. 8; Eric Keown, Punch, May 28, p. 659; A. E. Wil- ison, The Star, May 14, p. 3; "J. C. B.," Guard., May 15, ;p. 5; J. C. Trewin, Illustrated London News (hereafter cited in notes as I.L.N.), June 7, p. 984; J. C. Trewin, The Sketch (hereafter cited as Sketch), June 4, p. 531; T. C. Worsley, New Statesman and Nation (hereafter cited as New Statesman or New States.) 43, May 24, pp. 612-614; Cecil Wilson, Daily Mail. May 14, p. 6; John Barber, Daily Express (hereafter cited as Express or Exp.), May 14, p. 3; Kenneth Tynan, Stand., May 16, p. 11. 65 Fifty-five performances would not seem to indicate a great public response when compared with some of the other runs that year: the Old Vic Romeo and Juliet with Claire Bloom and Alan Badel, 74 performances; Katherine Hepburn in The Millionairess. 98; John Gielgud's production of Much Ado About Nothing, 227; Michael Redgrave in Winter Journey (Odets' The Country Girl). 243; or The Love of Four Colonels. 58 812. Nevertheless, fifty-five may have been a respect able run for the Winter Garden, a large theatre (seating 1,577) on the somewhat dingy periphery of the theatre area, far from public transport; it "has been closed for long 59 spells at a time." A Sunday Times article of about that period called it a "white elephant" and a "hoodoo." Priestley claimed to be delighted with the run. "On the whole," he said, "the response from both press and public was far more emthusiastic than I had ever imagined it would be."61 The reviews of Dragon's Mouth provide some insight into the British reputation of the First Drama Quartette's 58"The Stage" Year Book (hereafter cited as Stage ■Year Booh or>SYB), 1953 (London: Carson & Comerford, Ltd., 1953), passim. 59 . Quotation and seating data from Lytton's Theatre and Concert Hall Seating Plans 1960-61 (London: The Dancing Times Limited, [.n.d.J ) , p. 80. 80 December 23, 1951, p. 7. 81 Op. cit., preface, p. xv. 66 production of Don Juan in Hell, from which it derived. Priestley made repeated attempts to explain the genesis of the play— in the usual press releases, and then in what T.C. Worsley called "a highly tendentious foreword" in the pro gramme. The latter began: During the autumn of last year I was staying in New York and there attended several performances by the Charles Laughton company of Shaw's Don Juan In Hell, then coming to the end of a long and triumphant tour. . . . [I thought} that there might be here the basis of a new dramatic form. It was suggested that I experiment with this form for his next production.62 He wrote an article in the threepenny family journal, Every body 1s. and finally chose the last resort of Englishmen of principle— a letter to the Times. . . .We acknowledge no debt to Shaw because we do not owe him one .... It was Mr. Charles Laughton's production of the Hell scene, which was quite different from anything Shaw ever intended, that gave us the idea, encouraged by discussions with Mr. Laughton, that this might be the basis of a new dramatic form. Shaw does not come into the picture. There is no resemblance what ever— in dramatic shape, style, ideas— between the Hell scene and Dragon's Mouth .... But, both as part- author and as producer, I am delighted to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Laughton.63 The ostensible reason for this letter was to challenge the first half of the sentence with which the Times' review had begun: "The distinguished authors acknowledge their debt to 62 "A Note About It," p. 3 of the official programme, MS in the Gabrielle Enthoven Theatre Collection of the Vic toria and Albert Museum (hereafter cited as Enthoven). ^May 16, p. 7. 67 the Hell scene in Man and Superman for the form. . . . But inasmuch as the reviewer quickly added, "and there the comparison may be left," Priestley's real target was the other critics. Punch agreed that "any close comparison with Shaw would only be confusing," but did not let the chance slip by entirely: The Don Juan scene was a strong stimulant to the in tellect, a flash and dazzle of probing wit charged with the pure excitement of ideas. The talk in Dragon1s Mouth is.often very good, but it explores much more fam iliar country and finally takes its shape from the trag edy of particular cases. Harold Conway, of the Standard, said merely: "This was, of course, an experiment in the Shaw manner, but without Shaw's heady sparkle, and dramatic skill." And A. E. Wilson, of The Star, was even briefer: "Even Shaw never got so close to unadorned debate." Perhaps the most confused account was Cecil Wilson's in the Mail. It began, "Priestleys will be Shaws," but went on to point out, correctly: As the programme note admits it is inspired by the successful tour of the American quartette who performed a dramatised reading of Shaw's "Don Juan in Hell" with a similar disregard for . . . theatrical trimmings.^ Then the point was blurred in the next sentence: Comparison being so boldly invited, I would say ^May 14, p. 8. 65 The reference to the success of the tour xs curi ous, in view of Wilson's opinion of it at the time— (see above, p. 38). An explanation may be that he was relying en tirely on Priestley's foreword in the programme, and con fused the American tour with the British. 68 this: the Priestley-Hawkes play— or rather, debate— has more heart than Shaw's, but a less provocative intellec tual impact. The fullest comparison of Priestley with Shaw came from W. A. Darlington, in the Telegraph. He too cited Priestley's acknowledgement of a production which was "greatly success ful in America," but, as the subtitle of his review indica ted, his emphasis was upon "Beating Shaw at own Game": Mr. Priestley and his collaborator seem to me to have gone one better than their model. Shaw's act, like the discussion plays of his old age, was literally "all Talk." That is to say, these plays were not of the theatre, and indeed constituted a denial of the theatre's essence. In spite of a little perfunctory action, they turned the stage into a mere platform for Shaw. "Dragon's Mouth," however, is not written by a he- ancient who despises the theatre; it is not a lecture, but a play. Though its four characters hardly move from set positions throughout the evening, their story moves. We are held not by a lecturer's but by a dramatist's magic .... Frances Stephens, reviewing the season, made the same com parison but reached a different verdict: "The palm must go yet to Shaw's Don Juan in Hell."^ Of the fifteen reviews studied, only two clearly y attributed the experiment to the influence of the Quartette and not to that of Shaw. The Guardian said that the authors fifi Frances Stephens (ed.), Theatre World Annual (Lon don) : A Pictorial Review of West End Productions with a record of Plays and Players, Number 3, 1st June 1951-31st May 1952 (hereafter cited as Theatre World Annual or TWA 1951-52); London: Rockliff, 1952, p. 14. 69 had been "technically inspired by seeing four eminent actors read the Hell scene," and added that they, the authors, "prove that such an experiment could succeed." This use of the conditional tense should probably not be probed for im plications, but certainly it attributes no conclusive suc cess to the earlier Laughton experimentKenneth Tynan alone offered to distinguish between the two productions: The Dragon1 s Mouth | ~ sic ] should not be compared too closely with the Charles Laughton production of Don Juan in Hell, which inspired it. Laughton's experiment had the fascination of a gala charity matinee, since it brought together, on the same stage, Charles Boyer, Ced ric Hardwicke, Agnes Moorehead, and the director him self. The Dragon's Mouth brings together Michael Deni son, Dulcie Gray, Rosamund John, and Norman Wooland, and I beg you not to look at me like that: I am simply sug gesting that this is not the most sharply contrasting quartet in existence. There was a moment in which I caught myself echoing Groucho Marx and speculating whether I was looking at four actors with one microphone or one actor with four microphones. If Tynan's disclaimer is accepted about.the excitement gen erated by the British players, the difference between the two productions would appear to lie in the amount of con trast among the members of each quartette; but the distinc tion was not maintained, and the rest of his objections to ^"J.C.B." reviewed this; "J.W." reviewed the Quar tette; Philip Hope-Wallace was the Guardian's chief drama reviewer. ^®Kenneth Tynan, Curtains: Selections from the Drama Criticism and Related Writings (London and New York: Long mans, Green and Co., Ltd., 1961), p. 23. This is identical to his Standard review, May 16, 1952, p. 11, except for minor stylistic changes. 70 Dragon's Mouth could have been applied with equal relevance to Don Juan in Hell. Hence it is almost an open question whether Tynan saw the two as virtually identical, or saw so little resemblance that even a trivial distinction would serve. For present purposes it is enough that he, unlike his colleagues, showed himself familiar with the Laughton production. It is clear that most of the London drama critics did not consider Dragon's Mouth to be an example of the in fluence of the First Drama Quartette. Six of them misinter preted the author's program notes, and either attributed the play directly to the influence of Shaw or treated the Laugh ton production and the Shavian original as if they were iden tical. An equal number apparently thought the notes irrele vant. Of the fifteen critics consulted, only two correctly identified the source of the play, and only one of those clearly implied a familiarity with the work of the Quartette. The circumstantial case appears strong. No evidence was encountered elsewhere to suggest that there was in Brit ain a groundswell of interest in the First Drama Quartette after they completed their tour. But if there had been such a groundswell of interest, then it ought to have appeared during the discussions of Dragon's Mouth: ; one of its authas was considered a major British playwright and a challenging ' innovator; he claimed to have found the basis of a new dra matic form, and he said explicitly and repeatedly that the 71 Quartette's production had inspired this new form. Only two London critics understood the relevance of his claim. And since all of this occurred within a year of the Quartette's tour, it seems probable that the Quartette did not create in Britain a widespread interest that survived their tour by any significant period of time. A further possibility remains: the First Drama Quartette may have influenced British reading indirectly, » through the direct influence of Dragon's Mouth. One diffi culty with such a hypothesis is the indifferent success of the latter: it played at an unpopular theatre and encoun tered a press which, though respectful, was about evenly divided between favorable and unfavorable. The authors did not proceed further with the experiment.69 The play does not figure in the standard British histories of the theatre of the period. But perhaps most important, the play was less clearly a reading than was its source. Priestley's statement that "we dropped all pretense of reading" has been mentioned earlier; a study of the published script suggests that, depending upon the importance one attaches to such elements as the extreme simplicity of the set and the A Priestley biographer, however, cites Dragon's Mouth as an example of the "occasions when one regrets the impatience that prevents him from following up an interest ing innovation that perhaps failed because only the writing and staging of it could teach him the mistakes to avoid." David Hughes, J. B. Priestley: An Informal Study of his work (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1958), p. 201. 72 "oratorical" speeches of self-analysis, the work might best be classified an expressionistic or realistic play. The dramatic situation exists onstage: the characters are "real" people on a "real" ship. Priestley remarked, with evident satisfaction, that in his play, as opposed to the Laughton production, the wearing of evening clothes was dramatically justified; so Eric Keown may have been mischievous but he was not unfair when he ended his review in Punch: "One small question. Do even exceptionally prosperous business women wear long gloves on a yacht in scorching weather?" None of the reviewers, searching for comparisons that would explain the nature of the experiment, likened Dragon1s Mouth to a reading— either the "rehearsed readings" at the I.C.A.or the poetry readings of the Apollo Society and the Third Programme of the B.B.C. Except for J.C. Tre- win's passing reference to a "recital," in the Sketch, T.C. Worsley's was the closest: "Dragon's Mouth is hardly visual enough even for television: it is a radio script recited." Even here the context would seem to have dissipated the em phasis upon "recited," so that the major comparison was like Trewin's in the Illustrated London News: "the material of a radio play." The most common metaphors were "lecture" and "debate"; but there were a few uses of "morality," and in his second review Harold Hobson found a comparison even far- 70 See below, Chapter IV. 73 ther afield: If a French visitor to London were asked what is the best acted play in the West End, he would, I think an swer "Dragon's Mouth," for the reason that it is the play acted most in the French manner. . . . The players are concerned solely with delivering what their authors have written as vigorously, eloquently, and excitingly as possible. ... . £They3 merely stand shoulder to shoulder, metaphorically and literally, and speak, shout, talk, coo, bellow, roar, thunder, and orate the lines. . . . This, with suitable qualifications, is act ing as the French understand it. Kenneth Tynan carried a more usual comparison to a conclu sion perhaps even farther removed from oral interpretation. He said that "argument loses its charm" if the debaters are not individuals, and concluded: "the logical end of [the3 method would be to distribute scripts to the audience and never to take the curtain up at all." Hence the critic most familiar with the First Drama Quartette claimed that silent reading is the extreme form of dramatized debate. Theatre World Annual, reviewing the year, linked the play with Em- lyn Williams' readings from Dickens, calling them the "two unusual forms of dramatic entertainment" Which "the year saw"; then it dropped the comparison in favor of one drawn between Dragon's Mouth and Don Juan in Hell— especially in the Clements version. Jacquetta Hawkes, Priestley's co author, drew a comparison equally generalized: While suggesting that his platform play. . . makes a step towards a promising new dramatic form, we have not failed to see it also as one current within a much broader movement. This is a trend back towards an en joyment of words. . . . [it is[J shown in a host of ways, from the popularity of Brain Trusts and Dickens' read ings to the explosion of enthusiasm for Christopher 74 71 Fry. There seems, then, no reason to believe that Dragon1s Mouth was viewed as a reading at the time, nor— pending further evidence— that it made any direct contribution to subsequent British reading. IV. SUMMARY No positive evidence was found to suggest that pub lic reading in Britain was influenced by the First Drama Quartette's tour of five British provincial cities during the summer of 1951. Circumstantial evidence would suggest > that the probability of such influence was slight. The na tional press was in general silent about the tour, and only four reviews were found in it; of those, two were hostile, one— (in a specialized theatre newspaper)— was favorable, and a fourth was sympathetic but unfavorable. The provin cial press was favorable; of the thirteen reviews encoun tered, ten were favorable, two were probably intended as favorable, and one was mixed. However the enthusiasm of the provincial press did not affect the silence of the national, even though the Quartette's exclusion from London might have been newsworthy. No adequate reason could be assigned to the continuing of this silence: most of the provincial re viewers lacked prestige, but only half appeared obviously to 710p. cit., epilogue, p. 85. A* ' 75 be unsophisticated about the theatre. However it was noted that the Quartette was rarely mentioned in a given city af ter the initial review; and the doubling of prices and the competition from other events in the Festival of Britain would militate against the production's attracting any wide following even in the provinces. It was provisionally con cluded that at best the tour generated a local enthusiasm. Generally the four national and thirteen provincial reviews—-and a half dozen other articles— showed little in sight into the uniqueness of the production; comments about the bareness of the set or the economy of the gesture were usually desultory and unrelated to the production as a whole. The reading stands were held to be unnecessary be cause the players had memorized their lines. One critic called the performance a reading, but said the word was a misnomer; six others denied that it was a reading. In the only perceptive review encountered here, the Guardian touched upon one problem unique to Readers Theatre, but blunted its point with literary preconceptions. Only one other critic considered the possibility of the Quartette's starting a new genre, but concluded that their success was the result of star appeal. Finally, the reception accorded the play Dragon's Mouth in London a year later seems to preclude the likeli hood that the Quartette's work was well-known in the theatre capital. One of its authors was then considered a major 76 playwright, and he claimed to have discovered the basis of a new dramatic form in the Quartette's production; but six national critics confused that production with the Shavian original, and of the fifteen critics consulted there were only two who correctly identified the source to which Priestley had explicitly referred. Such wide spread misun derstanding within a year of the Quartette's tour implies either that the production was not known, or had been for gotten, by people whose job it was to keep abreast of thea tre developments and theatre gossip. Pending further evidence, it seems unlikely that the First Drama Quartette created a sufficiently strong or en during impression in Britain to allow them to be considered as probable influences upon subsequent British reading. CHAPTER III EMLYN WILLIAMS' READINGS AS CHARLES DICKENS, 1951 AND 1952 The production generally accepted by London critics as the first major postwar British reading was "Emlyn Wil liams as Charles Dickens in a solo performance of readings from the novels and stories," which opened at the Lyric in Hammersmith on October 29, 1951. Although it had been an nounced as limited to a two-week run the show moved uptown to two successive West End theatres and thence to the United States. "His triumph— it is no less" inspired more than twenty-five enthusiastic reviews, as well as an editorial in The Times. A year later Williams offered a condensed version of Bleak House which, though not received as enthus iastically as the earlier program, was highly praised indeed. In subsequent tours the two programs were often alternated; by 1956 they had been given over six hundred performances in half a dozen countries.^ ^The Times (hereafter cited as Times), December 15, 1951, p. 7. 2 Richard Findlater, Emlyn Williams; An Illustrated Study of his Work, with a List of his Appearances on Stage and Screen (No. VIII t~VI?*) of Theatre World Monographs, ed. Frances Stephens; London: Rockliff Publishing Corporation, 1956), pp. 95-96, 108-109. 77 78 The present chapter deals with Williams' first ap pearance as Charles Dickens, at the 11. . . Merely Players" gala matinee, and then with his first full Dickens program and with Bleak House. A section is devoted to each of the three programs, within which is discussed the background and immediate circumstances of that program and the general press reaction thereto? the fourth section discusses the way in which the two full-evening programs were regarded as unique; and the fifth section offers some provisional con clusions . I. ". . . MERELY PLAYERS", 1951 In his monograph of Williams Richard Findlater said that the first full Dickens program was begun in 1949 and required two years' preparation? however, its press announce ments said explicitly and its official programme implicitly that it derived from Williams' brief performance in the gala charity show, 11. . . Merely Players", at Drury Lane, Febru- 3 ary 4, 1951. There he read from the episode about the mur der of Tulkinghorn in Bleak House? he was made up as Charles Dickens, and even borrowed the author's original reading 3 Ibid., p. 78. But see The Daily Telegraph (hereaf ter cited as Telegraph or Tele.), Oct. 1, 1951, p. 6? Daily Mail (hereafter cited as Mail), Oct. 24, p. 4? and p. 3. of the official programme, MS in the Gabrielle Enthoven Theatre Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum (hereafter cited as Enthoven). 79 desk, If, as Findlater suggested, the reading contributed about three and one-half minutes to a show that, according to the reviews, ran for almost five hours and displayed over 250 performers— some of them leaders of the profession— he might well have been eclipsed; but in fact, reviews in three papers praised him by name.^ The nature of the entire program would appear such as to obscure whatever was unique in Williams' contribution. There were a lot of costume parts: Anna Neagle did a scene as Queen Victoria? Robert Morley did a scene as Oscar Wilde? Eric Portman, Ruth Dunning, Margaret Rawlings and Rudolph Besier were the Barretts and the Brownings. Emlyn Williams "as Charles Dickens" may well have been accepted as merely another Victorian characterization. Moreover, there was a Prologue "spoken by Leo Genn as David Garrick," and an "In troduction to the Second Half" spoken by Esmond Knight "as 5 King Charles II." Given such a context there would seem little reason for assuming that the reading was perceived as something unique. And yet the Times1 reviewer separated it from its surroundings: There were also odds and ends, delightful and felic- ^Times, Feb. 5, p. 3; Tele., Feb. 5, p. 7; The Stage, Feb. 8, p. 8. However, he was not mentioned in three others: Daily Express (hereafter cited as Express or Exp.), Mail, or The New Statesman and Nation (hereafter cited as New Statesman or New States.). ^Programme, Drury Lane, MS Enthoven. 80 itous odds and ends. There was , for instance, Mr. Emlyn Williams in a rich impression of Dickens at one of his dramatic public readings, and the passage describing the murder of Mr. Tulkinghorn will surely have sent forget ful readers straight home to take down a copy of Bleak House. There were, for another instance, a company of famous singers . . . .6 The performance was sufficiently distinctive to be used as a reference in some of the press announcements for the full Dickens program eight months later, and even for Bleak House the following year; but apparently it was not so memorable 7 as to allay some critics' misgivings on opening night. The evidence was too scanty to support any useful in ference. But the tone of surprise pervading the autumn re views would indicate that the ". . . Merely Players" reading had not been taken as a portent. II. THE FIRST DICKENS PROGRAM, 1961 The October full-length production consisted of six cuttings from five of the stories and novels: "Moving in Society" (scenes from Our Mutual Friend); "Paul" (scenes from Dombey and Son); "Mr. Bob Sawyer Gives a Bachelor Par- ^Feb. 5, p. 3. When the Times subsequently (Feb. 7, p. 10) ran a special article on ". . . Merely Players"1 be coming an annual affair, its correspondent suggested as a possible future program, not another Dickens reading, but "say, Mr. Emlyn Williams and Miss Angela Baddeley in the un forgettable scene from Night Must Fall when a fascinated wo man lets one read in her face her recognition of the iden tity of a habitual murderer." 7 See below, p. 86. 81 ty" (from Pickwick Papers); "The Signal-Man," and "Mr. Chops" (both from Christmas Stories); and "The Fancy Ball" (from A Tale of Two Cities) T h e programme announced ten- minute intermissions after the second and fourth selections. The performance lasted about two and one-quarter hours, and, according to subsequent calculations in the press, required him to memorize about fourteen thousand words and portray forty-two characters.^ He was made up and costumed as Dick ens, and used a replica of the reading desk that Dickens de signed for his own readings. "A cunningly simple affair," the programme said of this desk? Punch, less reverent, call ed it "an eccentric piece of carpentry draped in red wool lens like a seaside mantel-piece, with a shelf for refresh ment and a square lump at just the right height for the left elbow."10 The theatre chosen for the London opening, the Lyric, Hammersmith, is a suburban theatre, seating approximately eight hundred.11 It was then being maintained by Tennent 8 Programme, Lyric, Hammersmith, MS Enthoven. These titles correspond to those listed in the New York playbill; Daniel Blum (ed.), Theatre World, Season 1951-1952 (New York: Greenberg, Publisher, 1952), p. 95. 9Tele., Nov. 19, p. 6. 10Nov. 7, p. 528. ^Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson, The Theatres of London (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1961), p. 227, lists it at 755; 800 is the figure from Lytton's Theatre and Concert Hall Seating Plans. 1960-1961 (London: The Dancing Times, Ltd., [I960]) , pT 19; 750 plus 100 standing is given in Freda Gage (ed.), Who's Who in the Theatre: A Biographical 82 Productions Ltd., for what were regarded variously as experi mental theatre or tax-exempt try-outs. Landstone described it as being "in a working class district, in the midst of a street market, . . . [with] no regular public; [and there fore] each play must stand or fall by its own appeal."I2 Williams played for a week at the experimental Arts Theatre, Cambridge, and another at the Theatre Royal, Brighton; then, on October 29, 1951, he moved to Hammersmith for a run lim ited to two weeks. He opened on the night of the Royal Var iety Show— the so-called Command Performance. Of the twelve reviews discovered,13 an were favor able, and only one— Ivor Brown's in The Observer— was not Record of the Contemporary Stage (thirteenth edition, here after cited in notes as WWT 13; London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1961), p. 1410a. 12 Charles Landstone, Off-Stage: A Personal Record of the First Twelve Years of State Sponsored Drama in Great Britain (London: Elek, 1953), p. 87. He inclined to the "tax-exempt try-out" view. The theatre's files in the Ent hoven showed these productions in 1951; Galsworthy's The Silver Box; Britten's Let's Make an Opera; his adaptation of Dido and Aeneas; The Lyric Review; A Phoenix Too Frequent; Williams; Summer and Smoke; and again, Let's Make an Opera. 13 D. L., "Ghasles Emlyn Dickens," Exp., Oct. 30, p. 3; Maurice Wiltshire, "One-Man Show: Dickens Returns to Life," Mail, Oct. 30, p. 4; W. A. Darlington, "Emlyn Williams as Dickens: Solo Performance," Teler., Oct. 30, p. 6; J.C. Trewin The Illustrated London News (hereafter cited in notes as I.L.N.). Nov. 10, p. 722; P.Chilipl H. [ope]-W. [allace] , The Manchester Guardian (hereafter cited as Guardian or Guard.), Oct. 31, p. 2; W. A., New States., Nov. 10, p. 531; Ivor Brown, The Observer (hereafter cited as Observer or Obs.), Nov. 4, p. 6; Eric Keown, Punch, Nov. 7, p. 528; J.C. Trewin, The Sketch (hereafter cited as Sketch), Nov. 21, p. 523; The Stage, Nov. 1, p. 14; Harold Hobson, The Sunday Times (here after cited as Sunday Times or Sun. T.), Nov. 4, p. 2; Times, Oct. 30, p. 7. 83 clearly enthusiastic. The Express and Telegraph agreed it was a brilliant success; the Illustrated London News called it a "thoroughly impress surprise-packet"; the Guardian and Mail called it spellbinding; and the Times praised its "astonishing virtuosity." To the Sunday Times it was "an evening of power, humour, vitality, foreboding, and terror." W. A. Darlington implied what Eric Keoen stated explicitly: "This experiment comes off with such astonishing success that one hopes the two-week season at Hammersmith will be extended in the West End." "Inevitably," according to the second Mail review, the production did move to the West End— to the 660-seat Criterion, in Picadilly Circus. ^ It played there for three weeks from November 19; then, from December 11 to January 19 it played at the smaller (491-seat) Duchess, just off Ald- wych. The reviews were equally favorable, and perhaps even more enthusiastic.15 The New Yorker1s London correspondent, ^Seating data from Mander and Mitchenson, op. cit. WWT 13 puts the Criterion's capacity at 607 plus 47 standing Lytton's . . . Plans, op. cit., says 560. ^Criterion: Cecil Wilson, "Mr. Emlyn Dickens Moves West," Mail, Nov. 20, p. 5; George Bishop, Tele., Nov. 26, p. 6; G. R., ibid., Nov. 20, p. 6; Beverly Baxter, "Under the Spell," Evening Standard (hereafter cited as Standard or Stand.), Nov. 23, p. 9; G. F., Guard., Nov. 21, p. 5; Queen, Nov. 21, p. 12; Roy Walker, "Emlyn Williams as Charles Dick- ens, Theatre Newsletter. Nov. 24, pp. 10-12; Times, Nov. 20, p. 6. Duchess: Cecil Wilson, "Highlights of the Year," sec tion, Mail, Dec. 31, p. 2; Stand., Dec. 13, p. 9; Molly Panter-Downes, "Letter from London," The New Yorker, Dec. 22 p. 116; leader in The Times. Dec. 15, p. 7. 84 echoing the Telegraph, called it "the most extraordinary theatrical performance of the moment"; its success was com pared with that of Dickens' own readings; and in the Mail's annual feature, "Highlights of the Year," Wilson chose as his "most exciting memory of the year" "the magnificent vir tuosity of Emlyn Williams," because the Laurence Olivier- Vivien Leigh productions of the two Cleopatra plays were "an obvious triumph, not a revelation." After seventy Lon don performances Williams flew to the United States, where he played at the Plymouth in Boston and the Golden in New York. Excluding brief announcements, social notes and thea tre chitchat, there were available to the present study a total of twenty-seven reports, articles and editorials that were detailed enough to be reasonably called reviews: twelve, perhaps thirteen, concerned the production at the Lyric, Hammersmith; eight referred to that at the Criterion; four, at the Duchess; one, at the Arts, Cambridge; and two left the name of the theatre in doubt.^ As there was no sugges tion that the production changed on its journeys, the pres ent study rarely preserved any distinction between early re views and late. •^In addition to those cited in notes 13 and 15 above: The Stage, Oct. 18, p. 10 (Arts, Cambridge) ; F. [ranees] S. [tephens] , Theatre World, Dec., 1951, p. 5; J. C. Trewin, A Play Tonight (London: Elek Books Ltd., 1952), pp. 129-30, where the review is assigned to the Lyric, Hammersmith. 85 Not only wore the reviews favorable in sum; almost all their details were favorable. Four critics noted some selections as less successful than the rest, but such demur- rals were in terms of better-worse, not good-bad; further, they were likely to contradict the views of some other crit- 17 ic. There were two adverse comments, both occurring in otherwise favorable reviews in the Guardian. Of the Hammer smith performance Hope-Wallace remarked: If one or twice we seemed to be falling under the spell of a Lloyd George rather than that of a Dickens, the result was still properly to be described as spell binding. And in a subsequent review of the Criterion opening, "G. F." attacked more strongly: There was only one fault in last night1s perform ances fsic 1. Having created his characters and their environment and wound the tension up to a point where it was hardly bearable, Mr Williams allowed the end of "The Signalman" to be ruined by an ill-conceived and badly reproduced sound effect. The same thing happened several times during the evening. Mr Williams should have more confidence in his own power to create a cli max.^® 1 7 - L/For example, the Times' first review said the end of "The Signalman" was the only place where Williams seemed "slightly to falter." Walker, in Theatre Newsletter, twice used that story to exemplify the show's success. Ivor Brown and Eric Keown thought the Bob Sawyer episode could have been omitted; Trewin said it was one of the best. Wilson's complaint was that "occasionally the programme lapses into seriousness." 1 f t ■^Walker in Theatre Newsletter offered the persuas iveness of that same sound effect as the most "eloquent" sign of the extraordinary success and versatility of the reading. 86 The six instances of disapproval, then, occurred as qualifi cations of otherwise favorable reviews; they tended rather to allege comparative weaknesses than positive faults, and most of those putative weaknesses were praised by some other reviewer. Only two of the thirteen early reviews did not clearly show surprise and delight. With four exceptions, noted above, the reviewers ap peared content with the choice of material, and some thought it worthy of praise. Ivor Brown said Williams was "obvious ly avoiding the obvious," and Trewin agreed that he used "some of the best— not the most obvious— theatrical pas sages"; Frances Stephens referred to the "scholarly study" evident in the preparation. Eight reviews by clear impli cation praised the variety of choice . Keown called the adaptations "sensible," and the New Statesman*s critic said that that of Dombey and Son was "extremely skillful." Another element singled out for praise was the re straint of the performance— in the gesture, the movement and especially in the handling of sentiment. Three reviewers confessed to haying gone with misgivings: "Many of us have been battered in the past by Dickens monologues," said Tre win; and Darlington and Hope-Wallace alluded to the old- style Dickens impersonations of Bransby Williams. There was, however, "none of the dramatic extravagance that might have tempted a less confident actor," said Keown; and added: "The dry delivery with which he treats the sentimental pas 8 7 sages seems to bridge the long gap in literary fashion." The Times praised his "discretion" in so adjusting his per formance to modern taste that "the impersonation of Dickens is carefully exact in detail but tellingly restrained." Beverly Baxter took a line that might not have seemed amiss in American textbooks at the time: This is a brilliant performance because Mr. Williams is at all times the author and only occasionally the actor. . . .There is no gulp in his throat when he in dulges in sentiment, but there is a smile of infinite understanding, as if to say: "Yes, yes, you will be moved to tears. I do not blame you but I shall not try to join you." Of the reviews encountered, that in Theatre Newsletter was the only one to suggest that Williams should have used less restraint and aimed at "emotional effects" nearer to those attained in Dickens' own readings. Findlater found two ad vantages in such restraint: In the 1950's, the actor is necessarily obliged to work within the conventional tone of understatement; and Williams carefully chose his extracts, and orches trated his performance, to avoid the extravagantly tearful mood in which Dickens wrote so many perishable pages. The gambit f sic ~ 1 was limited, but in such an enterprise the actor could not afford to go to extremes. The whole performance was meticulously calculated within his range— a range which had never, it seems, been fully exercised by Williams the author. The six reviewers who referred to gesture and move ment are probably best exemplified by Eric Keown, who noted that Williams "scarcely budges" from the desk., that "there is remarkably little gesture," and that "the magic rests in his voice, his exquisite timing, and the eloquent small 8 8 movements of his face." Trewin referred to "his freedom from reciter's cramp," and in a subsequent book credited much of the program's effect to Williams' dignity and to his "surpassingly clear, vibrant voice, with its control of tim ing and pointing.Prom this may be inferred that he agreed with Ivor Brown's verdict: Anchored to a table, and handicapped by lack of move ment the actor none the less employs such beautiful tim ing of gesture with subtle changes of voice that a score of characters leap into varied and vivid life. Walker referred vaguely— considering the length of his re view— to "the use of head and features," but somewhat more specifically to "the sparing but invaluable repetitive ges tures— especially the silent pose of The Signalman." The Times' second review was the only one that considered facial gesture at any length: He puts behind the beard a face with many of the fea tures that Carlyle described— "a face of the most ex treme mobility, which he [i.e., DickensJ shuttles about — eyebrows, eyes, mouth and all— in a very singular man ner whiie he is speaking." The lines in the face are more lightly drawn than they appear in the old prints, and they are never made to work furiously, as one ima gines they often worked at the original r e a d i n g s . 20 Two reviews described the way in which Williams evoked Dick ens ' self-confidence at the beginning of the program— Baxter 190p. cit., p. 129. 20 Nov. 20, p. 6. Fmdlater, op. cit., p. 80, rather confusingly distinguished between the facial play of Dickens and Williams on the basis that the latter's was "hampered" "by the disguise of beard and moustache." Hence he had to compensate with "the singular brilliance of his eyes" and the "Protean precision or his voice." 8 9 said, "At all times he is conscious of his splendid beard, . . . his cravat, his jacket and his. splendid hair"— and four mentioned his bowing to Dickens' books by way of cur tain call. Considerable space was devoted to the variety and credibility of characterization, to Williams' "magically as suming the voices and whole beings of 42 characters." Eight reviews contained lists of characters like this: Was there ever a more pompous Podsnap, a more crow like Mrs. Raddle, a jollier Jack Hopkins, a more spine- chilling signalman? Theatre Newsletter pointed out what a number of others mere ly implied: "each character is evoked by a mimicry that is never allowed to destroy the personality of the 'author' who is speaking the words." Williams' fidelity to Dickens' own readings was per haps the element upon which the critics came closest to un animity. No doubt part of this was a response to his make up. It was favorably mentioned by ten, of whom Eric Keown was the least enthusiastic: It is not a bad portrait. Without much difficulty one can believe that the dignified figure in Victorian tails . . . ^s Dickens. Much closer to the consensus were the two who called the re semblance "uncanny." Pictures of Williams in character were frequent: the present study found eight. Only one critic questioned the necessity of the makeup: the New Statesman1s "W. A." said that the impersonation helped to carry the 9 0 weakest selections, but that in the strongest, . . . beard, make-up, Victorian frock coat seemed oddly irrelevant, and one felt that the illusion of Mr. Williams as Dickens would have been as fully maintained by a presentation, as it were, in modern dress. And indeed the critics' acceptance of Williams as Dickens usually went beyond the question of makeup: with few excep tions they assumed, if they did not say explicitly, that his was "an accomplished facsimile" of Dickens' own readings. Fourteen of the twenty-six reviews explained Wil liams' performance in terms of Dickens'. In some this may have been a kind of journalistic shorthand— a hasty omission of the sort of qualification that the Times inserted into its discussion of what "one imagines" Dickens did.2l But neither shorthand nor a delight in Williams' makeup would account for the Guardian's reference to "an accomplished facsimile," nor Punch's claim that Williams "follows him faithfully" in manner of presentation. Seven reviews said that Williams impersonated Dickens, and of those, five added modifiers: "admirably," "so well," "brilliantly successful," "loving" and "carefully exact." Both Observer and Sunday Times said that his was a recital such as Dickens used to give; the Illustrated London News implied as much: As with Dickens himself, there is no question of a "reading": it is "an untrammelled dramatic perfor mance." 21 November 20, p. 6; italics added. . 91 Trewin1s quotation of the programme's reference to an "untrammelled dramatic performance" was almost symptomatic: like many another critic, he appeared to accept the pro gramme's implicit claim that this was in fact how Dickens used to read. Walker's article, one Times review and one in The Stage supposed that Dickens had been less restrained; an earlier Times review said that Dickens had had the advantage of identifying himself with his own creations, where Wil liams attacked them "from outside." If to those four be added Wilson's conjecture that Dickens had "surely not" had the same "vivid theatrical effect," and Hope-Wallace's pas sing reference to "inspired amateur histrionics" versus "pro fessional artistry"--(and to "the spell of a Lloyd George") — then there were six attempts to distinguish between the imitation and its object. The majority assumed that "the method practised Qby Dickens and Williams^ is essentially the same." Indeed, such was the general enthusiasm that at times it appeared that people assumed Dickens and Williams to be essentially the same. The Express and Mail paid similar compliments in their headlines: "Charles Emlyn Dickens," and "Emlyn Dickens Moves West." A Telegraph columnist wrote a piece describing the "charming" paraphrase that Williams had made of Dickens' last curtain speech. Williams was photographed in costume and makeup at a reception for Dick ens' granddaughter. And when he was reported to be donating 9 2 to charity the proceeds of his season at the Duchess, his generosity and indeed his financial success were compared to those of h i s m o d e l . 22 Such associations were doubtless strengthened and enriched as Christmas approached, insofar as Dickens' stories and holiday theatregoing are both much more nearly central to the Christmas traditions of England than to those of America; but the Sketch was alone in its reference to "a properly Christmassy six-week season" at the Duchess. How much of this was cause, how much effect, and how much a skilful job of press relations would have been impossible to determine in the present study; what seemed clear was that the critics' judgment of Williams' perform ance included an assumption that it faithfully reflected Dickens' own readings. In summary, all twenty-six reviews were favorable, if not indeed enthusiastic; fourteen expressed surprise. There were six objections to details of the performance: four re ferred to selections weaker than the rest, one to the intru sion of Welsh, and one to the sound effects; almost all of these elements were praised by some other critic. Favorable notice was given to the choice and variety of the material, to the restraint of the performance, to the variety and credibility of the characterization, and to the accuracy of ^ Mail, Oct. 24, p. 4; Dec. 11, p. 5; Stand., Dec. 13, p. 6; leader, Times, Dec. 15, p. 7. 9 3 the portrait of Dickens. There was a pronounced tendency to accept Williams' performance as an indication of how Dickens used to read. Three reviews and three articles discussed the like lihood of Williams' readings achieving a success comparable to those of Dickens. Several of the critics foresaw a new career for Williams. The New Statesman hoped that his Dick ens readings might become "an annual institution"; Theatre World said they "could easily attain" a long run, and the New Yorker's "Letter from London" said they could go on for as long as Williams wished. In the midst of all t h i s , ^ 3 h e announced that he planned a further program for the follow ing year. That further program, the 1952 production of Bleak House, must be discussed before attempting to gauge the sig nificance that the critics attached to the productions' be ing "readings." III. BLEAK HOUSE, 1952 Williams' first performance of his adaptation of Bleak House was given at the Prince of Wales Theatre in Car diff on August 4, 1952; then he played it at the Lyceum in 23 Apparently during his run at the Criterion, about Nov. 21; Tele., Nov. 26, p. 6; Theatre Newsletter, Nov. 24, p. 12. Again the timing was so good that it would be hard to guess how much of this speculation about a "career" was cause, and how much effect. 9 4 Edinburgh, where it was, according to T. C. Worsley, "the dramatic highlight of the Edinburgh Festival."24 on Septem ber 3, 1952, he opened in London at the small (452-seat) Am bassadors Theatre, off Cambridge Circus, and played there till November 1, for a total of sixty-nine performances.25 None of the fourteen reviews encountered in the pre sent study were unfavorable: six were*enthusiastic, five were clearly favorable, and the remaining three might best be labeled perfunctory.2^ The element of surprise was clear in nine: both the Telegraph and the Mail, for example, said it was "an astonishing feat"; Punch, the Illustrated London New States., Sept. 6, 1952, p. 262. Also Times, Sept. 4, p. 6; Eric Keown, "Festival Time," Theatre Pro gramme , ed. J. C. Trewin (London: Muller, 1954), p^ 194. 25 "The Stage" Year Book (hereafter cited as Stage Year Book or SYB) 1953 (London: Carson and Comerford, Ltd., 1954), pp. 8 6, 148. Three weeks later, on Nov. 25, the Ambassadors be came the home of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, which ran there for over ten years; Times. July 17, 1963, p. 12. Enthusiastic: W. A. Darlington, "One-Man Play," Tele., Aug. 22, 1952, p. 7 (Edinburgh performance); J. C. Trewin, I.L.N.. Sept. 13, p. 420; "Our London Correspond ence," Guard., Sept. 5, p. 6; Eric Keown, Punch, Sept. 3, p. 322 (Edinburgh); J. C. Trewin, Sketch, Sept. 10, p. 236; Times, Sept.. 4, p. 6. Favorable: Exp., Sept. 4, p. 3; Walter Hayes, "35 into 1 Goes Down Well," Daily Graphic (hereafter cited as Graphic or Graph.), Sept. 4, p. 7; Cecil Wilson, "35 Parts— but Dickens is the Favourite," Mail, Sept. 4, p. 6; T. C. Worsley, New States., Sept. 6, p. 262; J. C. Trewin, Obs., Sept. 7, p. 6; Harold Hobson, Sun. T., Aug. 24, p. 4 "(Edin burgh) . Perfunctory: R. P. M. G., Tele., Sept. 4, p. 6; Kenneth Tynan, Stand., Sept. 5, p. 9; Harold Hobson, Sun. T., Sept. 7, p. 9. 9 5 News and the Guardian thought it "remarkable"? and the Sun day Times and the Sketch said it was "extraordinary." Ap parently this surprise was compatible with references to the earlier Dickens program, or even— as in the Times— to the 11. . . Merely Players" snippet: Those who were at Drury Lane one Sunday evening a year or so ago and heard Mr. Emlyn Williams's first thrilling account of the death of Mr. Tulkinghorn will take almost a proprietary interest in his adaptation of the whole of Bleak House for dramatic r e a d i n g .27 Three reviews implied that this production was super ior to that of the previous year? Darlington said, for exam ple: Emlyn Williams in his Dickens readings has now taken a stride forward . . . to something.like omnipotence. Both as adaptor and as actor he has a complete triumph in his one-man performance .... But T. C. Worsley was much closer to the consensus: If this attempt is a little less certainly success ful it is the difficulties of the adaptation and not any deficiencies in the performance that make it so. . . . In the middle section, we have to race along un ravelling mere events in order to get through a plot. . . . Yet even if we do have a feeling in the middle of the impossible being attempted and missed, this re mains a most brilliant and most entertaining virtuoso act. This note, of the impossible's being attempted and missed, 27 Six of the reviews were unusually brief. Insofar as this was not because the Edinburgh production had been covered fully in earlier issues— (and in the Exp., Stand.. and even Sun. T. it probably was not)— such brevity might imply the reverse of surprise. 9 6 was struck again by Cecil Wilson, who said that one novel was "at once too much and not enough for one evening," and by Harold Hobson, who felt that the narrative was "too dis connected to make a novel, and the characters too few to make a world." Walter Hayes of the Graphic put it more strongly: Not even such an experienced guide as Mr. Williams can altogether prevent the novel's highly complicated plot from becoming baffling at times. It is , of course, too much to expect one man to play 35 characters and invest each with a clear personality— and some of the characters in "Bleak House" step into each other 1s shadows. The complexity and intrusiveness of the plot was mentioned by J. C. Trewin in two reviews, in both of which he absolved Williams of responsibility; here, for example, is the rele vant passage from the Illustrated London News: In "Bleak House," where he contrives to digest an entire novel . . . he has to make the plot clear, and maybe we have too much of the Dedlocks. I would have preferred more time with, say, Skimpole or Chadband. Still to have wandered would have been to lose the im pact of "Bleak House" as a story: Mr. Williams seeks to honour Dickens the story-teller as well as Dickens the man of a thousand-and-one characters. The Guardian offered a different example of Williams' making the best of a bad job: The death scene of Little Jo . . . cannot be left out. That is Dickens, the tear-jerker, at his worst. Mr. Williams does the only thing that can be done: he plays it for all it is worth, ending with as realistic a death rattle as ever was heard in melodrama. These adverse criticisms, then, like those of the earlier production, occurred as qualifications of otherwise favor- 9 7 able reviews. Proportionally they were somewhat more numer ous than before, but more insistent that the real fault lay with Dickens. And like those of the earlier production these unfavorable comments often centered upon details that were praised in other r e v i e w s .28 This production, like the earlier, was widely praised for its restraint. "Emlyn Williams proves again that he can cope with Dickensian sentiment," wrote Trewin in the Sketch; "he can bring from it something infinitely touching and real." Hobson referred to the "same deliberate coolness" of the earlier production; and the Guardian prefaced its note about the melodramatic death rattle, cited above, with this; The characterisation is always subtle; but remark ably vivid. The robust humour is left to present it self— it is the sly line Mr. Williams chooses to point, — and all the time one is discovering fresh virtues in Dickens as a writer. Worsley said that where Bransby Williams' readings had em phasized the horror in Dickens, those of his namesake caught "the pervading irony" instead; the Guardian, and Trewin twice, were even more clearly reassuring when they said that this was far more restrained than the performances of the "old monologue-men." The economy of movement and gesture was again remar- 28 For example, ten reviews praised the characteriza tion; Punch and the Times« and the Telegraph twice, praised the adaptation; and the underplaying of sentiment was ex plicitly mentioned by at least four. 9 8 ked upon, and again much of the total effect was attributed to the voice. The thirty-five characters, said Punch, were "presented with very little gesture but with all the magic resources of a Welsh voice." According to Darlington such simplicity was by no means accidental: The secret £of the performance] . . . is an astonish ing economy of words only possible because Mr. Williams the adaptor and Mr. Williams the actor can play contin ually into one another's hands in a way that is fascin ating to watch. Effects which cost Dickens pages of description are now got with a flick of expression, a sketch of a gesture or an attitude. In his Sketch review Trewin referred to Williams' "intense, smouldering eyes, his concentration, his vocal resource"; and in the Illustrated London News: He has extraordinary stillness and poise. He acts, for the most part, with his voice: no player's voice that I remember has been called upon for so protean a performance as this. According to two reviewers much of that vocal effect was gained by "relishing every word," by maintaining an "empha tic affection for the vital word and the climactic phrase." Finally, a gesture that aroused four comments previously— Williams' bowing to the books as a curtain call— was now men tioned by only one reviewer, who said his colleagues dis agreed with him that it was "oddly moving." The variety and vividness of the characterization was questioned by only one reviewer, Walter Hayes, whose refer ence to their stepping into each other's shadows was cited above. Punch and the Times thought those characters came 9 9 completely to life; the Express said they "seemed to stalk around him" as he read; in his Sketch review Trewin said Williams "establishes its people for us in the round," and in the Illustrated London News he became graphic indeed: In remembrance, of course, the characters won [.over the plotj. I cannot relate to you now, in detail, the Dedlock-Tulkinghorn business; but I can hear in the mind the unctuous buttery-oily chunnering of Chadband, the gentle cough of Snagsby, the squeezed voice of Tur- veydrop, the reverent guidance of Bayham Badger, the cockney.-quaver of Jo, the hatpin prodding of Mrs. Par- diggle, the conscious whimsicality of Skimpole, the brazen assurance of Guppy. All told, ten reviewers praised the characterization; and the only element that aroused comparable enthusiasm was Williams' portrait of Dickens himself. That impersonation became a facet of characteriza tion in some reviews. Trewin said the thirty-sixth charac ter was Dickens himself, and Cecil Wilson agreed: For all the oiliness of Mr. Chadband and the airi ness of Mr. Skimpole, my favorite character of all re mains Dickens, the reader, setting us squelching and choking in the mud and fog of his gaslit London, polish ing those precious pearls of comic description. The Times' reviewer was unwilling to sacrifice either excel lence: He acts for us Dickens reading the abridgment. He acts for us Dickens acting the characters as they appear. Whether as Dickens directly withering us with his de scriptive power, or as Dickens breathing life into a whole gallery of extraordinary portraits . . . Mr. Wil liams brings off a tour de force. Three others said that Dickens himself was on stage at the Ambassadors; in his Observer review Trewin, echoing Dickens, 100 appeared to suggest as much: What is the word for the Dickensian Mr. Williams? He is "the ray of rays, the sun of suns, the moon of moons." Indeed, the light of Terewth. Such fidelity to Dickens was not ascribed to the ef fectiveness of the makeup; indeed, that makeup was so much taken for granted that it could be encompassed in a passing reference to the beard, in the only three reviews to mention it at all. Pictures of him in makeup continued to appear, h o w e v e r . 29 Nor was there so obvious an assumption that Wil liams' was an accurate copy of Dickens' own reading style. In these reviews appeared, however— and more strongly than in those of the previous program— a disposition to blame the faults of the productions upon Dickens the author. Five re views have been quoted above to that effect;31 to them might be added Hobson's explanation that "Dickens was at his best in episode and character, not in the discipline of the nov el," and Trewin's, that "the fact that we do forget the plot and remember the characters is the novelist's matter entire ly." 2Q ^Indeed, Everybody1s magazine, Sept. 13, p. 16, car- ried an eight-picture sequence of his making up, plus a large picture of the finished product and a smaller one of Dickens. "^Contrariwise, no distinction was attempted; and this might indicate that the assumption had been completely accepted. All that could be established was that the ques tion seems not to have arisen. ^See above, pp. 96, 99. 101 Finally there should be added two miscellaneous com ments about this program. Two reviews, as opposed to four previously, praised it as a feat of memory— involving, said one, over thirty thousand words. Second, Cecil Wilson de voted some time to his contention that "the Ambassadors is just [Williams'J . . . size of theatre": Emlyn Williams, dressed- and bearded once more as Dickens at his reading desk, gives an altogether cosier, crisper, and more compelling performance than the one I saw at the Edinburgh Festival. To begin with he has a much smaller theatre and the impact of his astonishing feat— one actor devoting two and a half hours to one book— is correspondingly great er. In summary, all fourteen reviews of Bleak House here encountered were favorable, although some were perfunctory. Nine contained some expression of surprise. Most of them held that because of the loose and complex structure of the novel, this production was not as good as the first. The restraint of the performance was widely praised, even by the reviewer who gave the only example here discovered of Wil liams' being melodramatic. Notice was given the economy of gesture, and somewhat more attention was paid than previous ly to the use of voice. Ten reviewers praised, and one questioned, the vividness and variety of characterization; eight praised the fidelity to Dickens, with seven excusing some of the alleged shortcomings of the production by trac ing them to this very fidelity. The idea that Williams "has now found a path he can 102 walk to the end of his career" may have been taken for granted— there appeared some tendency to treat him as an in stitution— but it was mentioned specifically in only one re view. In any event, beyond sporadic one-day revivals for charity he attempted no further Dickens productions in Lon don during the period under study. In November, 1953, he appeared in an unsuccessful new play of his, Someone Wait ing; in January to March of the following year he disting uished himself in all three of the memorial readings given for Dylan Thomas;32 an(j then in June, 1955, he burst upon London with a new solo performance, Dylan Thomas Growing O O Up. J The surprise with which this was greeted might sug gest that the career predicted by the critics in 1951 and 1952 concerned not readings per se, but readings from Dick ens. It is to that question that the discussion must now turn. IV. THE UNIQUENESS ASCRIBED TO THE PROGRAMS Reviewing 1951, the year of the first Dickens read ing, Stage Year Book concluded: No great new idea in flesh-and-blood drama, nor any 32 See below, Chapter V. 33 Fmdlater, op. cit., pp. 108-09, suggested that much of the time between December, 1952, and June, 1955 was spent on international tours, with the "Mixed Bill"— or first Dickens program— and Bleak House often given on alter nate evenings. 1 0 3 profound new genius, has been proclaimed. . . . The most ingenious creation of the season in London has been Peter Ustinov's "The Love of Four C o l o n e l s ."34 Theatre World Annual credited Williams with greater origi nality: The year ([i.e., the season 1951-52]. saw two unusual forms of dramatic entertainment in Emlyn Williams1 out standingly successful impersonation of Charles Dickens giving his famous readings, and in Dragon1s Mouth, the "quartette" by J. B. Priestley and Jacquetta H a w k e s . 3 5 However, this review devoted a further sixty-seven words to Dragon's Mouth and moved on to Clements' production, of Man and Superman without mentioning Williams again. In its fol lowing issue the former annual was equally negative: "Emlyn Williams, although giving another fascinating impersonation of Dickens, . . . wrote no play.1 1 36 Theatre World Annual complained of the triteness of the season's offerings, and said later that Williams, Ruth Draper and Maurice Chevalier had proved "that a single act can fill a theatre." 37 The originality of Williams' two Dickens programs seemed less than self-evident to the major theatrical annuals at the time. Williams may have been partly responsible for this 3^S. R. Littlewood, "Drama of the Year," SYB 1952, p. 2 0. 33F. [ranees] S. Qtephens] , "Review of the Year," Theatre World Annual (hereafter cited in note a* a s . . TWA) 1951- 52 (London: Rockliff, 1952), p. 14. 36R. B. Marriott, SYB 1953. p. 7. V 3 7F. [ranees] S.[tephens], TWA 1952-53, p. 16. 1 0 4 state of affairs: he seems to have worried about alienating potential audiences with novelty even more than had Charles Laughton, who was twice reported as claiming his theatrical form derived from the Greek. 38 Williams' playbills for both Dickens productions contained unusually long explanations of "The Nature of the Performance," "The Adaptation" and "The Desk"— over three pages of apologia, .the sum of which may well have obscured the originality of the productions if in deed they did not completely deny it. Both playbills con tained something to this effect: The word [['readings' [ ] is put in inverted commas be cause nothing could have been less like a reading than Dickens' solo presentation; he knew every scene by heart, the book before him became merely a sumbol, and he gave throughout an untrammelled dramatic performance. 38 No less insistent were the press announcements for the first full Dickens program— the "Mixed Bill," as it came to be called.^ 8 Perhaps indicative of the success of the campaign, tLaughton' s] one worry is that people will imagine that 'Don Juan' is some sort of play reading, which it is not. It's a proper performance, but without scenery— rather like the original Greek theatre . . . ," (Manchester) Even ing Chronicle. June 18, 1951, p. 2; Cecil.Wilson, (Manches ter) Daily Mail. June 19, p. 3. 39 Programme, Lyric, Hammersmith, MS Enthoven, p. 3. 40 Times, Oct. 1, p. 6; Tele., Oct. 1, p. 6; Oct. 27, p. 6. The Mail, Oct. 24, p. 4, quoted Williams as saying his hardest task was "breaking down the reverence of English audiences for their classic writers." Henceforth the first full Dickens program, of Oct., 1951, will be called the "Mixed Bill"; although the title seems not in fact to have been applied until later, in the U. S. See Findlater, op. cit., p. 95. 1 0 5 a number of reviewers preserved the "inverted commas" around word "reading," and Trewin repeated the phrase "un trammelled dramatic performance" in two of his reviews. And so the uniqueness ascribed to the programs may have reflec ted the fear, in Williams or in the critics, that potential audiences might be driven off by the radical and unfamiliar. Accordingly a multiple approach to the problem seemed advisable. The following discussion centers first upon the terms applied to the "Mixed Bill" and then to Bleak House— the attempts of the critics to fix on the essential nature of the productions. Then it turns briefly to the actors with whom Williams was compared. Third, it attempts to as sess the prominence of Dickens in the criticism— to deter mine whether these were seen as essentially Dickensian. Last, it discusses the value assigned to the method, and the future foreseen for it. Whether suggested by Williams or not, there was dis cernible a mistrust of the word "reading"— especially in the early reviews of the 1951 "Mixed Bill." Seven critics ob jected to the term, denying that it was appropriate. Trewin has already been cited as substituting for it the programme's phrase, "untrammelled dramatic performance." Ivor Brown said that Williams' were "in fact, recital performances"; Keown substituted "skilful declamations"; Queen magazine said "he presents Dickens acting passages from his books"; and Darlington said merely that the term was misleading. 1 0 6 The Express1 critic preserved the quotation marks around the word, and elsewhere used "acting" and "dramatising"; Wilt shire explained thus: A reading? Well, he probably glanced once at the book he held. But really he declaimed in rolling per iods, he sniggered, he yelped, he terrified, he drew laughter and tears with a flick of the hand or a break of the voice. Those critics who did not directly challenge the word were in little closer accord. The Stage said the show could "perhaps best be described as an animated reading"; Hobson's choice was "recital"; and the Times in its editorial called him a "Dickensian reciter." In its second review the Times said: "These new readings are little plays in which every character is acted by the reader." Beverly Baxter, however, attributed the program's success to Williams' being "at all times the author"; hence its essence was "a portrait of a famous author who was his own most appreciative reader." Roy Walker referred to "slightly dramatized texts," and to "a doubled redoubled solo," in which Williams had to "act a man who is acting his own characters." Hope-Wallace called them "public readings," but added that Williams "pretends to be reading aloud to us." The Guardian's second review, how ever, used "Readings" with quotes and capitalization. In all, there were six reviews of the "Mixed Bill"— four of them late and three of those very brief— which used the word heading" with no distinctive punctuation or other indication that perhaps a better term might be found. 1 0 7 The word "interpretation" occurred twice in contexts that might be relevant to this discussion. In its feature, "We take off our hat to ... . the Sketch said: "His read ings were so thrilling, his interpretation so excellent, that the one-man show moved to the Criterion .... "4^ Maybe this is to be understood in the sense of an actor1s interpreting a part— the Mail referred to Williams' stature as an "interpretive artist"^2— but the New Statesman may have been using the word in the sense currently employed in the academic field of Speech in America: It is a tribute both to actor and novelist that when Mr. Williams was interpreting the best Dickens, . . . we were scarcely conscious that he was impersonating the author; then, beard, make-up, Victorian frock coat seemed oddly irrelevant, and one felt the illusion of Mr. Williams as Dickens would have been as fully main tained by a presentation, as it were, in modern dress. 3 Even here, however, the use is not altogether clear. By way of recapitulation, a gross count of the terms used— (ignoring emphasis, and taking multiple count of any review that explained the production from a multiplicity of viewpoints)— would yield results somewhat like these: seven called it a solo, and three more a one-man performance. Eight referred to impersonation; and eleven contained the idea of an identification: "facsimile," "personification," "impression," "appeared as" (two), "in the guise of," "dis- 41Dec. 19, 1951, p. 625. 420ct. 30, 1951, p. 4. 43Nov. 10, 1951, p. 531. 108 guised as," "alias," "in the role of," "presents Dickens" (two)..44 The idea of acting appeared in four, and that of dramatization in five. "Recital" turned up in two; the idea of reciting and the idea of declamation appeared each twice. "Reading," with or without quotes, appeared in eleven. As was indicated earlier, fourteen reviews explained Williams' performance in terms of Dickens'. A similar gross count of the reviews of Bleak House— with no correction for the fact that only half as many were encountered— would suggest a shift in terminology. Two called it a solo, two a one-man performance, and two others added "alone." Only two referred to impersonation, but there were seven implicit identifications— most of them stronger than those of a year ago— of Williams with Dickens: "brought Charles Dickens back to London," "Dickens himself" [performed) (two), "'Dickens' re-told [the story) , " "he does . . . Dickens," "Dickens [the charactei0 ," and "the Dickens ian Mr. Williams." The idea of acting appeared in two; that of dramatization appeared in five, of which two were "drama tic readings." "Reading was used in six reviews; "recital" and "declamation" or their derivatives did not appear at all; and the following new words each appeared in one review of the fourteen: "rendering," "spoke" and "tell." 44 Neither reference to "presenting," in Queen or New Yorker, implied that "presentation" was a synonym for "in terpretation," as did Times, May 19, 1955, p. 3— (see below, Chapter V). The nearest such implication lay in the New 1 0 9 The reviews of Bleak House were less disposed to quarrel with the word "reading" than those a year previous. The Telegraph called it "a rendering (rather than reading)," and the Illustrated London News said that "dramatic reading . . . means that Dickens himself is at his reading-desk." Most common was the use of "reading" with a modifier— either "Dickens" and its variants or "dramatic"; but as only five reviews did this, it could hardly be called a pattern. The strongest attempts to describe the nature of the performance tended to disregard "reading." J. C. Trewin substituted "acting" on the grounds of intensity; he seems to have introduced the theme in the Sketch and resolved it in the Illustrated London News: The main point is that Emlyn Williams re-creates. He does not merely flick at the strange gallery of Bleak House. He establishes its people for us in the round.45 It is not merely a matter of reeling off lengths of Dickens and letting the audience do the rest. Any man can try to summon spirits from the vasty deep. When Em lyn Williams calls, they come. This is acting.46 The Times, Graphic and Sunday Times used three different terms for what seems to have been the same phenomenon— and one not prominent in the earlier criticism— the handling of the narration and description. The Graphic emphasized the Statesman citation above, p. 107. ^ Sketch. Sept. 10, 1952, p. 236. 46I.L.N., Sept. 13, p. 420. 110 "telling"; the Sunday Times said: He impersonates Dickens impersonating thirty-five characters, a fog, a wind and the Court of Chancery. And the Times put it this way: He acts for us Dickens reading the abridgment. He acts for us Dickens acting the characters as they ap pear. Whether as Dickens directly withering with his descriptive power, or as Dickens breathing life into a whole gallery of extraordinary portraits . . . Mr. Wil liams brings off a tour de force. This emphasis upon descriptive power went somewhat beyond the earlier reviews, which praised rather Williams' relish ing every word. There was, incidentally, only one use of the term "interprets": "This Bleak House is. life itself— as AfL Dickens saw it, and as a superb actor interprets it anew." The fact that the critics sought such terms indicates that the "Mixed Bill" and Bleak House were regarded as un usual, but the wide variety in those terms suggests fairly strongly that the critics did not agree upon where the uniqueness lay. The fact of their being solo performances was prominent in about a third of the reviews, but was cen tral only to the shortest notices. About a quarter of the reviews denied that the performances were readings; approxi mately the same number claimed, explicitly or otherwise, -that they were essentially acting. Slightly more called them impersonations, usually of Dickens and not of the char acters. Indeed, if to that number be added the reviews that 4 J. C. Trewin, Sketch, September 10, p. 236. Ill used what appear to be loose synonyms for impersonation, and those which described Williams' performance by describing those of Dickens, then probably the majority of reviews could be considered to have praised the shows chiefly for their fidelity to the historical Dickensian reading. Considerable warmth, however, was expended in dis claiming all similarity between Williams' and the perform ances of earlier Dickensian reciters and "elocutionists." J. C. Trewin, in particular, was emphatic on the point; in four different reviews he offered some variant of the fol lowing: "There is nothing in them of the lacrymose moaning, the heavily-thudding comedy of the old monologue-men."47 Eric Keown said there was "none of the dramatic extravagance that might have tempted a less confident actor." W. A. Dar lington came closer to naming names: after speculating about a similarity to the methods of Bransby Williams, he said, "It turned out otherwise. The only Dickens character whom Emlyn W. directly enacted last night was Dickens h i m s e l f . " 4 8 Philip Hope-Wallace concurred, and on the same grounds— add ing only "whatever one had feared in advance ...."49 Roy Walker prefaced his review of the "Mixed Bill" with an 47I.L.N.. Sept. 13, 1952, p. 420; Nov. 10, 1951, p. 722; Sketch. Nov. 21, 1951, p. 523; Sept. 10, 1952, p. 236. 48 Tele., Oct. 30, 1951, p. 6. 4^Guard., Oct. 31, 1951, p. 2. 112 anecdote about Bransby Williams, but established no connec tion; T. C. Worsley compared the two thus: What seems to me the particular achievement of Mr. Williams's fine performance is the exactness with which he catches the Dickensian tone. As a prep school boy I remember my hair being raised by Mr. Bransby Williams's readings from Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby; and then, at that age, it was the horror that chiefly im pressed itself. Mr. Emlyn Williams seems to me a little less successful with the horror but with the pervading irony he was quite perfect.50 Trewin made passing reference to Walter Plinge, who "in the old days . . . did three characters" to Williams' thirty- five; ^ and Roy Walker linked Williams with "the Laughton quartet that recently 'read' Don Juan in Hell." but only on the basis that all had memorized their l i n e s . The only other artist with whom he was compared was Ruth Draper— and the resemblances were superficial. Cecil Wilson, announcing the "Mixed Bill"'s change of theatre, asked: "And to what worthier theatre than [.the Criterion,the London home of that other expert in crowding the stage with imagination— Ruth Draper?" Theatre World Annual linked them both with Maurice Chevalier, in that all three had proved that "a so New States., Sept. 6, 1952, p. 262. Even in his obituary in the Times, Dec. 4, 1961, p. 15, Bransby Williams got mixed reviews: his Dickens characters were "all acted with a certain richness and broad sense of character, though without much subtlety." "... Complaint was made £in 1922J that Williams, for the sake of contrast, took an unjustifi able liberty in rendering Micawber as a drunken bufoon." ^Sketch, Sept. 10, 1952, p.-'236. 52 Theatre Newsletter, Nov. 24, 1951, p. 11. 113 single act can fill a theatre"— apparently the same basis upon which Tynan linked Williams with Bob Hope. The Guard ian offered this analysis: Mr Williams is not a male Ruth Draper, though there are signs that he could be one if his material were specially designed to combine the word and the image in the way that Miss Draper's is.53 Hence three critics linked him with Ruth Draper, on the grounds either of imaginative truth or of their both having given solos; one critic attempted a distinction— on the ba sis of physical action. Five critics, in eight reviews, drew some distinction between Williams and earlier Dicken sian reciters— chiefly Bransby Williams— on the grounds either of subtlety or of the former's having impersonated only Dickens and not the characters within the fiction. Such data provide very slender support to the view expressed in a Times editorial, hailing the revival of the tradition of 54 Dickensian reciting; they might demonstrate as easily that he was viewed as unique, and not seriously compared with anyone at all. A question remains as to whether similar criticism might have resulted if he had read, say, Thackeray or Austen or Conrad. The prominence of Dickens the reader, especially in reviews of the "Mixed Bill," has been remarked above. It 5 3"G. F.," Nov. 21, 1951, p. 5. Times, leader, Dec. 15, 1961, p. 7. 114 was noted that fourteen reviews explained Williams' perform ance by describing what Dickens had done; only six reviews drew distinctions between the two performances, and the majority assumed that Williams* was a faithful reproduction of Dickens' method; further, resemblances between the ca reers of the two appeared in a number of news stories. A year later, there was some slight tendency to characterize the Bleak House performance a "Dickens reading." Trewin even offered a definition of the genre: . . . a Dickensian "reading": in other words, a dra matic rendering of scenes from the canon delivered in the spirit of their creator.55 Hence the present analysis concerns rather the prominence of Dickens the author, as opposed to that of Dickens the read er. Some slight negative evidence appears in the fact that references to Dickens the author usually lacked ampli fication. That is to say, although there were many examples of this sort, "his enormously popular readings," or "the dignified figure in Victorian tails"— wherein the modifiers served to identify Dickens the reader— there were probably more attempts to identify Dickens the author within the official playbill than in all of the reviews of the "Mixed Bill" combined. "That histrionic novelist, 1 1 "the undimmed humanity of Dickens"— these two were almost the only modi- 55A Play Tonight (London: Elek Books, 1952). p. 129. 115 fied references encountered until, in the reviews of Bleak House and seeking to explain Williams' comparative lack of success, the reviewers discussed Dickens' powers of charac terization and weaknesses of form. Furthermore, there were at least seven lists of allusions like this: He gave a performance of such astonishing virtuosity that Mr. Podsnap and his Young Person, Paul Dombey and Miss Cornelia Blimber, Bob Sawyer, and Mrs. Raddle, Toby Magsman and Chops the dwarf, the frightened signalman and the cowed and starving Paris mob seemed real, vital, and authentic. ^6 There were at least three rather esoteric whimsicalities like "Dickens would have recognized him at once as an Adult Phenomenon." Most of the critics professed an easy famili arity with the author, making no apology for blaming the weak parts of the "Mixed Bill" and particularly of Bleak House upon Dickens and attributing the programs' success to "the richness of Dickens's invention and the art of Mr. Wil liams together." With one exception— Cecil Wilson's refer ence to "an author so many had left to moulder on their bookshelves"^— the critics seem to have taken the merits of Dickens the author affectionately for granted. Probably only Shakespeare and Lewis Carroll— and at a distant cast, ^ Times. Oct. 30, 1951, p. V. See also, Mail, Nov. 20, p. 5; Sketch, Nov. 21, p. 523; I.L.N.. Nov. 10, p. 722; I.L.N., Sept. 13, 1952, p. 420; Sketch, Sept. 10, p. 236; Mail, Sept. 4, p. 6. ^ Mail, Dec. 31, 1951, p. 2. Perhaps also TWA 1951- 52, No. 3, p. 10: "QitJ coul'd not be enjoyed by all, whether with Dickens or not." 116 perhaps Jane Austen— could be invoked so confidently in British newspapers. Finally, and perhaps more significantly, the value attributed to the readings, and the future foreseen for them, were almost completely centered upon the works of Dickens. "All the time one is discovering fresh virtues in Dickens as a writer," said the Guardian's critic; "effects cost Dickens pages of description," said the Telegraph1s. "are now got with a flick of expression, a sketch of a ges ture or an attitude." The New Statesman has already been cited to the effect that Williams' impersonation was most useful in carrying the weaker selections in the "Mixed Bill," and that a "modern dress" presentation would have served for the stronger. Eric Keown said, in part: Everything is against the adaptor who tries to bring Dickens to the stage. The dialogue is far too rich and roundabout for the stage, many of the best phrases lie in the descriptions of character, and audiences have their own cherished ideas of the people, which an actor is almost bound to shatter. Dickens himself found the right way out in his enormously popular readings. Darlington gave almost the same reasons for his view: "This is, undoubtedly, the best way to bring Dickens to the thea tre." The Times said: "There would seem to be no more sat isfactory way of bringing the best of Dickens to the stage." "Shall we ever dare to read Dickens to ourselves again?" said the Daily Mail. And so forth. The future of the read ings was similarly confined. "One hopes that . . .Mr. Wil liams as Dickens may become an annual institution in our 1 1 7 theatre," said the New Statesman; the New Yorker1s "Letter from London" said: "there seems no reason for Williams ever to stop being Boz if he cares to go on"; the Telegraph said he was likely to "wear the mantle of Charles Dickens for many months"; and both Trewin and Walker called the Dickens readings a new career. Only the Times. in an editorial, saw broader implications in the success of the "Mixed Bill": although calling him a "Dickensian reciter," it speculated upon his reviving a tradition— "a craze (as it became)"— in which Thackeray, "Wilkie Collins and others 'cashed in' — there is no better phrase for it— while the fashion lasted." Is this welcome swallow a harbinger of summer for those who enjoy hearing their favorite characters and passages in fiction dramatized? The success of the B.B.C. with novels half turned into plays and, less strikingly, with straight readings may suggest that pop ular taste is receptive. It would be interesting if the B.B.C. paid less attention to their, sometimes, over acted versions of novels and allowed one voice over regular "peak listening periods" to tell the story. Grown-ups might be held, as Mr. Williams is holding them and as children delight in being read to by those well intentioned, but amateur, actors and actresses,their parents. It may even be that, unknown to publicity, there survive families in which grown-ups still read aloud, as their grandparents did, to one another.58 Except for this editorial, the particular value of Williams' achievement, and the future predicted for it, was always stated in reference to Dickens and his works. 5 8 Times, leader, Dec. 15, 1951, p. 7. V. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 118 Emlyn Williams' first full-length Dickens program, a "Mixed Bill" of six episodes, opened at the suburban Lyr ic, in Hammersmith, on October 29, 1951, and then moved into the West End, where it played till January 19, 1952, for a total of seventy London performances. The twenty-seven re views encountered in this study were all favorable,— indeed, enthusiastic,— and most of their details were favorable. Fourteen expressed strong surprise. Williams was widely praised for the choice and variety of his material, for the restraint of his performance, his virtuosity, his charac terization, and for the accuracy of his portrait of Dickens. It was generally assumed that his was an accurate reproduc tion of Dickens1 own readings. His adaptation of Bleak House was a "highlight" of the 1952 Edinburgh Festival, and then played at the small Ambassadors Theatre from September 3 to November 1— for a total of sixty-nine London performances. Of the fourteen reviews enconntered, nine expressed some surprise at the success of the production; none were unfavorable; most of the fourteen, though favorable, agreed that the rambling plot of the novel intruded, so that the production was not as successful as the "Mixed Bill." Again Williams was praised for his restraint, for his characterization, and for his fidelity to Dickens. 119 Although the early reviews indicated some dissatis faction with the term "reading"— perhaps encouraged by the long and apologetic playbill— no generally accepted substi tute was ever advanced: even a year later, the most common terms, "Dickens readings" and "dramatic readings," were used in only five reviews. Attempts to explain the nature of the productions centered around their being solo performances, around Williams1 having acted or impersonated Dickens effec tively, and around the character "Dickens" having acted or impersonated or "rendered" the characters within the fiction. Just what was the relation between the character of "Dickens" and the other characters never received satisfac tory elucidation: late reviews of Bleak House were trying just as hard to fix upon it as were the early reviews of the "Mixed Bill" a year previous. The critics were almost unan imous in the view that the characters within the fiction had been evoked colorfully and credibly— hence the frequent claim that they were "acted" or "impersonated" or "brought to life"; but there was an equal insistence upon the res traint of the performances— Williams was distinguished from earlier Dickensian reciters on the grounds that he had not directly impersonated the fictional characters. It may be that those critics would have concurred in the view that Williams impersonated Dickens, and that the impersonated character Dickens in turn "suggested" the characters within the fiction— if the latter term were understood in the sense 120 in which it is commonly employed in current theory of oral interpretation. The value assigned to the method, however, was al most entirely restricted to the presentation of Dickens' works. Only once, in an editorial in the Times, was it sug gested that reading aloud per se might be encouraged by Williams' success; and in only one review, in the New States man, was there any question of the need to impersonate Dick ens in order to present his characters. Generally it was assumed that Williams had found a promising new career, in asmuch as his was the "ideal" way or the "right" way to bring Dickens to the stage. Accordingly, however strong the agreement in retro spect that Emlyn Williams' readings from Dickens were pio neer efforts in a postwar revival of public reading in Britain, according to present data it must be provisionally concluded that at the time they were viewed instead as a distinct genre, peculiar to the words of Charles Dickens. If those readings had had implications for other artists, then it might be expected that subsequent produc- 59 It might be noted, however, that that theme, com mon enough while Williams was actually playing, appeared only once in the seven sympathetic but regretful reviews of the play The Trial of Mr. Pickwick, in May, 1952. In the Mail. May 16, 1952, p. 6, Cecil Wilson said, in part: "Except for Emlyn Williams' readings, combining as they do the magic of dialogue and description, there seems no really satisfactory way of dramatising Dickens without offending the diehard Dickensian and baffling the unitiated." 121 tions would attempt to capitalize upon Williams' success— if not in the West End, then in the club theatres and other institutions along the "fringe." That hypothesis may be tested in the following chapter. CHAPTER IV ACTIVITY ON THE FRINGE, 1950-1954 Whatever the eventual implications of Emlyn Williams' success as Charles Dickens in 1951 and 1952, there was little immediate effect discernible; no further readings were given in the West End until Williams himself appeared again, in the Dylan Thomas productions discussed in the next chapter. Four West End productions which lay outside the lim its of the present study but which may have influenced sub sequent readings have been mentioned very briefly in the first section below: the London seasons of Ruth Draper, 1950-56; Cornelia Otis Skinner's Paris '90, 1954; and the two solo revues of 1954, Joyce Grenfell Requests the Pleas ure, and An Evening with Beatrice Lillie. The present chapter is however chiefly concerned with relevant activities along the "fringe"^: with imper- ^-The term "fringe" was probably made current in the English theatre by the Edinburgh Festival, where it is ap plied collectively to the recitals, plays and concerts which have not been scheduled as official parts of the Festival, and which have consequently had to book themselves into what ever remaining auditoriums, clubrooms and whatnot are avail able. The metaphor seems not to suggest geographic limits, but, as in the title of the 1960 revue, Beyond the Fringe, it may well imply artistic ones. The term is used in the present study to avoid the ambiguity of the word "background" which is not only the antonym of "foreground," but might also connote— here misleadingly— a source. 122 123 sonation, monodrama, and reading in the small club theatres where theoretically experimentation could be conducted with less fear of financial loss and no fear of censorship? with "rehearsed readings" and other group readings such as were sponsored by the Institute of Contemporary Arts? and with the poetry readings given by professional actors under the sponsorship of the Apollo Society. A section of this chap ter has been devoted to each. Hypothetically, the ferment caused by Williams' success— and perhaps the ferment out of which his readings arose— should be discernible in these fringe groups long before it appeared in the established com mercial theatre. I. SOLO PERFORMANCES IN THE WEST END Ruth Draper's six London "seasons" in the years 1950-56 are hardly to be distinguished from the four between 1946 and 1948— or from the fourteen between 1926 and 1939. According to her biographer, Morton Zabel: Great though her popularity became in the States, it was possibly surpassed in Great Britain. . . . The Eng lish audience . . . made of her what it is no exaggera tion to call a cult. ■Morton Dauwen Zabel, The Art of Ruth Draper; Her Dramas and Characters, with a memoir (London: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 1960) , p. 67. See the posthumous tributes in -1 ' The Times alone: Dec. 31, 1956, p. 8? Jan. 3, 1957, p. 12? Jan. 9, p. 10; Jan. 10, p. 13? Jan. 11, p. 10? Jan. 16, p. 1 0. 124 And indeed, some reviews took the same slightly reminiscent tone they adopt toward the Savoyards in Gilbert and Sullivan. When she returned for her first postwar season in March, 1946 the Times' review was almost entirely retrospective. Noting that there was "little that is new" and "neither gain nor decline in £her] mastery," it summarized thus: If the imagination behind Miss Draper's character sketches is almost commonplace, the observation which supplies the details of characterization is unfailingly exact; and she has sufficient histrionic and vocal range to make every detail tell.3 If to this were added the phrase "peopling the stage"— which became shorthand allusion to her method— the review would be the quintessence of almost everything the Times said of her later seasons. Those later reviews took on some of the care ful balance of a set of variations: "Miss Draper's great reputation as a creator almost blinds one to the fact that she is, first of all, an actress"— this, the 1947 verdict, became, a year later, "Miss Ruth Draper the actress has rather drawn attention away from Miss Ruth Draper the author, and no less remarkable lady."4 The pattern became estab lished wherein the review consisted largely of an impres sionistic description of one or two of the characters, pre faced by something to this effect: 3 The Times (hereafter cited as Times), March 12, 1946, p. 6. Her later season, in November of that year, was announced as a "farewell season" in the issue of Nov. 4, p. 6, but was not reviewed. 4Nov. 11, 1947, p. 9; Nov. 4, 1948, p. 6. 125 Their familiarity will generally be accounted an ad vantage, for they have the perennial freshness of good art, and it is a pleasure to meet again the indomitably gracious lady who opens the bazaar, the grimly humorous fishwife in [sic ] her porch in a Maine coast village, and the three dissimilar women . . . in the life of Mr. Clifford. 5 Or the pattern might provide the preface: We are like spoilt little guests. . . . For a season or two, we turn up our noses, ever so slightly, at, say, the scenes in the church in Italy. They are amusing, of course, . . . but they are not our favourite: they are not a patch on Miss Draper's great lady at the bazaar, which is proof against all caprices. And then, for no very obvious reason, since Miss Draper has continued on her own sweet way of inflexible excellence, it is sud denly the turn of the Italian church again. 6 Similarly Punch was saying in 1955 much of what it had said in 1952: that her originality was limited; that she was stronger in satire than in sentiment which might become "rather cloying"; "in her magic circle £the characters! be come living people"; and of the current favorite sketch, "it is a wonderful performance, observed to a pinpoint, and only Miss Draper could manage it so beautifully."^ By the time Williams began his Dickens readings, if not indeed by the end of World War II, she was regarded as an institution.^ ^May 21, 1952, p. 9. See also Sept. 26, 1950, p. 6. 6Feb. 3, 1953, p. 3. 7June 15, 1955, p. 775. See May 28, 1952, p. 687. 6The Daily Telegraph (hereafter cited as Telegraph or Tele.), June 7, 1955, p. 6; Daily Mail, (hereafter cited as Mail), June 15, 1954; p. 6; The Sunday Times (hereafter cited as Sunday Times or Sun. T.). May 25, 1952, p. 7; Ken neth Tynan, Curtains: Selections from the Drama Criticism 126 Her London schedule after the Dickens readings seems to have been more regular than before— an average of thirty- five performances or thereabouts, over a period of about four weeks per year: in 1952 forty-six performances at the Criterion (560 seats), May 20 to June 28; in 1953 forty-two at the Globe (907), February 2 to March 14; in 1954 thirty- two at the Duke of York's (615), June 14 to July 10; in 1955 thirty-two at the St. Martin's (550), June 6 to July 2; and in 1956, the year of her death, thirty-two at the St. James's (950), July 2 to 28. This new regularity seems not to have been connected with Williams' success. Cornelia Otis Skinner had played her Loves of Charles II and her Wives of Henry VIII during a brief season at the St. James's in June and July of 1949; the Times had ♦ clearly implied a similarity to Ruth Draper in that she was "alone on the stage in what has become as much the American as the French mode,"9 and had paid her the further compli- and Related Writings (London: Longmans, Green and Co., Ltd., 1961), pp. 248-250. Her institutionalism might almost have been demonstrated in 1946 by the single fact that the entire Royal Family went to see her. Times, March 15, 1946, p. 7; March 22, p. 6. g The Only other postwar West End solo to which refer ence was discovered was John V. Trevor in "solo productions of famous plays" at the St. Martin's, opening June 24, 1948; John Parker and Freda Gage (eds.), Who's Who in the Theatre: A Biographical Record of the Contemporary Stage (eleventh edition; hereafter cited in notes as WWT 11; London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Son, Ltd., 1952), p. 103. Times, June 25, 1948, p. 3, gave it a long but ultimately unfavorable review that demonstrated the thesis: "whether he succeeds or not 127 ment of trying to explain "the special quality of the spell1 : She does not people the stage. . . . She is in swift succession half-a-dozen dissimilar types. . . . Whatever she is, she is very vividly that, but all her interlocu tors . . . are but shadows of a shade. We cannot visu alize them nor can we often hear what they are supposed to be saying. She has no brilliant strokes of charac terization. Her observation of character is placid and conventional. Yet her rendering has the tact and the measure and the unobtrusive but very real humour of a talented lady amusing a domestic circle . . . On February 22, 1954 she opened at the St. Martin's with her 1952 New York success, Paris '90; it ran for thirty-two per formances and closed on March 20. Critical reaction was not good. The Times said it was "an almost complete failure"; it offered a long and sympathetic description of one of the characters, but said the end result was "an extraordinary sense of flatness which is enhanced by the flatness of the dialogue.Wilson in the Mail was cautiously favorable, but thought that the show was too long and that the charac ters merged in retrospect.^ Hobson and Keown were unfavor- 13 able; Trewin thought the task "too much for this endearing diseuse .... The evening droops, but it has been a brave seems to depend on the particular play." Trevor's national ity was not established. 10June 29, 1949, p. 7. ^February 23, 1954, p. 2. ^February 23, 1954, p. 6. ~^Sun. T., February 28, 1954, p. 11; Punch, March 3, p. 304. 128 effort.In The Observer Peter Forster said that her "es sentially transatlantic idiom gets in the way," and that her own personality was "too strong to permit really convincing transmutation fifteen times."^ A little over three months later Joyce Grenfell opened her enormously successful revue, Joyce Grenfell Re quests the Pleasure at the small (441-seat) Fortune, and ran from June 2, 1954 through January 29, 1955 for a total of 275 performances. On November 24, 1954 An Evening with Bea trice Lillie, another essentially solo revue, came from Broadway to the Globe (907 seats) and played 196 performan ces there, closing on May 14, 1955. None of these productions was researched in the pre sent study? however even these limited data may suggest the 16 probabilities that as R. B. Marriott claimed, they stren gthened the tradition of the solo performance, and hence ultimately that of solo reading.^ ^The Illustrated London News (hereafter cited in notes as I.L.N.), March 6, p. 372. 15 The Observer (hereafter cited as Observer or Obs.), February 28, p. 11. 16 See below, Appendix? Ivor Brown, Theatre 1954-5 (London: Max Reinhardt, 1955, pp. 12-13. 17 The club theatres' files showed few solo revues, and only one sketch, "An Evening With Nobody in Particular," at the Watergate, Sept. 5, 1955, that appeared to satirize the fashion, if fashion it was. Times, Sept. 6, 1955, p. 12. 129 II. ACTIVITY IN CLUB THEATRES, DRAMA AUXILIARIES, ETC. London's club theatres, almost all of which are now defunct, were organizations that produced plays for members only: they could offer a sense of exclusiveness and perhaps of dedication, and in return could gain a paid subscription audience and freedom from the office of the Lord Chamberlain — Britain's theatre censor.-*-8 The oldest and largest, the Arts, was founded in 1927 and had in 1952 a membership of 25,000; during Alec Clunes' ten-year resident-management it produced 139 plays, including all of Shaw's— a record that prompted Ivor Brown to call it Britain's "pocket-sized Na tional Theatre"; in 1962 it was one of the two clubs remain ing, and still had a fairly large headquarters in the West End with a theatre that seated 339.^ Most of the others l®This freedom seems to have been more often boasted than tested. There was a flurry in 1956 when the New Water gate, with Arthur Miller a conspicuous member, began a ser ies of otherwise banned productions at the New; Mail, Sept. 7, 1956, p. 3; Sept. 10, p. 3; Times, Sept. 10, p. 3; "The Stage" Year Book (hereafter cited as Stage Year Book or SYB) 1957 (London: Carson and Comerford, Ltd., 1957), p. 11. But inspection of the clubs' production schedules indicated that for most of the period most of the clubs were presenting re vues. 19 . Times, May 19, 1952, p. 9; [n.n.], The Arts Thea tre Club, 1956 (London: Arts Theatre Club, [1957?]), MS in files of present investigator; other membership brochures, loc. cit.; Norman Marshall, The Other Theatre (London: John Lehmann, 1947), pp. 214 ff.; J. C. Trewin, Alec Clunes: An Illustrated Study of his Work, with a List of his Appearances on Stage and Screen (No. XII of Theatre World Monographs, ed. 130 were small and administratively amorphous, and spent much of the decade going in and out of receivership; successive is sues of Stage Year Book show that during the period under study the number of club theatres declined slowly and uncer tainly from fourteen in 1953 to five in 1960.20 Somewhat similar were the organizations that formed as auxilliaries— somewhat on the analogy of fan clubs— around pre-existent theatre groups: the Vic-Wells Associa tion, for example, was formed to support the productions at the Old Vic and Sadlers' Wells? the English Stage Society formed to support those of the English Stage Company at the Royal Court. Members received discounts and special privi leges in booking— and sometimes special entertainments were arranged for them— but the major productions were open to the general public. 21 Frances Stephens. London: Rockliff, 1958), pp. 46-52; Ray mond Mander and Joe Mitchenson, The Theatres of London (Lon don: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1961), pp. 256-59. 20 Mander and Mitchenson, op. cit., p. 256, list only two as of 1961. They say many were strip-tease clubs, and that even the legitimate ones lost their reason for existence as censorship policies were liberalized. 21 One form of fringe theatre prominent in the earli er literature, the Sunday Night Societies, have— according to The Stage. March 22, 1951, p. 8— had to disband because high costs precluded single performances or to become "shop windows" for young actors aspiring to the West End. Rele vant issues of the Stage Year Book ordinarily listed four or five, but the only one advertising in 1962, The Repertory Players, was reported in an interview with the present auth or to. be purely a "shop window," which therefore could not present readings. As none of these societies was encoun- 131 The present discussion concerns both kinds of organ ization, in its attempt to trace the development, if any, in readings and related performances on the theatrical fringe from the year before Williams appeared in his first Dickens reading until the year in which he appeared in his first reading from Dylan Thomas. In 1950 one club theatre, the Watergate, offered eight productions that may have some relevance to oral in terpretation. The year seems to have been a singularly busy one for the club, newly installed in "a large room" "under- 22 ground" in Buckingham Street: it mounted the first produc tion of Shaw's recently completed Farfetched Fables, and the first English production of Strindberg's last play, The Great Highway;^ and it created a succes de scandale with what it claimed was the "first fullstage production" of Pablo Picasso's Desire Caught by the Tail and what the Daily Mirror claimed was "the biggest leg-pull in years.It tered in other parts of the present research, no further attempt was made to consult their files. ^ Times. Feb. 24, 1950, p. 2; May 16, p. 6; Tele., July 21, p. 6. The building was razed during a street-wid ening project in 1956; see the Mail, Sept. 7, 1956, p. 3. 23 Times, Sept. 6, p. 6; Sept. 29, p. 7. 24 The Daily Mirror, Daily Express (hereafter cited as Express or Exp.), Mail and Evening Standard (hereafter cited as Standard or Stand.), all featured the story promi nently on October 10. Much of the interest centered around a promise to adhere to a stage direction that called for a nude. There was much coy publicity, but only a not-quite 132 tried an opera and a seven-character Hamlet as well; doubt less the following experiments should be considered in that context. One of the first was a "dramatised reading" of a play by a Denis Faulkner Horne, Tabu is the House, opening on January 4, 1951. The only review encountered, in The Stage, said that the play was too diffuse, and that read ing merely leaves an audience wondering at what exactly Mr. 25 Horne is aiming." Who1s Who in the Theatre says that on February 14, Robert Rietty "told and acted" The Menace, a short story by Robert Dahl, as a curtain-raiser to a play which the Times dismissed as deserving to be noted "rather than sought out"; no reviews of Mr. Rietty were found. 26 For the first week in March the poet David Gascoyne read selections from his poems and translations as a curtain- raiser to his play A Hole in the Fourth Wall; or Talk Talk 27 Talk. The Sunday Times mentioned the play but not the nude. .In a 6-page mimeographed "Foreword", MS in the Gab- rielle Enthoven Theatre Collection in the Victoria and Al bert Museum (hereafter cited as Enthoven), reference was made to a controversial public reading of the script at the London Gallery in Brook Street, circa 1947; but no other re ference to that reading could be found. 25Jan. 12, 1950, p. 7. 26yimes. Feb. 16, p. 10; WWT 11, p. 167. No record in Enthoven. ? 7 'Programme, MS Enthoven. 133 2 8 readings;* 0 the Times mentioned the readings and scorched the play; Surely, we say to ourselves, there is some point in this gathering of six actors to read a play, or rather to discuss the reading of a play. Surely, though it sounds like one of those hasty improvisations of which almost any clever young man is capable, there is more to it than that. . . . [But] it has been heard on and off in experimental theatres for a very long time. Mr. Harold Reese and Mr. Oliver Burt speak it best. Before the performance last‘night, Miss Elizabeth Sprigge and Mr. Gascoyne read some of his new poems and transla tions. 29 The review may contain some hint of a concert reading; but given the rather aggressive nature of the poet and the club, such hint might almost certainly be expected to appear full blown in. the playbill. Another Watergate presentation was something billed as "Marcella Salzer in Vienna-New York." which ran from May 15 to May 26. It consisted of four "duets": "Rudolph and Anna, " from Reigen; "the first stage production of Sorry, Wrong Number11; Dorothy Parker's Dusk Before Fireworks; and "Christmas Presents," from The Affairs of Anatol.^O The Times1 review said that part of the pleasure arose from a snobbish awareness of merely being present at these "chamber works, as it were, plays for two voices"; it added that Miss 28 March 5, p. 10. 29March 2, p. 10. Programme, MS Enthoven. They are listed separate ly in SYB 1951, pp. 149, 152, 123 and 122 respectively. 134 Salzer, who was always one of the voices, was "perhaps at her best" in Sorry, Wrong Number.31 The production should probably be classified as acting, as in the Watergate's other two-character plays, The Macbeth Murder Mystery and Never Get 32 Out. The Watergate also experimented with one-woman thea tre in the productions by Rosalinde Fuller and Elspeth Doug las Reid. The latter played twice at the Watergate in 1950 in programs of "her own dramatic sketches" in the manner of Ruth Draper. Her first appearance, "to round off the even ing" dominated by another production, was dismissed by the Times in two lines.^3 The same show, opening for a week at the Gateway club theatre on May 30, was apparently never re- 34 viewed at all. When she returned to the Watergate, April 11-16 with a full program she was praised in The Stage for the "fascination" in the realism and completeness of her 35 transformations. Her subsequent productions will be dis cussed below. 31 May 15, 1950, p. 6. For an equally mixed review, see The Stage, May 18, p. 10. 32 SYB, 1951, pp. 136, 142. 33 February 24, p. 2. 34 Parker and Gage, op. cit. p. 178. 35April 13, p. 9. 3^See below, pp. 139, 303-5. 135 Rosalinde Fuller first appeared from 'January 31 to February 5 as the second half of a bill called A Programme of Predicaments and Passions. The first half seems to have been six skits titled collectively "All Right, Spring," written and performed by David Hurst and Patrick Brawn. Miss Fuller appeared in her own adaptation of Schnitzler's novel, Fraulein Else; the programme credits mention the scenery, a 37 mask, and a musician. The Stage's review— the only one found— said that the performance was excellent but the choice "was not a pleasant one."^ Her program was subse quently expanded into Masks and Faces which ran for a week beginning June 27; in addition to Fraulein Else there were versions of Maupassant's "The Sign," and "Caresses," and Kay Boyle's "Winter Night." Her entry in Who's Who in the Theatre called it "a programme of character impressions, her own adaptations from the works of Guy de Maupassant, Schnit- zler, etc." and implied that it was an early form of her later dramatized storytelling;^ it was announced in the Telegraph,^ but no reviews were found.^ 37 Programme, MS Enthoven. The mask was apparently a character. OO OQ Feb. 9, p. 10. Programme, MS Enthoven. 40wwt 13. p. 503. See also the entry "Richard Ain- ley," p. 177. ^George W. Bishop, "Theatre Notes," Tele., June 26, p. 6. 42 See also below, pp. 297-300. 136 Evaluation of these Watergate offerings was diffi cult because the evidence was so scarce. There were two and two-halves programs of what might be classified as impersona tion or "character sketches," plus another which was probably a recital of acting but may have been impersonation; there was a half program of dramatic storytelling; there was a concert reading, and a program that contained a poetry read ing and a play which may have been a concert reading but was probably thin Pirandello. As the runs were limited to one or two weeks, the most generous estimate would place these programs at about seven-fortieths, or eighteen per cent, of the club's total for the year. Given further evidence that the Watergate was in 1950 a new aggressive organization with a tendency toward experiment in several directions, it is hard to find special significance in that particular eight een per cent. The difficulty increases when the record for the following year is consulted; the evidence suggests that in 1951 the Watergate turned toward revues— with no sign of readings or even of solo performances. The 1950 programs, therefore, appear more strongly indicative of the Water gate's experimentalism than of a trend or step in the his tory of oral interpretation. Furthermore, the Watergate seems to have been almost the only locus of such activity. The Telegraph carried a piece signed "M. C.": At the RBA galleries Winifred Radford combined song 137 and recitation. In Elizabethan, Georgian, and Edwardian pieces, performed in appropriate costumes, she pointed her musical effects with apt and economic gesture and a pleasantly dry wit. Beyond that, and Elspeth Douglas Reid's appearance at the Gateway, nothing in London. There is evidence of some work being done on tour: Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies may have been touring Denmark under the auspices of the British Council "giving readings from Shakespearean and other English 44 plays"; Michael Redgrave began his recitations of Hans Andersen's tales in Denmark, and in December he toured Hol land . . . with a Shakespearean programme of some twenty- four speeches in ninety minutes, acting without scenery or properties in a simple all-purpose costume specially designed for him by Sophia Harris of the Motleys. This tour de force was a personal triumph, and six months later he was asked back again to repeat his solos in the Holland Festival. ^ In short, the present study uncovered little evidence of any strong interest in oral interpretation in the London profes sional theatre in 1950, the year before Emlyn Williams began his first readings from Dickens. Even less evidence was obtained for 1951. As was ^April 14, p. 7. 44 From her entry m WWT 13, p. 472. But there is no confirmation in: The British Council, Annual Report for the Year Ended 31st March (hereafter cited in notes as BC Rep ort) , 1951 (London: The British Council, 1951), p. 97. This listed only a troupe for India and Pakistan. 45 , Richard Findlater, Michael Redgrave Actor (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1956), p. 95. See also p. 162 n. 138 stated above, the Watergate's records show no readings nor related performances. Nor does any other club appear to have taken impetus from the Watergate. On November 6 the Irving Theatre Club offered two Grand Guignol plays: Dalgar- ni whose cast consisted of Griffiths Jones, its author; and O'Neill's Before Breakfast whose cast was Ellen Pollock, directed by "Ken Tynan."4^ The former reopened on December 11 at the Embassy club theatre. ^ No reviews were found, but the bizarre form of theatre implicit in "Grand Guignol" suggests it was acting of a sort. Billing herself "The Premier British Diseuse in her Fourth West-End Season," a Margot Hamilton played at the Irving, November 12-18, with eight of her sketches— each labeled "Comedy," "Tragedy," AQ "Drama," or "Historical." No reviews were found. Two of these required only one actor each, and a third required two. They should all be classified as acting perhaps, with the possible exception of the Chekhov monologue On the Evils of Tobacco which was given by a Patrick 0'Connor.^9 Both the Times and the Telegraph were unimpressed; "the very young 46WWT 12. p. 24. 47 Ibid.. p. 28. AQ Programme, MS Enthoven. 49 Programme, MS Enthoven. The bill included: O'Con nor in the Chekhov piece; Christabel Hayward and Dennis Spencer in Molnar's The Kiss; Frank Marcus in Pirandello's The Man with the Flower in his Mouth; a considerable cast in the prologue to O'Neill's The Great God Brown. 139 company was hardly equal to the demands" of the material.^® Elspeth Douglas Reid appreared in a program of char acter sketches at the New Boltons club theatre for two weeks beginning July 4. "J. H." reported thus in Theatre World: When she does not convince she is still intensely interesting and self-sufficient. Her characters are sometimes caricatures rather than sincere portraits. . . . Yet such is her power to people a stage with un seen characters that now and then we have to admit to a sneaking interest in these phantom players which does not include the central figure. Eric Keown's review was less mixed: I am afraid Miss Elspeth Douglas Reid fails to reach the standard we have come to expect of single entertain ers who provide a whole evening of character sketches. She is at her best as a woman trying to telephone with a cold in her head, but in her other items neither her dia logue nor her observation is enough to hold us for so long.52 His point is a little puzzling, not because it contradicts the earlier review in The Stage which praised the complete ness of her transformation, but because he did not say who had set the standard of expectation: beyond Ruth Draper, and just possibly Cornelia Otis Skinner, it is hard to guess 53 whom he had in mind. If his claim was more than a testy ^®"R. P. M. G." Tele., Nov. 28, p. 6? see also the Times, Nov. 2.9, p. 6 . 51 August, 1951, p. 11. Apparently the show was not reviewed in the Times, the Telegraph or the Express. 52 Punch, July 18, 1951, p. 76. 53 Emlyn Williams had done only his ". . . Merely Players1 1 snippet; and Keown's review of Miss Skinner's Paris 190 three years later, was very unfavorable; March 3, 1954, 140 exaggeration, solo performances were more numerous and more widely recognized than the data found the present investiga tion would suggest. At the Arts Theatre Club, Alec Clunes announced a series of rehearsed readings of some of the final entries in a playwriting contest the Arts had sponsored. But he was doing so because he was dissatisfied with the quality of the scripts and wanted the authors to hear their work in the com pany of a critic and a producer [director?]. There was no evidence that the public was invited, or even that the read- 54 mgs were held. As 1951 was the year of the Festival of Britain, the comparative absence of ceremonial readings and recitations may be a little surprising. Sybil Thorndike recited a Mase field ode at the laying of the foundation stone for the National Theatre on July 13;^ earlier on June 23 there was scheduled at the Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, "a special performance of David Garrick's p0de to Shakespeare'," p. 304. A further, if minor, puzzle is his reason for re viewing Miss Reid at all. The New Boltons had been in re ceivership that year, and was trying to reopen as a non-pro fit distributing company (Times, Jan. 4, 1951, p. 7); in spection of its files showed little in the year's offerings to draw the attention of a first-line critic. ^ The Stage, July 5, 1951, p. 8. ^J. C. Trewin, Sybil Thorndike; An Illustrated Study of Dame Sybil's Work, with a list of her Appearances on Stage and Screen (No. 4 of Theatre World Monographs, general editor, Frances Stephens. London: Rockliff, 1955), p. 122. 141 to be "spoken" by Michael Redgrave, who would "appear as 56 David Garrick." But the major effort seems to have been the Apollo Society's series of "poet-sponsored" readings at the Arts Council, to be discussed later.^ The relative inactivity of the club theatres is only a little easier to understand. The Festival year has been C Q called a financial disaster for the theatre; and so the clubs may have had caution forced upon them: doubtless they stood to gain little from the tourists because advertising budgets were probably limited, and because their club status depended upon their restricting admission to "members" how ever temporary. Moreover, they had to compete for those members' attention with the free pageants and other spec tacles provided for the Festival. For whatever cause, they did little with reading. The Arts continued to produce the Shaw canon; the Watergate turned to revues; but even under the "incredibly crude conditions" resulting from its having to dismantle a picture gallery every evening before begin ning to build the stage set, the Hovenden offered eighteenth century costume plays, and was praised by a critic for its 56 George W. Bishop. "Theatre Notes," Tele.. June 18, 1951, p. 4. 57 See below, section IV. 58 By Landstone, op. cit., and provincial journalists. See above, pp. 51-53. 142 sticking to such safe choices.^9 Clearly the question was not entirely one of economy or convenience, and perhaps the data lend themselves to nothing more than a bald recapitu lation: in 1951 the club theatre.files showed a total of one program of character sketches, one "diseuse," one pro gram that contained a "monologue" and some solo acting, and two one-character plays. In 1952 after Emlyn Williams' first "Mixed Bill" of Dickens readings had "launched him upon a new career," there seems to have been in London's twelve club theatres less of relevance to oral interpretation than in the West End— which fin had Ruth Draper and the play Dragon1s Mouth. At the New Torch on July 2 Selma Vaz Dias performed Cocteau's mono logue The Human Voice as a curtain-raiser to Lorca's The fin Shoemaker's Wife. The play was reviewed, but not the monologue. 62 Elspeth Douglas Reid offered a program of character sketches at the Mercury, opening on May 23— two days after Ruth Draper began her season at the Criterion. Her daring 59 The Stage, May 24, 1951, p. 10; May 17, p. 8. ^®In addition, Libby Holman is listed as a "diseuse" appearing July 22 at the Lyric, Hammersmith; WWT 12, p. 53. She was reviewed solely as a folk-singer in the Times, July 23, p. 3. ^Programme, MS Enthoven; SYB 1953, p. 102. 6^Tele., July 3, 1952, p. 6; Times, p. 9. 143 went almost unnoticed; but the Times observed: Miss Elspeth Douglas Reid . . . does not achieve much more than a series of scenes which are descriptive rather than dramatic or moving. She tells us all about a number of imaginary characters who are supposed to be on stage with her, but she only brings her own imperson ation to life. The others remain shadowy and indistinct, mere excuses for her own monologue, and the result is inevitably somewhat monotonous.^ The club theatres, then, offered in 1952— so far as could be established in the present study— a total of one monologue and one program of character sketches. Of the drama societies, the Vic-Wells Association revived the prewar custom of celebrating Shakespeare's birthday at the Old Vic; on April 20, 1952 scenes and speech es were given by Robert Harris, Marie Ney, Diana Wynyard, Sybil Thorndike, Lewis Casson, Dorothy Tutin, and others. Alec Guinness, for example, recited Auden's "Prospero to Ariel," and Pamela Alan did Sonnets LV and LXXI.^ A similar concert was presented on July 11 in commemoration of William Poel: there was a reading of the opening passages of Every man by Robert Atkins, Lewis Casson, Russell Thorndike, and Margaret Halston; and Helen Haye (sic) spoke the prayer for the Queen from Ralph Roister Poister.6^ In that same year the Association's Bulletin announced that there had not been 63 Times, May 23, p. 9. 64 Programme, MS Enthoven. 65 Loc. cit.; Times, July 12, 1952, p. 6. 144 enough interest among the members to form a weekday play- reading group?00 there was one which met on Sunday evenings, but no evidence was found to indicate that it was other than amateur and that professionals ever performed with or for them. In addition to these occasional readings at the Old Vic there was an increase in the number of poetry readings and "rehearsed readings" offered by the Apollo Society and 6 7 the I.C.A.— both of which will be discussed later — but the record of readings or related performances in club theatres in 1952 appears wellnigh nonexistent. In most respects the year 1953 seems to have been a repetition of 1952. Ruth Draper again played a two-week season in the West End, Williams again took a successful Dickens reading to New York, the Apollo Society and the I.C.A. increased the number of their readings; the number of club theatres rose from twelve to fourteen, and the num ber of readings or near-readings increased to two. At the Watergate on October 4 Esme Percy gave a lecture-recital called "The Legend of Sarah Bernhardt," "in which he invokes 66 Vic-Wells Association Bulletin, no. 71 (Nov., 1952) p. 4? MS Enthoven. A Miss Irene Brent invited inter ested members to visit her playreading group which met at the Finsbury Public Library. Apparently the group was still in existence three years later, ibid., no. 91 (Sept., 1954), p. 7. 67 See below, sections III, IV. 145 youthful memories and impressions of the famous actress."®® Stage Year Book, 1954 reports that there was a rehearsed reading of Plautus1 The Captives in the Oak Room of the Arts Theatre Club on July 12, 1953. One new element, however, was introduced in 1953: the Hovenden Theatre Club offered a series of poetry read ings, and may have given concert readings as well. Possibly these should be considered school exercises rather than of ferings of the professional theatrebut inasmuch as some of their other productions were reviewed as legitimate thea tre, a similar presumption was made here. The poetry read ings were announced for September 25, October 10 and Novem- 70 ber 14; neither programmes nor reviews were found. As 1953 was the year of the Coronation, the absence of records concerning ceremonial recitations is somewhat odd. There appears to have been in the West End some im pulse to the classical, if not indeed ritualistic: Gielgud 68 Tele.. Sept. 21, 1953, p. 6. Times, October 6, p. 2, treated it as a lecture. 69 The club's announcements frequently implied a close connection with the drama classes offered by the foun der, Valerie Hovenden; and by 1960 it had rather clearly be come a shop window for aspiring— and apparently unpaid— ac tors: "Unlimited free seats are allowed each artist to en able them to be seen .... All taking part in the Club pro ductions give their services and immediate release in the event of engagement is assured." Prospectus, dated June 16, 1960, MS Enthoven. 70 Mimeographed announcements, loc. cit. 146 had "a brilliant season" with Venice Preserv'd and The Way of the World; Wolfit played Oedipus; Redgrave and Ashcroft did Antony and Cleopatra; an otherwise undistinguished play 71 called The Young Elizabeth had a run of 498 performances. And if it was indeed "on the whole a disastrous year for . . . serious new plays," and if the cost of scripts was in fact "greatly bothering" such fringe groups as the provin cial repertory companies,^ 2 the presentation of some sort of Elizabethan anthology would seem— in retrospect— to have been an almost inevitable choice. Yet no record was encountered 7 ^ even of conspicuous occasional reading. In 1954 there occurred in rapid succession three Dy lan Thomas memorial readings, so successful that one review er called their neglect by West End managements a "scan- 74 dal"; Ruth Draper, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Joyce Grenfell, and Beatrice Lillie appeared in solos in the West End— three of them successfully; and there was one all-star matinee on 71 Theatre World Annual (hereafter cited in notes as TWA) 1952-53 (London: Rockliff, 1953). 72SYB 1954. p. 10; Ibid., p. 11. 73 However, at the Mercury, Elsa Verghis, of the Na tional Theatre in Athens, opened on March 10 in a solo reci tal of Greek classic heroines. Times, March 11, p. 11, praised the recital, "spoken in the tongue of modern Greece," for its "unwonted air of warmth and humanity about the doom ed women." 74 Exp.. March 1, 1954, p. 5; see below, Chapter V. 147 May 31 at Her Majesty's in honor of the golden jubilees of Dame Sybil Thorndike and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art: Dame Edith Evans opened the proceedings with an en- trancingly warm and witty reading of A.P. Herbert's Pro logue? and Sir Laurence Olivier ended them with the apt Epilogue from Shakespeare's Henry VIII.75 But there was little such activity in the club theatres. A group called the Play Forum presented a "rehearsed reading" of a play called A Last Letter at the Arts on May 30? and at the Irving, "London's Only Grand Guignol Theatre," 77 El len Pollock directed and played Birthday Greetings, a mono logue by Nesta Pain, as part of an evening of five horror playlets. It was heavily reviewed, but the Telegraph's headline, "No Chills from Grand Guignol," reported the con sensus. However The Manchester Guardian and the Mail agreed with the Times' conclusion, if not necessarily its reasons: The best of these five essays in the kind, or so Miss Ellen Pollock makes one believe, is . . . Birthday Greetings, since there is something pitiful, as well as grotesque, about the character of the aging, neglected wife, made mad with jealousy, who has poisoned her hus band's mistress and rings her up to tell her.7° There was a rather unusual amount of work in "rehearsed 75 Audrey Williamson, Contemporary Theatre, 1953-56 (London: Rockliff, 1956), p. 178. 76SYB 1955. p. 125. 77 Programme, MS Enthoven. Programmes for two years previous called it "London's Only Late Night Theatre." 78 Times. March 11, 1954, p. 3? The Manchester Guard ian (hereafter cited as Guardian or Guard.), March 12, p. 3; Mail, March 11, p. 6; Tele., March 11, p. 8. 148 readings," in various lecture halls,^ but this activity seems not to have touched the majority of club theatres; and the influence of Williams' Bleak House was so slight that the Arts and Theatre Workshop mounted at least four full- stage dramatizations of sprawling novels. All told, the Bri tish Council, a pillar of the Establishment, was probably doing more experiment in oral interpretation— with its speech recordings, and its sponsorship of the tours by Margaret Rawlings and James McKechnie in poetry recitals through Hol land and by Sybil Thorndike and Lewis Casson in dramatic re citals through Australasia®®— than were the reputedly exper imental club theatres. At the Old Vic, on April 23, the Shakespeare Birth day program contained a number of poems "spoken by" Richard Burton, Laurence Hardy, John Neville and Michael Hordern, in addition to fullstage performances of six scenes from the years' productions; it grossed seventy p o u n d s . T h e thea- 79 See below, section III. 80 The British Council, Report . . . 1955, appendix XV, p. 114. According to Appendix V, pp. 95-9, such tours cost £15,665; but the Cassons' brought in 68,166. Appendix XVII, p. 118 says 4,630 recordings were distributed; The Reports 1950 through 1954 indicate that more than fifteen albums were sponsored by the Council. 81 The New Watergate booked Cilli Wang, a mime, and Anna Russell in September; the Arts booked Juliet Prowse; and the Hovendon tried something called Musicolour— a de vice which, according to the Times, Aug. 10, p. 3, "'inter prets ' music played on a piano by producing erratic distur bances of the stage lighting." 82 Typed announcement, MS Enthoven. 149 tre's Fortieth Anniversary program, on October 3, had eleven actors— Michael Redgrave, Claire Bloom and Miles Malleson among them— reciting poems and Shakespearean speeches. But QO neither program was reviewed. J According to the data gathered in the present study, then, there was in London's club theatres and drama socie ties rather more activity in oral interpretation— very broadly defined— during 1950 and 1951, the two years preced- *, ing Emlyn Williams' first full program of Dickens readings, than during the three years following it. Such data should almost certainly be viewed as incomplete, for it was in this part of the present study that the design was least adequate to its purpose: marginal operations like the small club theatres were the least likely to be reviewed in the press, and the least likely— of the institutions studied— to have a stable executive which would keep accurate records and forward them regularly to the national repositories. But after such allowances are made, it still seems fairly clear that monodrama, impersonation, concert reading andi solo reading received no strong impetus in the fringe theatres from Williams' success. QO On Sunday, Oct. 17, "The Monday-Nighters" gave a rehearsed reading of Fry's The Boy with a Cart, directed by Irene Brent, whose "students" gave a poetry recital besides. It seems to have been an amateur production. See above, p. 145. 150 III. REHEARSED READINGS IN THE INSTITUTE OF OF CONTEMPORARY ARTS, ETC. The Institute of Contemporary Arts was founded in 1946 by Herbert Read, the author and literary critic; it has been active in the promotion of a wd,de variety of artistic endeavors: it maintains a gallery in Dover Street, just off Picadilly, for exhibitions of new painting and sculpture; it offers lectures in the arts; it acts as parent body to a num ber of groups that meet for discussions or exhibits of poet ry,, foreign films, "Italian well spoken," new books, etc.; it cooperates with other organizations, such as the National Book League or the London County Council, to serve as joint sponsor of projects as varied as poetry readings or the pre miere performance of a new translation of Stravinski's The Soldier's Tale. It has sponsored many poetry readings— its Bulletin lists eight in 1953 and in 1954— but as these have been almost invariably those of poets reading from their own a a works, and have rarely featured professional actors, they 84 Margaret Rawlings appeared with Elsa Verghis, the Greek actress, in an I.e.A. recital of contemporary Greek poetry in Greek and English at the Egyptian Institute on March 2, 1953. On May 26, 1954, in Mahatma Gandhi Hall, Hed- li Anderson appeared with Louis MacNeice in their "only Lon don recital prior to American tour"; she delivered some dia logues and dramatic songs. On November 24, 1954, Miss Raw lings appeared with Claude de Sache in a program of readings from Rimbaud. The Institute of Contemporary Arts Bulletin (hereafter called Bulletin), 1953, 1954, in the files of the I.e.A. on Dover Street. 151 have been omitted from the present study, which was concern ed rather with the Institute’s "rehearsed readings." These rehearsed readings often employed professional players and professional directors, and seem ordinarily to have dealt with experimental plays. Usually they were given not in theatres, but in lecture halls and clubrooms in and around the Bloomsbury district. It is unlikely that many of them were well enough advertised to attract the general pub lic, and very few were reviewed in the press; yet they may deserve attention as having, potentially at least, a germin al influence like that of the programs at Kaufmanrt Hall in New York. The present section attempts only to mention those readings whose casts included identifiable profession als, but even with this limitation the list is almost cer- QC tainly incomplete. 3 On January 20, 1952, at the theatre of the French Institute in South Kensington, the I.C.A. produced a re hearsed reading of Sappho, the verse play by Lawrence Dur- 86 rell. It was directed by Robert Speaight, and read by 8*5 The I.C.A.'s noncurrent files consisted solely of back issues of its Bulletin, complete to 1953, but with no thing earlier. SYB 1953 lists three rehearsed readings for 1952; earlier issues list none, but neither does the 1954 issue, when other sources show that there were at least four. Little was found in the Enthoven Collection, perhaps because few of the readings was held in theatres. 86 Times, Jan. 22, 1952, p. 7; The Stage, Jan. 24, p. 9. SYB 1953, p. 123, says it was produced at the I.C.A. 152 Margaret Rawlings, Richard Ainley, Speaight, and four others. The Stage praised Durrell's verse and characterization, and said of the actual readings Margaret Rawlings's reading of the part of Sappho, with sketched-in moves and gestures, was more exciting than most finished performances and made the strongest possible argument in favour of a full production. The Times was more concerned with the historical accuracy of the play, but agreed that the performance was excellent. It concluded thus: It says much for the quality of . . . [Durrell's] play and also for the skill of the principal artists that they manage to create, on a bare stage set only with chairs, a good measure of dramatic illusion. Quite clearly the rehearsed reading was considered a make shift form by both reviewers. No reviews were found of the other two such readings that year: Theodore Bikel in Fare well to Faustus by Leo Lehman, directed by Frank Hauser, on February 3; nor a "First Stage" society production of No 87 Man's Son on April 6. In 1953 Roy M. Walker directed a cast that included Roger Livesay and Ursula Jeans in a reading of The Coming of Acre, a verse play by Patric Dickinson, on January 18; on May 3 Douglas Claverdon directed a cast of six, including Diana Maddox and Valentine Dyall, in scenes from In Paren thesis and Anathemata by David Jones; and on June 14 A 87SYB 1953. pp. 96, 117. 153 Parliament of Women, a play by Herbert Read, was directed by Robert Speaight with a cast including Vivienne Bennett, David King-Wood, Speaight, and Yvonne Coulette. A dramatic reci tal in German of Brecht's works, including Kalendergesch- lichten and songs from Mother Courage, was given by Ernest- 88 ine Costa on February 1. None of these were reviewed in the Times or the Telegraph. The I.C.A.'s files for 1954 showed three readings— besides the Dylan Thomas memorial readings, two of which it co-sponsored and which will be discussed in the next chapter. On January 17 Eric Capon directed Mother Courage, with Er nestine Costa, Theodore Bikel, Esme Percy, John Gregson, and others; on June 13 Tony Richardson directed e. e. Cummings' him, with a cast that included George Devine; and on October 17 there was a double bill consisting of a Richardson pro duction of Giradoux' The Apollo of Bellac and a version of Auden's The Sea and the Mirror, directed by David William with a cast that included Diane Cilento." To these Stage Year Book. 1955 adds two: Remember Island on September 26 and Worlds Apart on December 12." It lists also five other 88 Bulletin, nos. 29, 32, 34, Jan., April, June, 1953L SYB 1954, p. 127, refers to a rehearsed reading of Shiela by the "First Stage" Society, March 29, 1953, and at the Three Arts Centre; no sponsor is mentioned. 89 . Bulletin, January, June, October, 1954. 90pp. 144, 161. 154 rehearsed readings, possibly amateur, which were sponsored by other organizations not researched in the present study: Gillian, written by Lynne Reid Banks and directed by Pat Reid Banks, at the Philarte Society, January 10; The Killer Dies Twice, also by Lynne Reid Banks, at the Philarte Soci- ^ ety on July 11; Tamar at Princes Gate on October 19; Glori- ana and the Earl by James B. Fell, in the Practice Theatre of the British Drama League on November 15; and The Rules of the Game at the Ben Uri Gallery on December 12. The sources were so scattered that even a bald sum mary of these data may be misleading, and a bald summary is almost the only conclusion they will support. During the years 1950 to 1954 the sources consulted in the present study indicated a total of twenty "rehearsed readings," some probably amateur. Of that total, from which the Dylan Thom as memorial readings have been excluded, the Institute of Contemporary Arts sponsored more than half. One was recor ded in 1950 but none in 1951; in 1952 there were four, three of them for the I.C.A.; in 1953 there were five, three of them for the I.C.A., one for another institution and one for a club theatre; and in 1954 there were ten, five for the I.C.A., four for other institutions, and one for a club theatre. As only one of these was reviewed in either the Times or Telegraph the present study found no adequate record of the pecularities of the genre. Nor could it safely gen eralize from the references to the "bare stage" and "sket 155 ched-in moves and gestures" in the reviews of Sappho, that other rehearsed readings were similar; a very early review alleged a great variety in reading styles,9^ and there was no evidence that the years brought them anything more uni fying than a common label. What does seem a matter of clear inference is that the "rehearsed reading" was regarded as a makeshift; three * reviews said as much, and they are corroborated by the fact that only one performance out of the twenty was reviewed by either of the two London dailies most conscientious in their theatre coverage. Almost equally clear is the absence of connection between a "Dickensian reading" and a "rehearsed reading"; Williams' theatre form was neither copied nor in voked by the organization which was probably the best-known and the most eclectic of the private sponsors of experiment 92 xn the arts. Whether the reverse was also true is a mat ter for the following chapter. Times. Nov. 10, 1946, p. 7, contained this; "The play-reading was certainly a success, if by success is meant that we should now like to see the company throw aside their scripts and complete for us the drama they have sketched. Last night some of them— Miss Peggy Ashcroft, for instance, Mr. Miles Malleson, Miss Margaret Leighton, and Miss Rosa lind Atkinson— antincipated this; they could not help am plifying the lines with gesture and facial expression. Dame Edith Evans, Mr. Franklin Dyall, Mr. Alec Clunes, and Mr. Esme Percy were among those who left it to their voices to do all." 92 R. B. Marriott, however, xmplxed a connection be tween the two forms. See Appendix. 156 IV. POETRY READINGS OF THE APOLLO SOCIETY, ETC. The Apollo Society, "a group of poets, actors and musicians whose purpose it is to design and perform pro grammes of poetry and music,acts as a sort of booking agency, where the program directors of schools, arts festi vals and community concert series can secure a troupe of ar tists— usually two readers and one pianist or lutanist; in addition, since about 1952 the Society has offered about six concerts per season in the West End, usually in the recital room of the Royal Festival Hall but sometimes in the thea tres like the Arts or the Aldwych. Tickets are sold through the usual channels; so far as could be learned, there has been no subscription audience. * Performers have received a "modest fee"; the Arts Council has paid "office expenses" QA and guaranteed the Society against loss. Although the Society's records for the first ten years of its existence were not available to the present study, so that the data prior to 1953 were rather scanty, such data as were discovered did not indicate the view that its work was well-established in London before the fif- Brochure issued during the Festival of Britain, 1951, MS in the files of the Apollo Society, St. George's Terrace, Regent's Park, N.W.l (hereafter cited as Apollo files). 94 Informal interview with Mr. Basil Douglas, Secre tary of the Society, May 24, 1962. 157 ties.^ Rather, the critics seem just to have begun to rec ognize its purpose. The aesthetic basis is no doubt to set over against each other two forms of lyrical impulse and expression. . . . There is no doubt that spoken poetry gains by as sociation with instrumental music, but there will have to be a lot of trial and error before it is clear what will go with what.96 Thus a Times1 review of a concert given by Sybil Thorndike at the Aldeburgh Festival in 1951; in 1954 another said that "inasmuch as the idea of concerts of poetry is new, there is still room for experiment in programme building.Its statement of aims, in 1951, had the militance of an out group: QC ^JEric Keown gives an account similar to the Socie ty's version of its early history. Eric Keown, Peggy Ash croft: An Illustrated Study . . . (no. 3 of Theatre World Monographs, . . . 1955), p. 62; cf. statement "The Apollo Society" in the programme for the Aldwych Theatre recital of February 18, 1962, MS in the files of the investigator. The Society was founded in 1943 by Peggy Ashcroft, who had been impressed by the popular reception of a series of poetry readings given at the Globe in 1940 by Edith Evans, Alec Guinness and herself, and advertised solely via a letter from Edith Evans to the Times. It gave recitals in concert- halls and camps during the war, and in schools, libraries and theatres thereafter. No newspaper account of that foun ding, nor of the first concert— in Cambridge, May, 1943— was encountered; Dame Edith's letter is in the Times of April 12, 1940, p. 9— (see also April 26, p. 4)— but there are few references to the Society indexed before 1950. 96 June 12, 1951, p. 8; see also the Guard., June 3, p. 3. 97 May 1 8 . , 1954, p. 10. See also the speculation in The New Statesman and Nation (hereafter cited as New States man or New States.), below.' 158 The aim of the Society, is to revive the neglected art of reading poetry and to show that poetry and music can be regarded as complementary .... The poems are not subsidiary to the music, nor the music to the poems. It is possible, then, that the Apollo Society's emergence as a force in the London theatre dates from the beginning of the period covered in the present study. In 1951 during the Festival of Britain, the Society, under the auspices of the Arts Council, offered a series of eight afternoon concerts, each "sponsored" by a poet, at the Council's recital room in St. James's Square.^9 Admission Q Q Brochure, 1951, op. cit. Cf. a statement in 1962, by which time the papers could make passing references to the Society without elaboration: "Very often it is found that one art enhances the other."— Aldwych programme, op. cit. 99 The function of the sponsor is not clear. That he was also one of the readers, as claimed in the New Statesman article next cited, is not supported by the schedule in the Society's files, which lists the participants as follows: SPONSOR (DATE) John Betjeman (May 7) Walter de la Mare (May 14) Dylan Thomas (May 21) Stephen Spender (May 28) Cecil Day Lewis (June 4) Edmund Blunden (June 11) Edwin Muir (June 18) Christopher Fry (June 25) READERS Peggy Ashcroft Robert Harris Georgie Henschel John Laurie Veronica Turleigh Dylan Thomas Margaret Rawlings Robert Speaight Edith Evans Cecil Day Lewis Rachel Kempson William Devlin Catherine Lacey George Rylands Jill Balcon Christopher Hassall PIANIST Natasha Litvin Terence Beckles Kathleen Long Angus Morrison John Hunt Mewton Wood Franz Osborn Joan Davies 159 was free but tickets were to be ordered in advance. A re view in the New Statesman was enthusiastic about the form: The recitals are not poetry readings with musical trimmings. The idea inspiring them is that the poems and the music should each play their part in creating a camp lex whole, and the programmes are built up with an eye to correspondence of tone and structure as well as to similarity of theme and mood. 100 It praised the readers as well: To the variety of words and music was added the con trast of two voices: Mr. Day Lewis's which offered the poetry, and not his personality, to the audience; Dame Edith Evans's, with a wider range of tone and volume, apt for the declamation of Whitman and, more unexpect edly, most effective in Day Lewis's own Italian Visit. And it predicted an impressive future for the experiment: The British are not always comfortable listening to poetry in or out of the theatre. They never know wheth er it deserves a hush or a clap .... Nor do we have a generally accepted tradition of speaking poetry like the French. But it does seem that these recitals are help ing to create a hybrid art of the great possibilities, that remains in its essence, and in the best sense, a highly formal art. After all this, it is probably ungenerous and perhaps mis chievous to quote immediately from the New Statesman's only other review of an Apollo Society concert during that dec ade, for the second was written by a different reviewer, working apparently from entirely different critical pre suppositions: "The poems had almost nothing to do with the music, and they could not have had . But as it concerned ■^^J.A.S., New States., June 9, 1951, p. 652. 101P.D.S., ibid., November 17, 1951, p. 562. 160 the next-but-one regular concert^®^— given by Peggy Ashcroft and Alec Clunes at the Arts on October 8— and as the earlier may be somewhat too convenient to ah evolutionary study, the contrast ought not be avoided. The second review said in part: The total effect seemed to me appalling. Similari ties between the arts came out all right: in the end it was the pianist who won the day, because he forced his colleagues to read the verse as music whereas they would plainly have preferred to read it as though it were drama .... Stage actors are seldom effective on the radio because they are not used to making an effect with the voice alone; and for the same reason they rarely read verse well. References to the performers were just about as specific as those in the earlier review: Mr. Clunes's antics in his armchair added nothing to the poems he read, and his smoking-concert kind of "ex pression" was a distraction. Miss Ashcroft has a very beautiful voice, but she missed her chances. She filled up the spaces between the words, ignored the end-stop ping of lines, and put in dramatic build-ups that did not exist. On the stage it is often an actor's business to make dreary words sound interesting. . . . reading verse you must allow the words the work for themselves. Besides the amusing contrast in critical presuppositions, what is perhaps most germane to the present purpose is the underlying mistrust of actors as poetry readers. In one it is explicit, and defended with a generalization about radio 103 acting; in the other it is evinced as surprise that an 102 The next regular concert, at Wigmore Hall on July 8, seems not to have been reviewed. The Apollo files list Peggy Ashcroft, Edith Evans, Margaret Rawlings, John Laurie and C. Day Lewis as readers— with two pianists. The notion that [BritishJ stage actors are poor 161 actress with a wide range of volume and tone could be effec tive in conversational material. Such misgivings were not shared by the reviewers for the Times. One, reviewing a concert later in the season, re marked upon how "extraordinarily stimulating and extraordin arily satisfying" it was: . . . to hear poems of all periods and on any subject and in every mood, and read by actors and actresses ac customed to seek and declare an author's subtleties.104 All four of the Society's regular concerts at the Arts dur ing the 1951-52 season were favorably reviewed in the Times: the Asheroft-Clunes reading, noted above; that of Margaret Rutherford and Robert Harris on January 14, 1952; that of Margaret Rawlings and John Laurie on February 11; and that of Eileen Herlie and Wilfred Pickles on March 1 0 . There is discernible in each, however, a tone of pleased surprise— which may further suggest that the Society's activities were still new to London at the beginning of the decade. For radio actors seems not to have occurred to the then Head of BBC Drama, who might have used such an argument very profi tably in his defense of radio drama as a unique form, or in his justification of the BBC's maintaining its own repertory company. See Val Gielgud, British Radio Drama, 1922-56; A Survey, with a Foreword by Sir .William Haley, K.C.M.G., Dir ector-General, BBC 1944-52 (London: George G. Harrap & Co., Ltd., 1957), pp. 69, 8 6, 182-186, and Appendix. 104March 11, p. 6. ■^^Respectively: Oct. 9, 1951, p. 10; Jan. 15, 1952, p. 7; Feb. 12, p. 2; March 11, p. 6. Names of the pianists have been omitted above. 1 6 2 example, the Rutherford-Harris review contained a descrip tion of the setting, and of the relationship which the read ers tried to establish with their audience: The atmosphere of a drawing-room is lightly hinted at with a setting of two carved oak chairs and a crystal chandelier and this impression is reinforced by . . . the casual manner in which the artists appear to choose, from the books and papers on the table at which they sit, the poems they shall read next. The effect is to make the poems they read more of an intimate, shared experi ence than one would expect in a crowded theatre and re mind the listener how often the poems are the experien ces of ordinary life heightened and crystallized by poe tic inspiration. As this seems to have been the Society's usual method— (ex cept for the reference to the chandelier the account would fit any of its concerts in the London area ten years later) — the implication is probably that the reviewer found it new. Judging from these reviews, the material chosen was lyric or comic poetry, but the lyrical may have shaded to ward the dramatic. Margaret Rutherford, for example, was "almost unbearably funny" with Eliot's "McCavity, the Mys tery Cat," and"no less effective" in Hardy's "The Tramp Woman's Tragedy," and "Sidney Dobells' dialogue 'How's My Boy?'" John Laurie "obviously enjoyed" McGonnigall's atro cious poem "Ode to Glasgow," and was "equally at ease with Browning's exacting monologue, 'Andrea del Sarto.'" Margar et Rawlings' "dramatic intelligence" made Tennyson's "The Revenge" "not only rhythmic and colourful but also moving." There is no indication, however, that poetic drama was read; 163 one passing reference to Swift and "witty comedy" is the only hint— and that an ambiguous one— that prose was offered during this season at the Arts. According to an announcement in the Times there was to be a rehearsed reading of Browning's drama Pippa Passes, as an "Apollo Society experiment" at the St. Martin's on February 24, 1952. It would be the first performance of the play since 1924; it would be directed by Frank Hauser; and the case was to include Margaret Rawlings, Cecil Trouncer, 1 Marius Goring, Max Adrian, and others. But it was not reviewed in any of the leading dailies— nor mentioned in an article in the Times that began: "By strange coincidence two eminent writers who failed in their own lifetime as playwrights are to be represented on the London stage this week."^®^ The present investigation yielded nothing about what may have been the Society's only formal attempt at a i no concert reading until its gala celebration in 1960. Nor did the present investigation find much trace of the subsequent season, 1952-53. The Society's brochures in 1962 claimed it had offered six concerts a year in the Royal L06Feb. 15, 1952, p. 2. 107 'Feb. 25, p. 2. Neither of the theatre annuals listed it, nor was there any reference to it in the Society's manifestly incomplete files. 108 See below, Chapter VI. But see below, p. 166, where a 1954 reading of the last act of Pygmalion is men tioned. 164 Festival Hall since 1952.^-^ But this study showed only that Peggy Ashcroft, John Gielgud, George Rylands, and George Malcolm were advertised to appear on May 31, 1953.^^ The 1953-54 season was much more thoroughly documen ted. In addition to co-sponsoring one of the Dylan Thomas memorial concerts, discussed in the next chapter, the Soci ety offered five concerts in the Royal Festival Hall: Claire Bloom and John Laurie on October 11, 1953y Margaret Rawlings and Robert Speaight on November 8; Joyce Grenfell and Max Adrian on February 7, 1954; Peggy Ashcroft and Robert Harris on April 4; and Edith Evans, Barbara Jefford, Michael Red grave, and Michael Hordern on May 16. No reviews were found of four of these, but the Society's files showed that they did not depart from the format. For example, Joyce Grenfell 109 However the monthly schedules of the Hall show a variation of from three to eight in the number of concerts offered yearly— with an average of five. If the concerts are counted by season the number is more constant: usually five, but twice increasing to six and twice to seven. A further source of confusion is the Society's cele brating, in 1960, what it claimed was its fiftieth concert in Festival Hall. No indication was found of the source of its calculations; the present study accounted for only for ty-one previous to the "fiftieth." Unless one entertains the assumption that between the end of the 1951-52 season at the Arts and the first available record from Festival Hall in May, 1953, there were eight concerts, none of than an nounced in either the Times or Telegraph, it seems likely that the Society extrapolated from its records for the four or five years previous to 1960, and assumed that the 1952- 53 season had five or six concerts. Obviously more research is needed. ^^Tele., May 30, 1953, p. 2. No reviews found. 165 and Max Adrian, each of whom had recently appeared in a ser ies of successful revues, offered only a few humorous works — from Betjeman, Pope, Stephens, and Ogden Nash— and devoted the major part of their program to Gray's "Elegy" and to ly rics from the Romantics. The fifth concert however was some thing special; and it was held in the main auditorium of Festival Hall which Seats three thousand, rather than in the recital room which with its annexe seated 350. The Times1 review was headed "New Kind of Poetic Ensemble" and dealt largely with structure: Poetry is by constitutional right the senior partner in the work of the Apollo Society, but inasmuch as the idea of concerts of poetry is new, there is still room for experiment in programme building. Mr. Louis MacNeice, who was responsible for the choice of Sunday's anthology, found that he must have at any rate a germ of a topic to unify his five groups of short poems, and he chose the idea of the life-cycle that starts in spring. The music should at a distance mirror the poet's moods. So Miss Kyla Greenbaum began with "Greensleeves" before Herrick and finished with Chopin's "Berceuse" after Mr. Michael Redgrave had spo ken in the poem . . . which contains the line "Sleep is a reconciling." Mr. Redgrave, however, spoiled Mr. Mac Neice's plan by substituting a piece of serio-comic Clough for the folk-poem "Strawberry Fair" which was to reorientate our mood bv the old and never-failing de vice of the refrain. It then discussed, no less ponderously, the effectiveness of the four voices in terms of the traditional musical quartet, and concluded that "the pitch of the speaking voice is one of the factors that the Apollo Society has to consider in li:LMay 18, 1954, p. 10. 166 this new kind of poetic ensemble." During that season the Society was offering far more dramatic material at regional festivals. At the St. Pancras Arts Festival in central London, for example, Margaret Raw lings and John Stuart read the last act of Pygmalion as part of "An Evening with Bernard Shaw" on November 17, 1954. Three days previous Peggy Ashcroft and Stephen Murray used as the first part of an otherwise standard Apollo program a series of poetic dialogues: lines from Comus, The Duchess of Malfi, Marriage a la Mode, and The Lady's Not for Burning. However, excerpts from the drama do not seem to have been offered at Festival Hall for another two years. In 1954 the Society brought out The Apollo Antholo- 112 gy; and there was another and perhaps no less reliable sign that poetry-reading was becoming established: a popular columnist tried to get an article out of it: I hate people who read poetry out loud .... Mar garet Rawlings is always reading poetry out loud— on the radio and at small gatherings. And she talked about de la Mare's poetry with bated breath. In a poetic voice. In words of carefully prepared purple prose. It was a b o r e . H 3 The Society was of course not alone in this popularizing of 112 The Apollo Anthology, comp. Lucy Selwyn and Laur- ier Lister (London: John Murray, 1954), 12s 6d. 1 1 3 . William Hickey, "Why this Bated Breath for Poet ry, " Exp., Feb. 27, 1954, p. 6. 167 poetry reading: the indictment mentions the radio;the I.C.A. annually sponsored about seven programs, usually by poets; from 1953 onwards the National Book League had a Poe try Circle that met quarterly for readings; the Poetry Society may have held readings every week; and indeed there were about one hundred societies in London alone which may have sponsored readings periodically. gut by the middle of the decade the Apollo Society's work seems not to have required special explanation in advertisements or reviews. Although the records were far from complete, the pre sent study found evidence of fifteen regular concerts given in the West End by the Apollo Society in the years 1951 to 114 . Times, Sept. 10, 1955, p. 7, devoted a light leader to the subject; it said in part: "There is still a great deal of reading aloud, but it is not done by father. It is done— well done— by 'professionals'on the wireless, and they number their families in the million." Writing of the Third Programme in 1962, Christopher Driver said: "At the nadir of its popular appeal— a poetry reading, for example— the Third's audience approximates to the circulation of 'Encounter' (about thirty thousand)," Guard., Feb. 15, 1962, p. 6. Burton Paulu, discussing the period 1946-57, put the maximum at fifty thousand, or two per cent of the total population; Burton Paulu, British Broadcasting in Transition (London: Macmillan, 1961), pp. 150-61. The Home Service, and even the Light, with a com bined evening audience of over four million in 1953, car ried— by American standards— a very large amount of poetry. In 1962 the Times. Jan. 20, p. 4, estimated that 2,250,000 housewives heard Sybil Thorndike read from Rabindranath Ta gore. ns Advertisements in Bulletin. 1953-59. 116 Literary, Debating and Dialect Societies of Great Britain, Ireland land France! 1951-54 (London: various pub- lishers, 1951-55.) 168 1954, excluding the special series of eight "poet-sponsored" readings in 1951 and the Dylan Thomas memorial reading in 1954. Two of these were in 1951, four in 1952, three in 1953, and six in 1954; the Society's advertisements have said there were six- per year. Programs were compiled by a poet or anthologist, but usually were read by an actor and an actress— although sometimes four readers appeared in a sort of quartet. Of the readers identified, only Cecil Day Lewis and John Betjeman belonged more clearly to the world of let ters than to the theatre; almost all the others were profes sional actors and actresses. However during the years 1951-54 the Society was exploring the relations between poe- « try and music, and was unconcerned with drama, if indeed it did not avoid it. The poems were chiefly lyric, and although poems with dramatic situations were used, poetic drama was not. The reviews treated the concerts as literary and musi cal phenomena, not as dramatic; aside from some early com ments about the actors' ability to read poetry, the theatre was rarely mentioned. These poetry readings appear to have grown in popular acceptance, and by the end of the 1953-54 season the connection between the Society and the theatre seems to have become remote. George Rylands, a drama professor and part-time director, Christopher Hassall, a playwright and one-time ac tor, and Day Lewis' wife, Jill Balcon, who did play Zeno- crate to Wolfit's Tamburlaine at the Old Vic in 1951, were the major exceptions noted. 169 V. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS In 1950 Ruth Draper offered a month's season at the Criterion; Elspeth Douglas Reid offered Draper-ish character i I (sketches in one and one-half programs at the Watergate club i I theatre and one at the Gateway; Rosalinde Fuller, also re motely in the Draper manner, offered solo dramatizations of short stories for one and one-half programs at the Water gate; and Robert Rietty "told and acted" a story as a cur- tain-raiser. So there were four and one-half programs of what might be called "impersonation" in the club theatres. The Watergate also offered a program of acting "duets," a poetry reading as a curtain-raiser, and a "dramatized read ing"; but it did not pursue these experiments. There was a program of song-and-recitation in costume at an art gallery; and overseas Michael Redgrave gave recitals of Hans Andersen in Denmark and of Shakespeare in Holland. In 1951 Williams began his "Mixed Bill" of Dickens readings; Elspeth Douglas Reid offered her character sket ches for a two weeks' season at the New Boltons club thea tre, and another diseuse offered eight sketches for a week at the Irving. The Irving also offered an evening of two one-character horror plays, one of which was repeated at the 170 Embassy. The New Lindsey booked an evening of five short plays, two of which required one character apiece. So the club theatres booked only two impersonations and three pro grams of monodrama— as opposed to four and one-half programs jof impersonation and no monodrama the year previous. The jApollo Society offered eight "poet-sponsored" readings at i the Arts Council during the summer, and two regular concerts of poetry reading in the fall; critical reception suggested that its work was new to the city. In 1952 Ruth Draper had a season at the Criterion, Emlyn Williams offered readings of Bleak House at the Ambas sadors, and the "quartet" Dragon1s Mouth— inspired by the First Drama Quartette— played at the Winter Garden. Elspeth Douglas Reid again offered a program of character sketches, at the Mercury; and a Cocteau monologue formed half of a program at the New Torch. The Vic-Wells Association began to hold about two programs of recitations per year. The I.C.A. held three "rehearsed readings"; a fourth was spon sored by another institution, and perhaps a fifth by the Apollo Society; none of these was reviewed by the two lead ing dailies. There were at least three of the regular Apol lo concerts. And so there were three items connected with oral interpretation in the West End, another two in the club 171 theatres, perhaps five play readings, and as many poetry readings and recitations; in that same year The New York Times editorialized about professional reading in the |United States: i : | The thing is developing into a craze. Wherever an actor hangs out a shingle and staggers through a stage door under a load of books people happily flock to the playhouse and buy tickets at a $4.80 top.1!8 There was little evidence of a corresponding craze in Lon don. And in 1953 when George Jean Nathan was balefully predicting that if the "profusion of solo and group copy cats" persisted in New York a conventional stage-play would be "a novel and exciting experience,1,118 there was in London only the American Ruth Draper at the Globe? the club thea tres offered no impersonation nor monodrama of which record was found. There was a rehearsed reading at the Arts, three at the I.C.A., and one elsewhere. The Apollo Society had three poetry readings; the Hovenden Theatre club— which may have been a school shop-window— had three; and the I.C.A. had one. 118March 2, 1952, IV, p. 8. 118The Theatre in the Fifties (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), pp. 36-37. 172 Then in 1954 there developed a considerable variety of activity. Ruth Draper appeared at the Duke of York's; Cornelia Otis Skinner got cold reviews for Paris 190 at the St. Martin's; two one-woman revues were extremely success ful. There were three widely noticed memorial readings for Dylan Thomas; and there were more "rehearsed readings" that year than in any other during the period of the study; five at the I.C.A., four at other institutes, and one at the Arts club. Club theatre activity was, however, reduced to one Grand Guignol monologue, widely but unfavorably reviewed. There were six Apollo concerts recorded, twice as many as in previous- years, and one more than the average for the entire period. The British Council sent readers abroad for the first time since 1949: Margaret Rawlings to Holland and the Cassons to Australasia. But even this flurry re sulted in a total of only twenty items or so— some probably amateur— that were connected even remotely with oral inter pretation and that were considered important enough to be recorded in the standard repositories— and this during a year in which there was less competition for attention than usual; The bare fact is that, apart from revivals and im ports, there is nothing in the London theatre that one 173 dares discuss with an intelligent man for more than five minutes .... If you seek a tombstone, look about y o u . 1 2 0 Perhaps the only conclusion to be derived with con- fidence is that if there was a strong tradition of profes- : sional oral interpretation in London during the period 1951-54 the design of the present study was inadequate to detect it, and it should be sought in other directions. The data are too clearly incomplete, and the time span too short, to trace the bimodal distribution they sug gest— with peaks of activity just before Williams opened his successive readings. But they are probably sufficient to demonstrate that Williams' Dickens readings had no strong immediate influence upon the offerings along the theatre fringe. No one seems to have tried further Dickensian read ings, nor offered programs of Trollope or the Brontes, for example, although in 1954 alone there were at least six fullstage dramatizations of books. The Apollo concerts seem rarely to have used prose and to have avoided drama, and the I.C.A.'s "rehearsed readings" were probably far from Williams' method. 120 Kenneth Tynan, op. cit., p. 85. See also TWA 1953-54. p. 7; TWA 1954-55. p. 7. If there was a single influence discernible in the club theatres, it was that of Ruth Draper— and this chiefly because of the persistence of Elspeth Douglas Reid. Rosa- linde Fuller too was in the Draper tradition; but the rest-f Ithe monodramas, the solo acting, and the"duets" might be traced to a Continental tradition of declamatory acting more quickly than to anything in the modern theories of oral in terpretation. A fourth point, of possible significance, was the continued indifference to "rehearsed readings." Only three reviews were found, out of some nineteen readings, and each review implied clearly that the production was a makeshift. Examination of the titles of the nineteen revealed few that were familiar; and so these readings may have existed pri marily to test new material. The indifference was not be- casuse of a lack of "star appeal"; many of the Apollo Society concerts assembled no more talent, but they got a far better press. The Apollo Society neglected the form; it advertised one concert reading, and a couple of programs with four readers; but there was no evidence of the readers' — as opposed to the poems'— interaction. The lag between American and British acceptance of concert readings or Readers Theatre may eventually be explained in part by an 175 investigation into the critical neglect of these early "re hearsed readings." Professional oral interpretation along the London theatre fringe in the years 1951-55 was scattered and desul tory, but it manifested itself in the theatre clubs as im personation and monodrama, and elsewhere as rehearsed read ings and poetry readings. Emlyn Willians' Dickens readings were unique. The next chapter discusses the direct and in direct results of the merging of three of these forces, when Emlyn Williams appeared in rehearsed readings and poetry readings that were sponsored by the Apollo Society, the I.C.A., the Vic-Wells Association and others, and held in memory of Dylan Thomas. The discussion of impersonation and monodrama is continued in Chapter VI. CHAPTER V THE THOMAS MEMORIAL READINGS, 1954, AND DYLAN THOMAS GROWING UP, 1955 During the first three months of 1954 there were three programs of readings in honor of Dylan Thomas. They were presented on Sunday evenings, and were sponsored in part by some of the organizations discussed in the previous chapter— notably the I. C. A., the Vic-Wells Association and the Apollo Society. Each program contained a concert reading of at'least part of Under Milk Wood, and each had as one of its ablest readers Emlyn Williams. Thus the pro grams might be considered a meeting of three potential lines of development previously discussed: the poetry read ings of the Apollo Society, and "rehearsed readings" of the I. C. A. and others, and the kind of reading given by Wil liams wherein he became the author telling a story. The best-known result of this meeting of potential lines of development was to inspire Emlyn Williams to cre ate another solo production, Dylan Thomas Growing Up. This show, which reached the United States under the title, A Bov Growing Up. opened in London on May 31, 1955, and proved almost as successful as his earlier readings from Dickens. He played it in various parts of the world for the next 176 177 three years, and then brought it back to London for three weeks in the fall of 1958. Whether there was a comparable impetus along the other lines of development— in the concert reading or the poetry reading— apparently had not been investigated prior to the present study. Obviously such impetus might greatly modify the "rehearsed reading" especially: it had been con sidered a makeshift form; and insofar as these memorial con certs were the first major attempts since those of the First Drama Quartette to use such a form before large and influ ential audiences, the success of the concerts might legiti mize if it did not completely refashion the "rehearsed read ing" as a dramatic form. The present chapter deals first with the memorial concerts; in a second section it discusses the concert reading and other manifestations of Readers Theatre during the period 1955-60. A third section treats of Emlyn Wil liams' 1955 production, Dylan Thomas Growing Up. and more briefly of its revival in 1958 as A Boy Growing Up. The fourth section offers a summary and some provisional con clusions . I. THE THOMAS MEMORIAL READINGS Within two months of Dylan Thomas1 death in Novem ber, 1953, The Sunday Times announced that in association with the Institute of Contemporary Arts and the Group Thea- 178 tre it was sponsoring "a programme of poetry, drama and mus ic" to raise money for a Dylan Thomas Memorial Fund, created to finance the education of the poet's children. Apparent ly the response was immediate: the following week it was reported that half of the available seats— presumably about 450— had been sold on the first day of booking;^ subsequent reports were that the concert was a sellout, at prices from five shillings to five pounds,-^ and that the "entire tak ings" of il,169 went to the fund.4 “ This concert, called Homage to Dylan Thomas and de vised by Louis MacNeice, Rupert Doone and Vera Lindsay, was held on Sunday, January 24, 1954, at the Globe Theatre. Hugh Griffith and Emlyn Williams each read two of Thomas 1 short stories; Edith Evans and Richard Burton read a number of his poems, and Hedli Anderson sang two that had been given musical settings. Excerpts from Under Milk Wood were read by members of the cast of the premiere performance, to be given on the BBC Third Programme the following evening; hence this concert reading was claimed to be the first pub- The Sunday Times (hereafter cited as Sunday Times or Sun. T.), Jan. 3, 1954, p. 1. See also The Times (here after cited as Times). Jan. 4, p. 4. 2 Sun. T.. Jan. 10, p. 1. 3 Evening Standard (hereafter cited as Standard or Stand.), Jan. 25, p. 5. 4 Sun. T., Jan. 31, p. 6. 179 lie performance of the work.5 In addition there were trib utes from some of Thomas' fellow-poets; and the concert ended with a recording of Thomas reading "And Death Shall Have No Dominion."5 Two weeks later, on February 14, there was a second concert, a "Memorial Recital," at the Royal Festival Hall. This was sponsored by the I. C. A., the National Book League, the English Centre of P.E.N., the London Welsh As- 5 A staged reading of an earlier version was held in Kaufmann Hall, New York, the previous autumn. Daniel Jones, "Preface," Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas (New York: New Directions, 1954), p. x. g The following are listed in the programme, MS in the Gabrielle Enthoven Theatre Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum (hereafter cited as Enthoven Collection or Enthoven): "In My Craft or Sullen Art" (song) Hedli Anderson Tribute by Edith Sitwell Edith Evans "Requiem Canto" by Louis MacNeice Louis MacNeice "A Visit to Grandpa's" (prose) Emlyn Williams "Poem in October" Richard Burton extracts from Under Milk Wood BBC Third Pro gramme cast "Lament" Richard Burton "Ears in the Turrets Hear" Edith Evans "The Hand that Signed the Paper" Edith Evans excerpts from The Return Journey (prose) Hugh Griffith excerpts from Holiday Memories (prose) Hugh Griffith "The Hunchback in the Park" Richard Burton Just Like Little Dogs (prose) Emlyn Williams "After the Funeral" Richard Burton "Ceremony after a Fire Raid" Edith Evans "Fern Hill" Richard Burton "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night" (song) Hedli Anderson "And Death Shall Have No Dominion" (re cording) Dylan Thomas The performance was recorded, and about half was is sued as Argo recording RG-29, Homage to Dylan Thomas. 180 sociation, and the Apollo Society in association with the Arts Council. Again the BBC Welsh team of actors read ex tracts from Under Milk Wood; the London Welsh association Choir sang; and poems and short stories were read by Peggy Ashcroft, Dame Sybil Thorndike, Sir Lewis Casson, Michael Hordern, Christopher Hassall, C. Day Lewis and Emlyn Wil liams. Festival Hall, which seats three thousand, was full to overflowing, according to the Daily Mail, and "women greatly outnumbered men in the audience."7 The Mail ran a large picture of Peggy Ashcroft "re citing": it showed her standing with book held high and head thrown back, as if addressing someone above eye level. She "had great success" with "Lycidas" and "A Refusal to Mourn"; Sybil Thorndike, the Mail continued, "spoke the words of Thomas's 'After the Funeral' in which he says he wrote for those 'who pay no praise or wages nor heed my Q craft or art.'" The Daily Telegraph's review, more liter ary, said the concert "demonstrated conclusively that when 7 "Tanfield's Diary," Daily Mail (hereafter cited as Mail), Feb. 14, p. 4. 8 Ibid. The confusion suggests that Dame Sybil read both "After the Funeral" and "In My Craft or Sullen Art." The programme could not be found in the Enthoven nor in the Apollo Society's files. There are unilluminating accounts in the Times, Jan. 20, p. 2; Stand., Feb. 15, p. 5; and in Audrey Williamson, Contemporary Theatre, 1953-56 (London: Rockliff, 1956), p. 179. 181 the poet wrote deliberately for recitation, few moderns could equal him." Then in a similar capsule it put Dame Sybil, "who, in reading for sense, found the sound followed it; [and^ Peggy Ashcroft, who, reading for sound, achieved the sense." Both reports agreed upon the success of Emlyn Wil liams' contribution. The Mail1s was the more enthusiastic: The triumph of the afternoon was Emlyn Williams tell ing Thomas's short story "Just Like Little Dogs." It must be at least 4,000 words long, and Mr. Williams had memorised it. He sauntered on to the stage, coat collar turned up, and recited leaning nonchalantly against the grand pi ano .... [ThomasJ would have been happy to see how Williams brought laughter from that great crowd. The Telegraph called it one of the two "highlights of a long, admirably chosen programme"— the other being the excerpts from Under Milk Wood "spoken by some of the original Third Programme cast." Williams' performance was a "tour de force": "he spoke without script, . . . £aj fragment of en raptured Welsh self-derision." The reference to the concert reading apparently was considered self-explanatory. The most stimulating— or at least the most heavily reviewed— of these productions was the third, a concert reading of the whole of Under Milk Wood, which was given two performances, on successive Sundays, February 28 and March 7, 9 G. R., "Dylan Thomas Remembered: Sound and Sense," The Daily Telegraph (hereafter cited as Telegraph or Tele.), Feb. 15, p. 9. 182 at the Old Vic. Douglas Cleverdon directed; the cast con tained "several members of the original jjThird ProgrammeJ * team supplemented— brilliantly— by Sybil Thorndike and the Welsh-born Emlyn Williams and Richard Burton."10 The set ting was merely a group of chairs, arranged in what T. C. Worsley called a "forbidding circle’ ’^ and what the pro gramme suggests were two concentric s e m i c i r c l e s .12 The only evidence of special arrangement for lighting or costume or makeup was a gossip item about the gold burnish in Rach el Roberts' hair.H Although Kenneth Tynan later wrote that these two "stagings" showed that the play "could en mesh the watcher as well as the listener,there was no in * xvWilliamson, op. cit., p. 179. ^ The New Statesman and Nation (hereafter cited as New Statesman or New States.). March 6, p. 284. 12 The programme, MS Enthoven, shows an arrangement like this: Meredith Edwards Diana Maddox Clifford Evans Rachel Roberts Daffyd Havard Sybil Thorndike Emlyn Williams Richard Burton 13 Stand., March 1, p. 5. 14 Kenneth Tynan, Curtains: Selections from the Drama Criticism and Related Writings (London: Longmans, Green and Co., Ltd., 1961), p. 70. 183 thing in the other reports to suggest any stage movement at all. Both W. A. Darlington and T. C. Worsley confessed to having gone with misgivings, and to having been pleasantly surprised by the production. Worsley's reversal was the more detailed: Since it was written for the Radio, I had argued with myself that it could gain nothing from the rather stilted conditions of a stage reading— that forbidding circle of chairs on an empty stage to be filled by act ors more nervous than usual in their day clothes and clutching each their f sic ] dog-eared script. But I was quite wrong. Comedy demands to be shared and with an appreciative audience and actors who, like Mr Emlyn Williams, know how to use that audience, the fun is doubled. What a flat, dumb, cold, medium the solitary radio is! Darlington agreed that its stageworthiness was because of its having "the kind of humour that welds an audience to gether"; as the second of its "two great and shining stage virtues" it had "clash and contrast of character." With Williamson he echoed Worsley's reference to the audience's enjoyment and singled out Williams for special praise as "of course a past mater at this kind of reading. Trew- in thought the play "a glitter of imagery" whose "characters 1 f i swoop to life— there is no other word";^0 but Wilson was 15 Tele.. March 1, p. 9. Williamson, loc. cit., said he was "a delight, reminding us of his virtuistic f sic 1 and justly famous dramatic readings from Dickens." 16 The Illustrated London News (hereafter cited in notes as I.L.N.), March 13, p. 416. 1 8 4 surprised by the difference between the performance, which "set the ears ablaze," and the printed script, "an unwieldy mass of adjectives!." He not only singled out Williams for special praise, he claimed that "the comic glory" of Wil liams' performance turned the show "largely into a one-man triumph. The idea that the production deserved more than two performances— implicit in the Telegraph and New Statesman and explicit in the Mail— received full orchestration in the Daily Express; The scandal at the Old Vic last night was something that did not happen. No big theatrical management was present. Yet this was my most enjoyable evening in the thea tre this year. Tickets for last night's reading, says the Old Vic, were "in unprecedented demand." The second reading, next Sunday, could have sold out six times. . . . Thousands would revel and laugh, as the Old Vic did last night, if it were put on the public stage for a season. 18 And not one West End management came to see it. Unless the Express' term "public stage" be given the unlike- ^Cecil Wilson, "It's a Gust of Wicked Welsh Fun: Emlyn Williams Scores a Triumph," Mail, March 1, p. 5. 18 John Barber, "Poet's Masterpiece— But Who Cared?," Daily Express (hereafter cited as Express or Exp.), March 1, p. 5. Italics in original. 185 ly interpretation, "fullstage production,1,19 the four re views seem to have been endorsing its continued run as a concert reading. If so, the production would be unique, in the present study at least, as the first London "rehearsed reading" to achieve a critical success— and to be consid ered as something more than the blueprint, however exciting, of a larger and costlier and presumably more effective con ventional drama. This disposition to accept the production on its own terms may have arisen out of the peculiar nature of the script and, perhaps equally, out of the fact that the pre- culiar nature was already well known. The Observer had printed a slightly condensed version of the script;29 ex cerpts had been read at two previous concerts; and the BBC 91 had broadcaist the entire play. x The Times1 review of that broadcast called it a "pure radio" play, because although "quick with drama, it is not in the least theatrical."22 19 A more probable explanation is that legally these were private performances, open only to members of the Vic- Wells Association and the Old Vic Club. In practice, the mail-order forms for tickets included applications for mem bership, which was a half-crown (thirty-five cents) extra. 20 The Observer (hereafter cited as Observer or Obs.), Feb. 7, 14. It reviewed none of the concerts. 21 On the Third Programme, Monday, Jan. 25. Although the question was not researched here, the BBC's policy at the time would have made at least one rebroadcast likely. 22 Jan. 26, p. 6. Curiously, the Times ignored these two performances; it reviewed instead a Repertory Players 186 They later disagreed with that conclusion, but Darlington, Worsley and Williamson had accepted the premise: they had gone to see not an underproduced makeshift of a stage play, but— so to speak— a lavish, overproduced version of a radio play. The merits they found, its comedy and imagery and characterization, were not clearly visual. And so, if the critics saw no obvious way of further exploiting those mer its in a conventional fullstage production, they may have been dissuaded from pursuing the problem by the reflection that the play was only too familiar to their readers. The production may have owed its critical acceptance, paradoxi cally, to the very fact that the play was an aging novel ty. For whatever reasons, the concert reading of Under Milk Wood at the Old Vic was praised in all six of the re views here encountered; none suggested it would be improved by full staging, and four stated or clearly implied that its run should be extended. Four praised Thomas' charac terization, five his comic sense and two his "verbal fire works." All agreed that the performance was excellent; four gave individual praise to Sybil Thorndike and Richard Burton, and five praised Emlyn Williams. Two of these im plied that his was the outstanding performance of the even ing. The production was later mentioned favorably in at (showcase) production for February 28. 187 least two books and one review of another production.23 In further summary, it seems clear that of the three productions in memory of Dylan Thomas in 1954— Homage to Dylan Thomas at the Globe on January 25, the Memorial Con cert at Festival Hall on February 14, and the two concert readings of Under Milk Wood at the Old Vic on February 28 and March 7— all were well attended and probably complete sellouts, and at least two were critical and popular suc cesses (with the third subsequently issued as a commercial recording). Prominent in all three productions were two phenomena discussed in previous 'chapters: the concert reading as a theatrical form, and the individual talent of Emlyn Williams. The next two sections discuss the subse quent development of each in turn. II. CONCERT READINGS, 1955-60 The popular and critical approval of the concert readings of Under Milk Wood might be expected to change the status of the "rehearsed reading" in London, at least inso far as the two forms were seen to be similar and insofar as the status of the latter depended upon the critics' regard ing it as a makeshift for fullstage production. Neither ^3Tynan, loe. cit.; W. A. Darlington, "Theatre," The Annual Register: A Review of Public Events at Home and A- broad for the Year 1954, Ivison S. MacAdam assisted by Hugh Latimer, ed. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., Ltd., 1955), p. 367; J. C. Trewin, I.L.N., Sept. 8, 3956, p. 400. 188 premise is self-evident however. A similarity between the two forms was not apparent to W. A. Darlington, if his word be taken literally: An event which lay outside all the categories but deserved its place in the record was a dramatic read ing, given at the Old Vic on 28 February with Sybil Thorndike at the head of a formidable cast, of Dylan Thomas's poem, Under Milk Wood.24 Nor is it clear that Worsley's forebodings of Under Milk Wood were intended as generic criticism: . . . that forbidding circle of chairs on an empty stage to be filled by actors more nervous than usual in their day clothes and clutching each their dog eared script .... Hence he may not have been reflecting the bias of earlier reviews of "rehearsed readings"— which reviews in turn were too limited in number to support any firm conclusion. In actual fact there were more "rehearsed readings" on record in 1954 than in any of the previous years stud ied: five at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, and five others— possibly amateur— sponsored by other institutions. And in New York during the^next two years there were not able concert readings or Readers Theatre productions of Moby Dick, Pictures in the Hallway, Anna Christie, I Knock at the Door and U.S.A. The present section discusses the evidence of a similar trend in London: the "rehearsed readings" and other activity similar to Readers Theatre 24 The Annual Register, loc. cit. Williamson, op. cit., called it "a Sunday Reading." 189 such as were reported in the available sources from the end of 1954 until the middle of I960, when the American produc tion,, Dear Liar, reached the West End. In 1955 the I.C.A. sponsored one reading— of Piran dello's Grafted.25 in 1956 it sponsored two: the first, The Shadow of Mart by Stig Dagerman, was presented on March 25, with Mai Zetterling in the cast; the second was a double bill comprising Ionesco's The Bald Prima Donna and The Motor Show on April 15,26 No persuasive reason for this sudden diminution suggested itself: the Institute would not easily abandon its role of gadfly to the arts even if it agreed that in 1955 the West End was having a "most remarkable season,"2^ or that 1956 was "an extraordinary year in the London theatre";2® nor does the organization seem to have begun a period of lassitude— there was no de cline in the number of its poets' readings, for example, and there was a positive accomplishment in its sponsoring the premiere of an English translation of Stravinsky's The Sol- 2®"The Stage" Year Book (hereafter cited as Stage Year Book or SYB) 1956. p. 67. On pp. 64, 68 and 98 are listed three "rehearsed readings" at Conway Hall, the Inter national P.E.N. Club and the Sunday Salon respectively. 26 SYB 1957, p. 92; I.C.A. Bulletin (hereafter cited as Bulletin), MS in files of I.C.A., April, 1956. 27SYB 1956. p. 9. 28R. B. Marriott, SYB 1957. p. 9. 190 dier1s Tale in 1956.^ The innauguration of Independent Television is said to have created a scramble for t a l e n t ; ^ but a shortage of readers seems unlikely. And if Look Back in Anger did begin a revolution in British playwriting, and if Brecht's Berliner Ensemble did give the London theatre Ol "its most salutary shake-up for half a century,"x there might be expected a flurry of experiment with "rehearsed reading"— provided it were considered a viable art form. Instead, there was one such reading in each of the two fol lowing years: on April 28, 1957, The Night Scenes from James Joyce, arranged by a Billy Jay; and on February 9 and 16, 1958, Goodbye World, written and directed by Bernard 32 Kops. Ironically, Under Milk Wood, whose concert reading appeared a possible harbinger, was re-produced by Douglas Cleverdon as a fullstage production; it was "the glory of the tenth Edinburgh Festival" in 1956 and moved to London 33 for a long run at the New. In 1958 the English Stage Company— which had produced Look Back in Anger. The Entertainer. Endgame and other pio- 29 SYB 1957, p. 94; Times, June 6, 1956, p. 5. Ralph Richardson was the Soldier, Peter Ustinov the Devil, and Michael Flanders the Narrator. 3°SYB 1956, pp. 26-28. 31SYB 1957, p. 10. ^ Bulletin, April, 1957; Jan., 1958. 33 I.L.N., Sept. 8, 1956, p. 400; Times, Sept. 21, 1956, p. 3. 191 neers in the angry and absurd— announced the first of its Sunday evening "productions without d^cor," For Children, on June 22; in 1959 it listed another, Leonce and Lena by Georg Buchner, on April 19.34 George Devine, founder and director of the company, defined these in 1962 as ways of presenting "new works to a private society (the English Stage Society) 35 for one performance only." John Russell Taylor called 36 them "run-throughs" of new works. Apparently they were not experiments with concert reading as a form, but instead a way of testing new plays and players; as such they were of limited relevance to the present study. The I. C. A., whose general activity seems to have 37 been decreasing, offered a "script-in-hand revue" in May, 1960; and on May 7, 1961, it was associated with a Company 101 in a "performance without scenery" of The Square by the 34SYB 1959, p. 62; SYB 1960, p. 68. 35 George Devine, "Court Account," The Guardian (prior to August, 1959, The Manchester Guardian; both hereafter cited as Guardian or Guard.), April 2, 1962, p. 7. His Ta ble I shows no such productions in 1956-57; 8 in 1957-58; 5 in 1958-59; 7 in 1959-60; 6 in 1960-61; 7 in 1961-62. Collation with his Table II suggests that all but two were by new writers. 36 Anger and After; A Guide to the New British Drama (London: Methuen, 1962), pp. 92, 37ff. Printed in U.S.A. as The Angry Theatre; New British Drama (New York: Hill and Wang, 1962). 37 I« January, 1960, its Bulletin became bimonthly and its poetry society solicited applications to read from unknown poets. Whether moribund or fragmented, a number of its interest-groups were rarely reported. Possibly much of 192 38 author of Hiroshima Mon Amour. Although outside the chronological limits of the present chapter, these produc tions are recorded here to complete the account of the I.C.A. staged readings encountered in the present study. During the six years between the Dylan Thomas Memor ial concerts in 1954 and the London premiere of Dear Liar in June, 1960, apparently there were recorded only two pro ductions that were somewhat like Readers Theatre and that aroused any critical curiosity whatever. Both were modest efforts, almost accidental. Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop at Stratford East, needing a curtain-raiser for a revival of Shaw's The Man of Destiny in April, 1958, ar ranged a concert reading of some of the Shaw-Terry-Irving correspondence; the critics found the reading, Love and Lec tures, more interesting than either the play or its revival. As its material was so clearly similar to that of Dear Liar, and the reactions thereto so clearly relevant to the other "reading-dramas" of 1960-62, the discussion of Love and Lec- 39 tures has been deferred to Chapter VIII below. Of the second such production the following account appeared in a Institute's function in the theatre was now performed by the English Stage Society at the Royal Court. In any case, the nature and purpose of both the former's/"rehearsed readings" and the latter's "productions without decor" require further research. 38 Bulletin. March-April, 1961 and 1962. 39 See below, pp. 343-48. 193 bibliography of John Masefield: As part of the Masefield 81st birthday tributes in June, 1959, Valery Hovenden adapted for dramatic repre sentation "The Widow in the Bye Street." Presented from June 7,.1959 the production ran until June 12, 1959.4® The production went to Malta and then was revived at the Hovenden £clubj Theatre for a week beginning December 12, 1960.4^ The Times called the revival "noteworthy," and con tinued: When the five characters . . . appear on the stage and speak all lines printed between inverted commas in the book, while a reader in the wings, Miss Hovenden, reads the remainder aloud, it seems quite natural that they should be doing so. The points they make are not spurious but are already there in the text, waiting to be made by some such means as this, or at least offer ing no resistance to it.42 The Stage said that the original production was "notably successful" in view of the fact that the poem had not been written for performance, and added: For this reason the narrator's sequences are dis proportionately long, a fact which Valerie Hovenden's 1 beautiful delivery of them almost turns to an advantage, and their interest might have been enhanced had the speaker been visible to augment to [~sic j miming of the actors. This last is admirably done by a cast of five, who, by means of the well-conceived production are able to 4®Geoffrey Handley-Taylor, John Masefield, P.M., the Queen's Poet Laureate: A Bibliography and Eighty-First Birthday Tribute (London: Cranbrook Tower Press, [I960]), p. 33. 41 Programmes and announcements, MSS Enthoven. 42Dec. 13, 1960, p. 15. 194 flow naturally between the mime-to-narration and the full acting passages.43 Pictures of the production show full period costumes and props, and a generally bare stage? poses— which of course may have been assumed only for picture-taking— suggest that the acting was fairly broad and that the focus was onstage as in a conventional play.^ The Stage's remark that the "production pattern" had "loosely followed" that of Douglas Cleverdon's fullstage version of Under Milk Wood may be suf ficient to confirm the suspicion that The Widow in the Bye Street ought not be considered a variant of concert reading at all, but rather an attempt at presentational staging that gained its interest from the distortions required by the tiny stage and by the narrative quality of the script. Pending further evidence the question might be allowed to remain open. Though the club gained one of its most "note worthy" productions in several years, it seems not to have experimented further with the form. The present study found little evidence of an inter- 43 June 11, 1959, p. 11. 44 Handley-Taylor, op. cit.. pp. 31-32. 45 - Cleverdon's Under Milk Wood, which came to the New after the 1956 Edinburgh Festival, also had difficulty with # the "irrelevant prominence" of the narrator; Times, Sept. 21, 1956, p. 3. If the Hovenden was able to use lighting areas for simultaneous settings as Cleverdon did, possibly the chief remaining reason for considering it a potential read ing would disappear. But the dividing line between epic or presentational theatre and Readers Theatres is a question 195 est in the concert reading in London during the period 1955- 60. In those six years the Institute of Contemporary Arts sponsored a total of five "rehearsed readings" of which there was record— a number matched by its output in 1954 a- lone. The English Stage Company held about twenty "produc tions without d^cor" for members of its auxilliary Society on various Sunday evenings during the period; almost with out exception these were supposed to be new plays by new— and usually unknown, British— authors; and these "run- throughs" were prior to or in lieu of fullstage production. Two other fringe theatres, Theatre Workshop and the Hovenden Theatre, each mounted one production that gained come crit ical interest and bore some resemblance to the kind of con cert reading which had by then become established in New York, but apparently neither company pursued its experiment further. III. DYLAN THOMAS GROWING UP, 1955 Although the Dylan Thomas Memorial concerts seem not to have affected the history of concert reading in London, there is general agreement that they influenced the subse quent career of Emlyn Williams. He was the only prominent actor to appear in all three of the memorial productions, and as was noted in an earlier section he was very favorably that was begged in the present study. 196 reviewed in the two that were reviewed at all. According to subsequent press releases, this success, like that in the . Merely Players" snippet from Dickens in 1951, encouraged him to prepare a full evening's program of se- AC. lections from the author's works. This program, entitled Emlyn Williams as Dylan Thom as Growing Up^ until it was changed on his American tour permanently to A Boy Growing Up, consisted of about ten 46 Announcements: Times, May 10, 1955, p. 3; "Tan- field's Diary," Mail, May 28, p. 12. Also programme, Globe production, MS Enthoven; and Richard Findlater, Emlyn Wil liams: An Illustrated Study . . ., No. VIII [VI?] of Theatre World Monographs (London: Rockliff, 1956), pp. 9, 97-98. 47 R. P. M. G., Tele., June 1, p. 6, said it had no title: "One was simply invited to 'Emlyn Williams as Dylan Thomas Growing Up.'" The present study uses the common short form for references to the 1955 production and the later title, A Boy Growing Up, for the 1958 revival. 48 The Globe programme, 1955, MS Enthoven, lists thirteen items, as follows: 1. Introducing Dylan Thomas 2. Memories of Childhood (from Quite Early One Morning) 3. Cousin Gwilym (sketch, from "The Peaches," in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog cited below as Por trait ) 4. "Who do you wish was with us" (story, from Portrait) 5. The Outing (story, from "A Prospect of the Sea") Interval, 10 minutes 6. The Hand 7. Reminiscences of a Schoolmaster (sketch), from "Return Journey," in Quite Early One Morning 8. The Fight (story, from Portrait) 9. "Just Like Little Dogs" (story, from Portrait) Interval, 10 minutes 10. Self-Portrait (sketch, from "Return Journey") 11. Adventures in the Skin Trade (fantasy, unpublished in this country) 12. A Memory of Older Youth (from Quite Early One Morning) 197 prose selections and two or three poems.It used an al most bare stage, set only with a plain, faintly Sheraton, chair and a screen inscribed with an enlargement of Thomas' 49 signature. It used some simple lighting changes. The re views agree that Williams was conspicuously neat, in blue suit with white shirt and red tie; he carried a bundle of foolscap sheets and school exercise books as stage props. He adopted the narrative "I" of Thomas and made no pretense of reading. For the finale he made his exit while reciting "And Death Shall Have No Dominion," leaving the lights to shine upon Thomas' signature. Williams tried out the new show at the Connaught in Worthing on April 25, 1955; then he took it to the Bath Festival, where, after a four-day revival of his Dickens "Mixed Bill," he brought it formally before the critics on May 17, 1955, at the Theatre Royal in Bath.^® The evening was an immense success, being both enter taining and moving. Mr. Willians, portrayed his subject 13. A Note to Close On The 1958 programme changes the title, omits the italics on "you" in item 4, and omits item 12. The Times. May 19, 1955, p. 3, says there were three poems; New States, June 11, p. 812, says two, and on p. 815 Mrs. Thomas implies either two or four. 49 Pictures were found in I.L.N., June 11, p. 1072; The Tatler, June 22, p. 685; and Queen, June 15, p. 26. 50SYB 1956. p. 109. 198 through three poems and a number of stories and sketch es. If one occasionally questioned the effectiveness of the verse in the theatre, the prose was surely tri umphant. 5 So wrote the Times1 "special correspondent," and J. C. Tre- win agreed: It was a rich evening in the theatre; it left a glow that remained with me on the way back to Queen Square in the unkindly May sleet. On May 31 he opened in London at the (907-seat) Globe on Shaftesbury Avenue and, according to Punch, "kept an ordinary lowbrow first night audience laughing continual- 53 ly." According to the Standard, the audience was not com pletely ordinary: "Students in jeans and polo-necked sweat- C/ ers mingled with elegantly-gowned women." But three other ^ Times. May 19, 1955, p. 3. 1 ^ 1.L.N., May 28, p. 982. Apparently the 1955 Bath Festival was an almost unrelieved disaster. The weather was foul throughout; a huge spectacle planned for the sesquicen- tennial of the Battle of Trafalgar was thrice postponed by rain and sleet; and though Beecham's revival of Gritry's neglected opera Z^mir et Azor was well received, there was not much enthusiasm for the other musical events; (Times, Tele., Exp., May 12ff, passim). The Times, May 21, p. 10, and Tele., June 5, p. 6, reported that despite an Arts Coun cil grant of £1,000 the Festival had lost £5,789 and that there would not be another in 1956. 53 June 8, p. 719. Recalling the skill and extreme caution in Williams' press relations during the Dickens runs one might suspect that word "lowbrow"— especially in Punch. "Tanfield's Diary," Mail, May 28, p. 12, quoted him just be fore the London opening: "If I wasn't sure that the mater ial I have is good I would be terrified. But I know it is good. I know it isn't highbrow." 54 June 1, p. 5. To the people in those jeans and sweaters Shaftesbury Avenue would connote the most grossly 199 reviews agreed that everyone had had a good time. Williams played at the Globe— with one day off for a show at the King's Lynn Festival®®— until August 13, for a total of eighty-seven London performances.®® There followed three years on the road, including a brief but triumphant appearance at the Longacre, New York, in October, 1957, a number of benefit performances at the Royal Festival Hall, and a six-month tour of Australia and New Zealand. Under its revised title, A Boy Growing Up, he brought it back to the Globe for three weeks, October 2-20, in 1958. Excluding announcements and the commentary that ac companied pictures, there was available to the present study a total of thirteen 1955 reviews— two from Bath®^ and eleven of the Globe production.®® An additional five, from the commercial part of the commercial theatre. ®®Mail, July 11, p. 10. 56 Theatre World Annual (hereafter cited in notes as TWA), 1955-56. p. 18. C. Trewin, I.L.N., May 28, p. 982; Special Cor respondent, Times, May 19, p. 3. 58 John Barber, "Mr: Dickens Tries Another," Exp.. June 1, p. 3; Cecil Wilson, "After Dickens, Dylan Thomas," Mail. June 1, p. 3; R. P. M. B., "Dylan Study by Emlyn Wil liams," Tele.. June 1, p. 6; Milton Shulman, Stand., June 1, p. 6; J. C. Trewin, I.L.N., June 11, p. 1072; Philip Hope- Wallace, "Emlyn Williams as Dylan Thomas; Solo Turn at the Globe," Guard.. June 2, p. 3; G. S. Fraser, New States.. June 11, p. 812; Kenneth Tynan, Obs., June 5, p. 6; Eric Keown, Punch, June 8, p. 719; Harold Hobson, Sun. T.. June 5, 200 1958 season, were discovered;^ but these have been consid ered supplementary and their use in the following discussion will be indicated each time. There was, finally, a letter to the New Statesman from the poet's widow, blistering Wil liams for having hidden the poet's strength: "If the total charm of Dylan Thomas and Emlyn Williams were rashly mixed together . . . what a wonderful sugar cake that would bel'1 ^® As it was considered to reveal more about Caitlin Thomas than about Williams, it too was separated from the thirteen main reviews. All thirteen of the 1955 reviews (and all five of the 1958) were clearly favorable and most were enthusiastic. A note of surprise was clear in four— "remarkable tour-de- force," "astounding," "astonishingly vivid," et cetera— and perhaps in a fifth as well. Kenneth Tynan called Williams a "glorious soloist," and J. C. Trewin twice bestowed his own accolade, "protean." Eric Keown concurred in Harold Hob son's view that it was "finer, more varied, more touching, funnier even than his Dickens recitals"; Philip Hope-Wallace said it was "the best thing of its kind since 'Under Milk p. 4; Times. June 1, p. .2. 59 J. C. Trewin, I.L.N., Sept. 13, 1958, p. 442; N. P., "A Vivid Study of Dylan Thomas," Tele.. Sept. 3, p. 10; S. N., "Tall Stories of Dylan Thomas: A'Dedicated Re cital," Guard., Sept. 4, p. 5; Harold Hobson, Sun. T., Sept. 7, p. 4; Times. Sept. 3, p. 5. 60 Caitlin Thomas, letter. New States., June 11, 1955, p. 815. 201 Wood'"y and G. S. Fraser said that although one of his two most vivid memories of Dylan Thomas was of his telling an anecdote, that memory would now "be overlaid and confused in my mind with a picture of Mr. Williams telling Thomas's sad and funny stories." The critics' approval extended to almost all points of the program, but five reviews contained adverse comment. The Times' early question about the effectiveness of the verse was put more forcefully in the New Statesman; "Mr. Williams lost his grip on me only when he read, stagily, two poems, The Hand and And Death Shall Have No Dominion." The Observer agreed in part: All that is needed to perfect the evening is for someone to talk Mr. Williams out of reciting "And death shall have no dominion" at the end. The poet's own re cording, booming from the bare stage as it did at the memorial programme in his honour, would be a much bet ter idea. * - And it offered another "small criticism": Perhaps Dylan Thomas would have burped at the prim ness and gentility which Mr. Williams has brought to his work; what was lusty and swaggering has been slight ly tidied up. The Standard echoed this criticism; added another, of Thomas' prolixity; and then concluded with this ambiguity: "Even those leaving the theatre thinking they have been hearing Emlyn Williams reading the works of Dylan Thomas should find 61 The reference is to the first concert, Homage to Dylan Thomas; see above, Section I. The Observer did not review any of them. 202 62 it enjoyable.' Three years later the Guardian raised a theoretical problem: But we have to face the fact— it weakened the enter tainment at the heart— that most of the material does not need the spoken voice [sic.] as an essential part of its expression .... Yet to say that they don't essen tially need it is not to say that they don't benefit from it. And so in five otherwise favorable 1955 reviews there were two objections to the poetry generally, two to the reading of "And Death Shall Have No Dominion" as a finale, one to Thomas' prolixity,^ and two to Williams' failure to show Thomas' boisterousness. It might be added that most of these same details were picked out for special praise in other reviews. Al- This concluded an article that took this form: four paragraphs remarking, with no heavier a freight of bit ter irony than usual in the Standard, upon the popularity of Thomas since his death in poverty; two paragraphs describing Williams' method in a tone of surprise; two long paragraphs describing some of the characters enacted; one and one-half paragraphs setting forth the objections mentioned above. The longer of those was as follows: "Revelling in his quiet and confident virtuosity, Emlyn Williams achieves a remark able tour-de-force of witty impersonation and astonishing memory. Perhaps his only interpretation of the poet him self does he remain unconvincing. For there is in this neat- suited, white-haired, almost precise performer little in common with the untidy, irreverant [ sic,J boisterous cherub who roared, pinched and drank his way through a short and flamboyant life." 63 The Times, June 1, p. 2, may have been hinting as much in what was taken here to be simply praise of Williams' memory: "The words (and after all there are a great many of them) come from Mr. Williams with the sureness of print." 203 though none specifically praised either the verse or its reading,^ two praised the finale: Trewin thought it ended "as it should," and Hobson said the finale was "a stroke of the noblest and most moving imagination." The claim that Williams made no attempt to impersonate— lodged as an ob jection in the Observer and the Standard— was advanced with implicit approval in at least three other papers, and with explicit praise in two more; the matter must be discussed below, as part of the analysis of the uniqueness imputed to the production. The Guardian1s 1958 criticism— about the beneficial weakening at the heart— was in flat disagreement with Fraser's view in the New Statesman in 1955: To me, at least, they [Adventures in the Skin Trade1 come over more effectively as talked by Mr. Williams, than on the printed page. They are (as in a sense many of Thomas1s poems were also) scripts for the speaking voice. . . . Jokes that seemed on the page too flat and broad, sentiment that seemed to be "getting at you" . . . are just right for the different medium (that needs a broader brush, and a less finicky fastidious ness) of the dramatically spoken word. The Telegraph added: "His Welsh intonation and quick grasp of the humour are qualities few readers would themselves, supply." There was, then, no agreement that any of the de tails deserved censure. ^Mrs. Thomas was alone in her view: "On the two oc casions when he did introduce two of the most theatrical poems, and he can't be blamed for that, the reaction in the theatre was a sudden galvanisation of attention far more in tense than the kindly amused response given to his charming, whimsical, sentimental reminiscences with no bite in them." 204 There was some tendency to modify the praise accor ded to the selection of the material. The Mail concluded: "Not all the items deserve immortality, but the best of them— [the club outing, the drawing class]— are an inspir ation to any man with wit and music in his soul." Similar ly the Guardian noted that "the sadder notes of that poet's lyre are not sounded," but that the best episodes, such as Adventures in the Skin Trade, were "pure theatrical gold and wildly funny." The Telegraph, more favorable, said that the latent theatrical quality of the writings was "ad mirably brought out by the actor's arrangement of the ma terial and performance." The Illustrated London News re ported, with what seems to have been pleasant surprise, that there had been no need to draw on Under Milk Wood. And the Times' Bath review, perhaps the one most favorable to the choice of material, said. Mr. Williams has, by careful selection and his own superlative skill, made a human figure of the enigmatic poet, and thousands will be quick to take him to their hearts, finding in the delicate and irresistible buf foonery something with which to offset the grisliness of some of the vision. References to the simplicity of the set and of the props were fairly frequent— six reviews mentioned the chair, five the screen and two the lighting— but the assessments did not go beyond pleased surprise. Three mentioned the foolscap papers and exercise books— "a bundle of messy pa pers." 205 There was a good deal of praise for the restraint of the presentation. Kenneth Tynan was at one extreme of en thusiasm: Out pads the crafty Welshman, smiles like a spy, bows like a knife, and we're off on an excursion into the poet's childhood and adolescence .... Not since Dickens, or the best of O'Casey, has prose jumped through such gorgeously funny hoops; and Mr. Williams's timing and mimic gift seem to sharpen with the years. Keown was more restrained: "He uses a minimum of gesture, relying on his beautiful Welsh voice and a power of mimicry which has never been so well shown off. It is indeed a mar vellous technical feat." And the Times was soberer still: "Here was testimony to the spell of words, for Mr. Williams managed it all with the least movement possible, sometimes sitting for a whole story, and helping out a characteriza tion with a grimace or a gesture."^5 For all this simplicity and restraint, there was high agreement that the result was "astonishingly vivid." Trewin said he "makes us see every piece of furniture in the 65 Bath review. The 1958 Guardian review referred to "every Welsh word he speaks and every Welsh gesture that floats or kicks it on its way." Caitlin Thomas said in part: "He extracted from each and every line the maximum effect, and had the words not spoken for themselves he was prepared to speak for them; [_he wasj even moving at times; though for my austere tastes he laid it one with a tablespoon too profusely, and, if it is permissible to criticise a professional of his stature, his gestures at times were just a blush embarrassing: those fluttering arms, and that bouncing never quite came off; though perhaps my puritanical training is to blame . . . ." 206 fiercely overcrowded room," and Hobson concurred: Dylan Thomas and Mr. Williams create a mean street or a railway arch with the power of a Simenon; and, like Simenon, they endow their scenes and people with power and compassion. In 1958 the Telegraph1s reviewer said: He makes the prose and poetry of his fellow-country man come to life so vividly that at times it seems the air is filled with music and the stage peopled with characters. There were proportionally more references to the evocation of mood and scene in these than in the Dickens reviews, and only slightly less enthusiasm for the characterization. Six critics gave lists of favorite characters and incidents. But now there were fewer attempts to fix upon the process by which he made them so vivid. Hope-Wallace said he jumped into their skin; G. S. Fraser said: Mr. Williams acts these stories as well as tells them; with a single chair for prop, he becomes in turn the great, fat uncle with the gravy-stained waistcoat, the tiny aunt standing on the chair to hit the uncle on the head .... Wilson generalized that he had "brought the characters alive with . . . Dickensian richness." One of the more curious aspects was the prominence given to Charles Dickens in these reviews. The two from Bath might be expected to explain the new production in terms of the earlier, for Williams had played a revival of the "Mixed Bill" the previous week; but they used it only as introduction— such as Trewin's prefatory remark that Wil liams had "left Dickens temporarily for Dylan Thomas." But 207 in London those readings were three or four years old and a great many shows had intervened; moreover those readings had been given by a man who till then had been identified as the leading playwright perhaps of his generation. Yet seven of the eleven Globe reviews mentioned either Dickens or the Dickens readings, and the Express even ran the headline: "Mr. Dickens tries another." Many of these references were points of departure— as in the Standard's calling his com pilation of excerpts the same "technique that proved so suc cessful in his readings of Dickens"; but the fact that the Dickens readings could be used thus, and used so tenuously, is a strong indication of their lasting impressiveness. Nor were all the Dickensian references mere points of departure. On their different levels, the Guardian and the Mail offered similar analyses and reached similar con clusions. Here was Hope-Wallace in the Guardian: The method differs slightly from Mr Williams's read ings of Dickens. There is no dressing up or pretense to be reading. But the curious thing is that what comes out of Dylan Thomas's prose is not merely crypto-drama tic (as Dickens always proves) but essentially Dickens ian in its comic exaggerations, its creaming up of out rageous adjectives. Cecil Wilson of the Mail put it this way: That matchless one-man company, Emlyn Williams, now does for his fellow-countryman what he did for Dickens, but with a difference. Instead of dressing up or reading from a desk, he confines his impersonation to a red tie and a lilting accent that could be any Welshman's, and stands or sits before an autographed screen eloquently memorising a good two hours of Thomas's sketches and stories. 208 This brilliant illuminator of other men's words brings the characters alive with a Dickensian richness that not even the author himself could ever have sus pected. And Keown arrived at a similar insight: "One curious point emerged, that as a humorist Thomas employed much the same tricks of extravagance as Dickens." One may be reminded of Eric Bentley's discovery that watching Williams made him "see the novelist's work freshly, as after reading a great critic."6^ In brief summary, all thirteen reviews discovered of the 1955 production of Dylan Thomas Growing Up were highly favorable, not only in sum but in almost all their details. Five contained adverse comments,but most of these centered upon details that were praised in other reviews. There was some reserve in the praise accorded the choice of material, but none in that given to the restraint of the performance or the vividness of. the characterization. Nine reviews mentioned the Dickens readings of 1951-52. To assess the uniqueness the critics saw in the pro duction, consideration was given the terms they applied to it, their descriptions of its essential nature, the promin ence of Dylan Thomas in their criticism, the value they as signed to the method, and the future they saw for it. These must now be discussed in that order. 66 Eric Bentley, The Dramatic Event: An American Chronicle (London: Dennis Dobson, 1956), p. 125. " 209 None of the reviews called it a reading. The Guard ian said there was no "pretense to be reading"; the Mail tortured neology to make a similar point; "Instead of . . . reading from a desk, he . . .stands or sits . . .eloquent ly memorising a good two hours of Thomas's sketches." The Standard made oblique reference to those "thinking they have been hearing Emlyn Williams reading the works of Dylan Thom as." The New Statesman used "as talked by," and "acts these stories as well as tells them"; one Guardian review and two from The Illustrated London News called it a recital; the Express used "recited." The Telegraph, Observer and Guard ian emphasized its being a solo. Four reviews said explicitly, and a fifth implied, that Williams had made no attempt to impersonate Thomas,^ and a sixth said he confined his impersonation to a red tie and Welsh accent. The Standard called the show an imperson ation, but added that the "interpretation" of Thomas was "unconvincing." The first Times review discussed the mat in this they agreed with the press announcement in the Times but not the Mail. The former, May 10, p. 3, said; "Mr. Williams will not attempt to impersonate Dylan Thomas but instead will appear as himself, without make-up and props." The latter, May 28, p. 12, said that without make up "he will be Dylan Thomas himself." 68 The terms are confusing here, and Shulman's parting shot— at those who thought they had been hearing Williams "reading" Thomas' works— compounds the confusion twofold. The temptation is to dismiss it as an unsuccessful pretense to authority— like his wishing in 1959 that Gielgud "had sprinkled his scrapbook with more of the deliciously witty 210 ter most fully: To fill an entire evening with the narratives of this poet, in the first person, may have tempted a mimic of such gifts towards impersonation. If so, the temptation was resisted,and the performance remained "presenta tion" or interpretation. White-haired, in a neat blue suit, . . .Mr. Williams did not recall the untidy poet, except through his words. Only the diffident, wondering Welsh lilt was there to underline the kinship and to give the true musical phrasing to the prose. This was, incidentally, the only review encountered which used "interpretation" unequivocally in the sense current in the academic field of Speech in the United States. Although no other reviews used the term "interpret- 70 ation" in that sense, several were concerned with the pro cess: having conceded the obvious differences between Wil liams and Thomas in appearance and mannerism, they tried to fix on the nature of the identification between the two. Punch said only that Williams "becomes in an extraordinary way Thomas telling us about his youth." The second Times speeches that abound in the [Shakespearean] comedies," Stand., July 9, 1959, p. 10. But by 1960 Shulman was the only reviewer to have detected "a growing interest" if not a "vogue for dramatic readings"; the present ambiguity may have been an objection to what he thought was a misuse of the form. See below, Chapter X. 69 Special correspondent, Times. May 19, 1955, p. 3. 70 . In addition to the Standard's interpretation-of- Thomas-within-an-impersonation, the term was used in the Tele., Sept. 3, 1958, p. 10: "Mr. Williams has, indeed, matured in his interpretations . . . ." Caitlin Thomas ap pears to have been using it in 1955 very nearly as it is used in Speech: "The balance between the personality of the interpreter and the character interpreted has always been a difficult one . . . ." 211 review said, "The whole performance keeps its hold on the audience throughout the evening by the completeness of the actor's imaginative sympathy with the Welsh boy's strange vision of the world . . and the New Statesman suggested: What Mr. Williams gets into the skin of is Thomas's spirit— or more precisely of his persona, the mask the splendid poet hid behind, the comedian at the bar. This last would seem a complete contradiction of the Observ er 's claim that "what was lusty and swaggering has been slightly tidied up"— unless that claim was indeed offered as "a small criticism." In another sense, the New Statesman's contradiction came from the Guardian, which said that "the evening seems . . . more Emlyn than Dylan; the sadder notes 71 of that poet's lyre are not sounded." Under its layer of whimsy the Guardian's 1958 review may have been suggesting a third relationship, in which both personalities were present: Five years after we thought he had died, a grey haired Dylan Thomas sidles on to the stage . . . and tells his tall stories .... [But] we can see all the time that it is really Emlyn Williams. And indeed it turns out to be no part of his purpose to pretend other- 71 Findlater, op. cit.. p. 98, said: "It was part of Williams's achievement that he deliberately presented Thom as, and let him speak for himself." Caitlin Thomas, having accused Williams of deliber ately emphasizing "the less worthy" aspects and almost omit ting "the dwarfing shadow (dwarfing to Mr. Williams himself, could it be?) of poetry," concluded thus: "The balance be tween the personality of the interpreter and the character interpreted has always been a difficult one, but in this case there was not much doubt left in the mind as to which personality had triumphed. I salute Mi. Williams for his courage." 212 wise. What we have . . . is a recital rather than an impersonation .... But the review concluded that in the best selections, . . . he had us weak with laughter. And this in the most modest and the purest way possible to a player: by losing himself in his author. Here the recital became truly theatrical. And so the Guardian's point may have been an extended verb alism basically similar to that in Punch. In 1958 the Times offered this analysis: A three-cornered party is Mr. Emlyn Williams's own description of the programme .... Three-cornered it is, for Mr. Williams persuades us that Thomas has been persuaded to join the party, that he, the author, is sitting beside us in the audience, laughing as words that he wrote . . . come to him now in Mr. Williams's varied tones, with Mr. Williams's glances, nods and gestures as a running commentary on them. Our feeling that Thomas is of the party . . . springs from our convicition [ sic ] that Mr. Williams wants him there. Such a relationship, if demonstrated, would of course differ from those that the oral interpretation textbooks usually assume to exist among reader, author and audience; but it may have been intended to imply no more than that Williams was faithful to his author.^ 72 The review also carried this analysis: Mr. Wil liams the actor does not impersonate Thomas, does not seek to pass himself off as the author or to take the author's place. In stead f sic ] Mr . Williams holds a mirror up to Thomas, not merely to the "I" of these stories, but to all Thomas's world . . . . It is a brilliant example of the art of the comedian put to an unaccustomed and worthy use. 213 Briefly then, though all but one of the reviewers recognized easily enough that no real attempt at imperson ation had been made, there was in both 1955 and 1958 a con siderable difference of opinion about the relationship be tween the personalities of Williams and Thomas within the program. Williams was said to have become Thomas, to have * played the role that Thomas had assumed in public, to have evoked Thomas as part of the audience, and to have given a recital of Thomas' works— presumably in the same way that a pianist might give a recital of Chopin. "Recital" was, in deed, the most frequent term— although in 1958 there was a tendency toward the more noncommittal "programme." No one called it a reading, although Hope-Wallace said it was "the best thing of its kind since 'Under Milk Wood.'" No one compared Williams this time with Ruth Drap er, who was playing at the St. Martin's— in American terms, less than two blocks away. Perhaps more significant, the automatic verbal equating of vividness or credibility with acting or the "truly theatrical" was far less noticeable than heretofore: the Guardian's 1958 review made it; but the only other such reference— the New Statesman's 1955 claim that Williams "acts these stories as well as tells them"— may have been a considered, if unsupported, judgment. Al though no consensus was apparent, the, critics seem to have recognized that Williams was piaying a consistent and cred ible role as the narrator without distorting his own person- 214 ality enough to warrant the term "acting" or even, in most reviews, "impersonation." Terms varied, but one critic called the process "presentation' or interpretation." As most of the critics had waived the issue of imper sonation,, references to Thomas' personal characteristics may have been omitted as irrelevant. Certainly there were few such references: Shulman offered a list of epithets, in cluding "irreverant cherub," and the Times referred to the "untidy poet" and "the enigmatic poet"; but this was all. However, there was a similar silence, less understandable, about Thomas' ability as a reader and raconteur. Consider ing the number of references to Dickens in these reviews, recalling the strong identification of Williams with Dickens the reader in 1951-52, and assuming a reluctance to discuss the life of Thomas the poet, the parallel with Thomas the reader would seem an obvious possibility for exploitation. But the New Statesman alone gave an account of Thomas' skill in these arts— and praised Williams highly for having equal led him; the Observer said Williams' finale could be im proved by the use of a recording that had ended one of the Memorial readings. The Mail, indeed, made a point that seems to imply an ignorance of Thomas' skill as a reader: it said Williams had brought "the characters alive with a Dickensian richness that not even the author himself could ever have suspected." And it is in this context that the references to the common nationality of the two, and to 215 Williams' "Welsh lilt," and "beautiful Welsh voice," and "lilt of a Swansea accent," and once even "Welsh gesture"— which occurred in at least eight of the thirteen 1955 re views and in three of the five from 1958— seemed at this distance superficial or incomplete. The present study could not try to assess Thomas1 stature as a reader in London at 73 the time, and so no reliable inference could be drawn. The data showed merely that the major nonliterary references to Thomas were to his Welsh nationality, and that all but two of the critics ignored his ability as reader, lecturer and storyteller.^ The references to Thomas the writer concerned chief ly his love of words, his boisterous irreverence, his gift of characterization— all of which have been exemplified in the discussion above. Most relevant here was the apparent surprise in the discovery of Dickensian elements in his prose. Considering the general vagueness of the references, ^Perhaps references to the fields in which Thomas made his reputation as a reader— the BBC Third Programme and the American lecture circuit— were avoided as unattractive to potential audiences for the popular theatre; but the probability seems slight. In 1960 a leader in the Times, Dec. 3, p. 7, and an interview with John Wain, Mail, July 18 p. 6, both cited Thomas as one of the sources of an awakened interest in public poetry reading. 74 Findlater, op. cit., p. 97, noted that "the trans lation [of the autobiographical works'] to the stage was made easier by the facts that much of its was originally written for broadcasting and that its author, like Dickens, had a histrionic power of self-projection." This is closer than most of the reviewers came, but it still may apply only to the tone of the writing. 216 these Dickensian similarities should probably not be given great weight. Keown thought that "with the addition of a few short poems [williamsj seems to take us right inside the mind of the young poet"; Hope-Wallace thought that "the sad der notes of that poet's lyre are not sounded"; and the maj ority of critics did not refer to the poetry at all. The consensus doubtless was that this was "a wonderfully well- balanced partnership" of writer and actor1 but in point of fact it would be hard to demonstrate from their reviews that many of the critics had read extensively in Thomas at all. Aside from a strong but generalized enthusiasm for a good show, little special value seems to have been ascribed to the method. The Telegraph said Williams' presentation revealed more than most playgoers could have got from a private reading, and the New Statesman said it was a more nearly perfect realization of their form than was the print ed version. And on the other hand a Guardian critic said in 1958 that the self-sufficiency of the material weakened the performance at its heart but nevertheless allowed the mater ial to benefit from the performance: depending on which side cne emerges from the muddle, this may have been merely 7C a qualified version of the Telegraph1s view. 75 The Times, June 1, 1955, p. 2, may have intended a similar endorsement, or may have been praising Williams' memory: "This sympathy extends to the poet's language as 217 There was a similar silence about the possibilities inherent in such a method. The two earliest reviews, those at Bath, offered contrary predictions: one said Williams had "left Dickens temporarily for Dylan Thomas," and the other said that "thousands will be quick to take [the show] to their hearts." Punch implied some continuity in Wil liams' development: "Emlyn Williams's fascinating experi ments in transferring literature to the stage enter a more difficult phase with [this production]." And it subsequent ly agreed with the Sunday Times that this was superior to the Dickens readings. But otherwise the silence about de velopment, or about future possibilities, was maintained through the 1955 and 1958 reviews— even after a strong nudge in the 1958 programme: "Theatre evening" is in inverted commas because there is no word for this form of theatre. It is new. Oddly, the expression which seems to suggest itself most readily— because the material stems from books?— is the one which least describes the genre, the drab word "Read ings ." There is no reason why this kind of one-man- revue-telling-a-story should not become regular theatre fare, what could be more absorbing than an evening, with the right adaptor and actor, from the works and life of Oscar Wilde, or (in French) of Victor Hugo? A word should be found. well as to his ideas; and one of the minor pleasures of the evening is the comfortable assurance we have that every sen tence will be spoken as the author wrote it. The words (and after all there are a great many of them) come from Mr. Wil liams with the sureness of print." 76 John Perry, "A Word Should Be Found," programme of Globe production of A Boy Growing Up, Sept., 1958, p. 5; MS Enthoven. 218 By that time Gielgud's The Ages of Man had appeared at the Edinburgh Festival and was en route to New York; yet no re views were encountered that took up the cry. The silence might of course be construed as evidence that the method was now accepted, that its possibilities had been gauged, and that the excitement of discovery had gone out of it.^ But failing more positive evidence, the pres ent study could infer only that Dylan Thomas Growing Up was regarded in the London press as a tour de force of Emlyn Williams', with no strong implications for other productions or even for Williams' future. IV. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS The three 1954 productions in memory of Dylan Thomas were well attended and probably complete sellouts; at least two of them were popular and critical successes. Prominent in each was a concert reading of at least part of Under Milk Wood and a performance by Emlyn Williams. The first concert, Homage to Dylan Thomas, was spon sored by the Sunday Times, the I.C.A. and others, and held in the (907-seat) Globe on January 25. It was a miscellany of poems and stories— mostly by Thomas—r-read or recited by Edith Evans, Richard Burton, Williams and others; excerpts 77 /7Cf. R. B. Marriott: "By then we knew the man could do it"; Appendix. 219 from Under Milk Wood were read by cast members of the BBC Third Programme's premiere performance which was scheduled for the next evening. Although no reviews- were found, about half of the program was used as a successful commer cial recording. The Memorial Concert at the (3000-seat) Royal Festi val Hall on February 14 was sponsored by the I.C.A., the Apollo Society and others. Poems and short stories by var ious authors were read or recited by Peggy Ashcroft, Sybil Thorndike, Williams and others; again excerpts from Under Milk Wood were, read by members of the Third Programme cast. Reviews were favorable, and singled out for special praise the concert reading and Emlyn Williams' reciting of "Just Like Little Dogs." The third production, a concert reading of Under Milk Wood, was given two performances at the (1004-seat) Old Vic on February 28 and March 7. Sybil.Thorndike, Richard Burton and Emlyn Williams joined members of the Third Programme cast; the two former were praised in four of the six reviews encountered, and Williams in five. All six reviews were en thusiastic; none suggested that the production would be im proved by full staging, although two admitted to prior mis givings about the form; and four reviews stated explicitly or clearly implied that the run should be extended beyond two performances. The enthusiastic acceptance of these concert readings 220 did not, however, have any discernible effect upon the use of this form in fringe theatre groups for the next six years. During the period 1955-60 the X.C.A. sponsored only five "rehearsed readings" of which record was found— a total that was matched in its 1954 season alone. The Eng lish Stage Company held about twenty "productions without decor" for members of its auxilliary Society during the sea sons 1957-60; but these were "run-throughs" of new plays by new and unknown British authors, and were concerned rather to develop playwrights than to experiment with concert read ing. And so, with the possible exception of Theatre Work shop's Love and Lectures at Stratford East in April, 1958— the discussion of whichlas been deferred to Chapter VIII below— and the Hovenden Theatre's staging of Masefield's narrative poem, The Widow in the Bve Street, which ran for a week in June, 1959, and another in December, 1960— and which may have been merely a cramped version of fullstage presen tational drama— the present study found no evidence that a concert reading in London during the years 1955-60 had at tracted any critical attention at all. A more positive result of the Dylan Thomas Memorial concerts was to inspire Emlyn Williams to compile the mis cellany Dylan Thomas Growing Up, which opened at the Globe (907-seats) on May 31, 1955, after four performances at the Bath Festival. It was very favorably received, and played for eighty-seven London performances before beginning a * 221 three-year tour; it returned to the Globe for three weeks in October, 1958. Data were gathered from thirteen reviews of the 1955 version, supplemented at specified points by five reviews of the 1958 revival. All thirteen reviews were highly fav orable; but five- contained adverse comment upon the reading of the poetry, or the finale, or upon Williams' failure to convey Thomas' recklessness. Almost all of these details were specifically praised in other reviews. There was qualified praise for the choice of mater ial, but considerable enthusiasm for the restraint of the performance— the economy of gesture and movement, and the reliance upon a "beautiful Welsh voice." There was high praise for the vividness of the result, not only in charac terization but in scene and mood. Six reviews contained short lists of favorite characters and incident, but with more elaborative detail than in the counterparts in the 1951-52 Dickens reviews. Nine mentioned the Dickens read ings; three, in showing the difference between the produc tions, remarked that Thomas and Dickens has used similar comic techniques. None of the eighteen reviews, 1955 and 1958, called the performance a reading, although one linked it briefly with the 1954 Under Milk Wood; none compared Williams to Ruth Draper or any other performer. Six said explicitly, and two clearly implied, that Williams had made no real at- 222 attempt to impersonate Thomas7 a ninth praised the show as an impersonation but complained about it basically on the grounds that it was not; and a tenth lodged a "small criti cism" that might be taken to imply the need for stronger im personation. One review said that Williams had acted the stories as well as told them; another said that at its best the recital became "truly theatrical"— but this was probably a verbalism. A review in the Times, May 19, 1955, called the per formance "'presentation' or interpretation"; within the lim its of the present investigation this was the only time a British reviewer used "interpretation" unequivocally in the sense it usually carries in the United States within the field of Speech. Although other reviewers did not use the term, a number touched upon what is probably the central problem in the interpretation— as opposed to the imperson ation— of narrative written in the first person: the bal ance between the personalities of the narrator and of the performer. Williams was said to have "become" Thomas "in an extraordinary way," to have got "into the skin of" Thomas' persona, to have maintained a complete "imaginative sympathy with the Welsh boy's strange vision," to have evoked Thomas as part of the audience, and to have given a recital of Thomas' works. "Recital" was the term most often applied, but not always as an implicit analogy to a musical recital. The majority view was probably that Williams' own personal 223 ity was always apparent within a consistent and credible role which might be variously identified— as the narrator, as the real Thomas, as Thomas the public figure, et cetera. Unlike the reviews of the Dickens readings, these found no strong extrinsic ties between Williams and his author— other than those of nationality. Thomas' career as a reader was mentioned in only one of the eighteen reviews, although another alluded to one of his recordings. Nor was there much discussion of the susceptibility of the work to such treatment as Williams had given it: three noted with surprise that Thomas and Dickens had used similar comic techniques; another said that the self-sufficiency of the stories "weakened the entertainment at the heart" but de nied that this meant the stories did not benefit from being spoken; a fi^th said that the stories, and many of Thomas' poems, were "scripts for the speaking voice," and there fore required some such performance for their full realiza tion. The data would probably support the conclusion that Dylan Thomas and his works were peripheral to the criticism of the production; certainly they were not central in the way that Charles Dickens, his works and his readings, had been central to the reviews of the Dickens readings in 1951. There was, however, no indication that Williams' method was capable of further exploitation, even though his 1958 playbill contained a suggestion that it be applied to the works of Wilde and Hugo. The silence about the value 224 and the future of the method might be a strong indication f that it was now being taken for granted. But pending fur ther evidence, the clearest inference is that Dylan Thomas Growing Up was regarded in the London press in 1955 as per haps a variant of his earlier Dickens readings but surely a tour de force peculiar to Emlyn Williams, with no clear im plications for other productions. Perhaps Ivor Brown's re view of 1954-55 is symptomatic: The sovereignty of the actor has been further proved by the ability of single players to fill a whole pro gramme. It is true that Joyce Grenfell had some support of dancers: but the public went to see her in her rich variety of monologues, as it goes, with recurrent and undiminished fidelity, to Ruth Draper. Emlyn Williams, so vividly recreating the life of Dylan Thomas, once more proved his powers to prepare a text and to spin a score of characters out of his own uncannily gifted and versatile personality.78 Whether other actors could share this putative sov ereignty— especially when, in 1956, Look Back in Anger be came hailed as having reasserted the claim of the contempor ary playwright in the London theatre— is a matter for Chap ter VII, which discusses the solo performances during the years 1955 to 1961. The discussion must first, however, touch upon the poetry readings that followed the Dylan Thom as Memorial concerts, and Sir John Gielgud's Shakespeare anthology, The Ages of Man. 78 Ivor Brown, Theatre 1954-5 (London: Max Reinhardt, 1955), pp. 12-13. CHAPTER VI POETRY READINGS, 1955-60, AND THE AGES OF MAN, 1959-60 The present chapter is concerned with the poetry readings given by professional actors in London during the years 1955 to 3.960. Accordingly the first section discusses the readings on the theatrical fringe, especially in the Royal Festival Hall, under the sponsorship of such organi zations as the Apollo Society; it continues an account that was begun in Chapter IV above.^ The second section de scribes the British reaction to Sir John Gielgud's Shake speare anthology, The Ages of Man, which appeared on the fringe in 1956 and 1957, and then, after touring Canada and the United States under the title Ages of Man in 1958-59, played for limited seasons in London in 1959 and 1960. The third section describes briefly the fate of Dame Peggy Ash croft's solo production, Portraits of Women, whose begin nings seemed to parallel those of The Ages of Man at a year's remove. Section four treats of Dorothy Stickney's solo dramatization of the works of Edna St. Vincent Millay, A Lovely Light, which she brought to London in 1960 after a short but very successful New York run. The final section •^See above, pp. 156-68. 225 2 2 6 offers some provisional conclusions. I. POETRY READINGS ON THE FRINGE The activities of the Apollo Society, the "group of poets, actors and musicians whose purpose it is to design and perform programmes of poetry and music," were traced in Chapter IV for the period 1951-54. There it was noted that although most of the readers were actors, the material was usually lyric or short narrative poetry: lyrics with drama tic situations might be used, but dramatic poetry apparently was not. A provisional conclusion was that by the end of 1954 the Society's reputation as a poetry-reading organiza tion was secure, and its connection with the theatre seemed remote. In 1955 and for most of 1956 the Society seemed to have adhered to this pattern. As before, there was no flam boyant experiment in combining the arts; the idea seems to have been a program that assembled lyric poems from dis similar or unusual authors and schools, linked groups of them with piano or lute solos from various other periods or schools, and yet organized the whole into an unbroken and emotionally satisfying unity. Quiet ingenuity is evident in the selection of poems. For example, Irene Worth and Christopher Hassall read a program on February 6, 1955, which was divided into "Songs of Innocence"— selections from medieval lyrics and from Piers Plowman— and "Songs of 227 Experience"— modern poems by relatively young contemporar ies; on April 3 Margaretta Scott and Marius Goring read a program with much the same pattern, but combining poems of the seventeenth century with those of Eliot, Hopkins, Yeats, et cetera; and the program by Flora Robson and Robert Harris on December 4 included poems by Robert Frost and the Count ess of Winchelsea. For the next concert, on February 12, 1956, Jill Balcon and C. Day Lewis offered these: four poems by Wyatt; one each by Francis Cutting, Jonson and Greene; two by Donne; one by Marianne Moore; two by Don Mar quis; four of Tennyson; and one each by Henry King and Henry Vaughan. Indeed, to examine the Society's programmes of that time is to find a comprehensive survey of British and major American poetry— with the perhaps significant excep tion of drama and of Shakespeare. As in earlier years, there were too few reviews to allow of any firm inferences about reading style. However, one review of a concert given by Margaret Rutherford and Christopher Hassall on October 21, 1956, may be suggestive. Claiming that a collection of poems by Walter de la Mare occupied "the inferior half," a reviewer for The Times ex plained: Mr. Hassall reads sensitively, if without any marked distinction. It was Miss Rutherford who made the even ing memorable, for her reputation has been made in car icaturing occasions of this kind. Her gestures are fam iliar— the imperious toss of the head, the jaw gamely squared. Last night these were seriously applied, though we have come to know them as the stock in trade 228 of the outraged games mistress and the lady trapped at the frontier with excess baggage. It was tempting to ^ take every rustle of Miss Rutherford's dress as a joke. It may be suspected that here the Society was paying for an unrealistic desire to "let the words speak for themselves," 3 completely divorced from the personality of the reader. But the evidence is too slight to be pressed. In 1956 there were, in addition to the Balcon-Day Lewis and Rutherford-Hassall programs, concerts by Margaret Rawlings and John Neville on March 18, Sam Wannamaker and Guy Kingsley-Poynter on April 22, Irene Worth and Marius Goring on November 18, and on December 9 Sir John Gielgud in a departure from the format: To-night's programme is in the form of an anthology, entitled The Ages of Man: Shakespeare's Image of Man and Nature, and arranged by George Rylands. Before each of the three sections there will be played three harpsichord pieces written by Orlando Gib bons . ^The Times (hereafter cited as Times), October 22, 1956, p. 12. 3 The program was not anomalous? see above, p. 162. She read this collection of de la Mare earlier, and again in Apollo concerts at Royal Tunbridge Wells, March 24, 1957, and at Colchester, April 28, 1957? programmes, MSS in files of the Apollo Society, St. George's Terrace (hereafter cited as Apollo files). The present investigator saw Miss Ruther ford read de la Mare at the Old Vic, May 6, 1962, and thought the element of comedy was never far away. 4 Programme, MS Apollo files. The program had been given in August at the Arts Council? it was offered at the 1957 Edinburgh Festival, before touring the U. S. See be low, pp. 246-54. 229 All of these concerts were given at the Royal Festival Hall — apparently in the Recital Room, whose annexe could be t opened to increase the seating from two hundred to three hundred and fifty. Two other poetry readings on the fringe should be mentioned here. Beginning January 25, 1955, the Hovenden Theatre Club presented A Book of Ballads, an "entertainment devised, directed and performed by Colyn Davies, assisted by 5 Qfour othersJ." In the only review encountered, The Stage said he recited lyric poems as well, and added: He has the personality and the appearance for sing ing and reciting traditional ballads and the kind of almost bawdy poems which sillier people would either burlesque or treat melodramatically.® One of the other readers was said to have recited two mono logues "with exactly the right emphasis." A concert at the Arts in 1957 so impressed R. B. Marriott that he included it with Olivier's performance in The Entertainer and Gielgud's Prospero in his "Review of the Year": At the Arts, Freda Jackson introduced a new form of entertainment, "Musica Lyrica," in which famous poems were linked in an extraordinarily effectively way with 5 "The Stage" Year Book (hereafter cited as Stage Year Book or SYB), 1956, p. 53. A Hovenden announcement, MS in the Gabrielle Enthoven Theatre Collection in the Victor ia & Albert Museum (hereafter cited as Enthoven), called it "Volume I," but there was no evidence that subsequent "vol umes" were devised. 6January 27, 1955, p. 9. 230 music of great composers. Apparently the name of the show was Lyra Musica, and not everyone was as enthusiastic as Marriott: "Lyra Musica," the wedding of poetry and music, took place quietly at the Arts Theatre last night. The only disturbance was caused by the noise of poets and com posers as they revolved in their graves and cried "mes alliance. "8 Said the Times: The perfect marriage of music and verse is presum ably in song, and experiments in other directions, using both media, suggest that it will not be surpassed. The Apollo Society have designed a number of programmes in which spoken poetry and movements of instrumental music alternate, at times felicitously. [in the present en tertainment J . . . piano music is used continuously while the words are being spoken. The result is largely a waste of effort, in that neither benefits from the pres ence of the other. Although Miss Jackson's declamation was often admirable as such and Mr. Yeoman's playing hardly less so, neither succeeded in enhancing the other's art to any appreciable degree. A poem about a cat was nicely matched with music by Darius Milhaud, but the same could not be said for Wordsworth plus Haydn in Lines Composed Upon Westminster Bridge and the addition of a tinkling tune to Psalm 23 was pointless. Marriott said in his review for The Stage that the Arts was "far from full," but that Miss Jackson deserved the large audience he hoped she would get. Then followed a descrip tion of her flowing black lace over pink satin, her hair, 7SYB 1958, p. 14. Q K. Y., The Daily Telegraph (hereafter cited as Tele graph or Tele.), Jan. 16, 1957, p. 8. It added that if such blend were necessary, this method was "almost certainly the best," and that her "virtuosity was equal to every demand." ^January 19, 1957, p. 8. 231 her glowing eyes, and her "look of real beauty, coming part ly from inner conviction and sincerity, on her handsome face. Immediately one pictures her as a perfect Marguerite Gautier." The first part of the programme . . . ends with a really beautiful rendering of "Annabel! Lee," to Chopin. In "The Lord is my Shepherd," Miss Jackson's clean, clear, finely used voice is perhaps heard at its best; the words are given weight and rhythm completely with out affection, which is particularly uncommon when ex tracts from the Bible are brought to the stage. But during the whole performance Miss Jackson eschews cheap or easy effectiveness; obviously her heart is in her poems, they really mean something to her and there is humility in her approach to everything.10 There was an advertisement in the Times for a single per formance of Lyra Musica at Festival Hall on April 1 4 and it was revived for the Bertie Scott Memorial concerts in 1959.12 In April, 1957, the British Council sent Vivienne Bennett to represent Britain in a "Declamation Competition" in Antwerp, and in November it financed Sir John Gielgud's trip to Paris with "The Seven Ages of Man." In March of the following year it paid "fare and subsistence" to Ossian El lis, the lutanist, for an Apollo Society concert given in ■ » 3 Rome with Dame Peggy Ashcroft.^ In April and May it sent ^■®R. B. M.[arriottJ, The Stage, Jan. 17, 1957, p. 9. » ^April 13, p. 2. 12 See below, pp. 239-40. 13 The British Council, Annual Report for the Year 232 & both Rosalinde Fuller and Vivienne Bennett on tours of the Middle East, and in November it sponsored but did not con tribute financially to Dame Edith Evans' tour to represent Great Britain in Duse Centenary Celebrations in Rome and Milan and to give poetry readings there.These notes sug gest that recitals of poetry and drama were important enough 1 to be used as instruments of semi-official policy; but although doubtless cheaper and easier to organize, they were not used proportionately oftener than the elaborate full- stage, full-company productions offered by Stratford or the Old Vic and led by Olivier, Redgrave, Gielgud or John Ne ville. Although the Apollo Society's program notes in 1957 and 1958 referred somewhat more often than before to the 16 structure of the programs, that structure appears to have Ended 31st March (hereafter cited as BC Report), 1958, p. 97. ^BC Report 1959, p. 98. ■^The Council is financed by the Government; its function was defined in its Royal Charter of Incorporation as "promoting a wider knowledge of Our United Kingdom . . . and the English language abroad and developing closer cul tural relations between Our United Kingdom . . . and other countries." 16 For example, from the Robson-Hassall program in November, 1957: "To preserve the scheme of the recital the artists would be grateful if any applause could be withheld until the end of the groups." From the Jefford-Neville pro gram in February, 1958: "The scheme of the programme would be more apparent if the audience would be kind enough to re serve any applause until the end of the groups." And the program that combined Eliot and Bartok was explained thus: 233 been changing from a sort of continuum of music and lyric poetry toward a looser but more flexible form, in which ap propriate musical selections divided the literature--consis- ting usually of related lyric poems, but sometimes drama and sometimes prose--into three or four segments, not necessari ly related closely to each other, but each maintaining its own internal unity. In other words, the ideal changed from one long "music-poem," so to speak, towards a series of three or four poem-groups separated from each other by ap propriate-musical selections. But the change was uncertain and inconsistent: the second concert of 1957, given by Flora Robson and John Laurie on March 3, linked two long nar ratives, the first adventure from Byron's Don Juan and Hop kins' "The Wreck of the Deutschland"; and when Miss Robson returned on November 24 she and Christopher Hassall departed even further from the lyric, with Pope's "Eloise to Abelard" and the trial of Katherine of Aragon from Shakespeare's Henry VIII; yet the concert given on February 9, 1958, by Barbara Jefford and John Neville was almost a model of the "The programme this evening does not attempt to suggest that Bartok's music matches Eliot's poems except in the very broadest sense. The works are placed, experimentally, in juxtaposition because they are great quartets of our time with a certain spiritual affinity and because it was known that Mr. Eliot admired the Hungarian composer's quartets and often listened to them when part, at any rate, of these poems was being written." Programmes, MSS Apollo files. 234 17 older form. In 1957 there were more or less conventional concerts by Ashcroft and Day Lewis on February 3 and by Mar- garetta Scott on November 3; but on December 15 there was a reading of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets by Ashcroft, Balcon, Day Lewis and Rylands. This last reading was interspersed with movements from Bartok's fourth string quartet— which provided, according to the Telegraph, "a contrast which was interesting if not particularly illuminating." It added, without elaboration: "It was Day Lewis whose style, vocal inflections, and subtly varied tone most successfully caught 18 the changing moods of the poems." In 1958, after a return to the conventional format in the initial concert, the departures therefrom became more frequfent than before. On March 9 Irene Worth and George Rylands gave a concert that was almost entirely Shakespeare an; on April 20 a program of "Scots, English, Irish and American Ballads" was read by Constance Cummings, John Laurie and V. C. Clinton-Baddeley, with Isla Cameron's 17 The first half, for example, contained these: De bussy, Voiles; Arnold, "Dover Beach" and "Philomena"; Medt- ner, Conte, opus 26/1; Swinburne, "When the Hounds of Spring," and "Time, with a gift of tears"; Galuppi, Allegro; Browning, "A Tocatta of Galuppi's" and "Youth and Art"; Chopin, Nocturne in C sharp minor; Tennyson, "The Lady of Shalott," and Vernon Watkins, "Camelot." After the inter mission there were poems' by Day Lewis, Emily Bronte, Hardy, Auden, Aiken, Edward Thomas; and music by Alan Rawthorne, Lord Berners, Gershwin, Medtner, Rachmaninov. Programme, MS Apollo files. 18 December 16, 1957, p. 8. Cf. note 16, above. 235 folk-singing as a substitute for the usual piano interludes. The 1957 Eliot-Bartok program was repeated on November 2, with Maxime Audley substituting for Peggy Ashcroft. On November 30 Joyce Grenfell and John Betjeman gave a wide variety of poems within the conventional framework, and on December 14 Dame Sybil Thorndike and Sir Lewis Casson gave a Victorian anthology, accompanied by their son, Christopher Casson, on the Irish harp. In addition to its regular series in 1958 the Soci- * ety offered two Sunday evening programs at the Old Vic: the 19 Worth-Rylands Shakespearean recital on June 1; and on November 23 a repetition of a program of poetry and drama that Edith Evans and Christopher Hassall had given at the 1958 Edinburgh Festival. These "Words and Music" concerts were continued sporadically at the Old Vic down to at least 1962. Moreover in 1958 the Society attempted a "Poet's Evening" on May 4 and 18, with Edith Sitwell and C. Day Lewis respectively as solo performers. No reviews or other comment could be found;- but it might be guessed that much of this extra activity was in celebration of the Society's fifteenth anniversary. The first concert of 1959, given by Maxine Audley and William Squire on February 1, began with the dialogue 19 Announcement and picture, Times, May 30, 1958, p. 16. No review was found. 236 between Samson and Dalila from Samson Agonistes, continued with Sweeney Agonistes, and then added thirteen poems of Thomas Hardy.^ Margaret Rutherford and Robert Harris were announced for March 1; on April 5 the three Cassons repeated their earlier program "by request"on July 5 Dame Edith Sitwell offered a solo reading? on November 1 Jill Balcon and her husband C. Day Lewis performed; and on November 22, Barbara Jefford and John Neville. Marius Goring was the lone reader on December 13, with a program called "Poets' Tales"; it included Enoch Arden "arranged as a melodrama" and read simultaneously with Richard Strauss's Opus 38— a combination with which, according ta a program note, Strauss and Emil Tschirch toured in 1897. No reviews were found of any of these but the Cassons'; but Dame Edith Sitwell got lively notice of her Apollo Society concert— a repetition of the one in July— at the Edinburgh Festival on September 9. As The Manchester Guardian had it: Dame Edith Sitwell caused a minor stir during her poetry recital at the Lyceum, Edinburgh, yesterday, when she retorted to members of the audience of complained of her inaudibility. When there were cries of, "We can't hear," she replied, "Then why don't you get a hearing aid?" 20 Thus in the programme, MS Apollo files. The Fes tival Hall advertisements, MSS Enthoven, give Michael Flan ders as the male reader. 21 . This got a review of sorts in a gossip column, Denis Blewett, "In London and Beaulieu Last Night," Evening Standard (hereafter cited as Standard or Stand.,), April 6, 1959, p. 8. 237 Later she said: "I am not meaning to be savage with people who cannot hear, but it makes me wild when things are going wrong."22 Even Dame Edith's program was not entirely lyric, however; she did the sleepwalking scene and Desdemona's bedchamber scene, plus several speeches from Atalanta in Calydon. It seems clear that about the end of 1956 the Apollo Society began to depart from the structure it had estab lished for its main London concerts, and that its earlier attempts to form some sort of continuum of music and lyric poetry were reduced though not abandoned. Long passages from narrative poems were now used, and occasional excerpts from the drama. At least two programs, the Gielgud and the Worth-Rylands, consisted entirely or in large part of Shake speare. But although excerpts from Atalanta in Calydon. Samson Agonistes, Henry VIII, Macbeth. Othello, and the Secunda Pastorum had appeared in some programs— and one con cert offered Enoch Arden as a melodrama— the Society's con certs in Festival Hall were still not nearly so freely dra- 22 The Guardian (prior to August, 1959, The Manches ter Guardian; hereafter cited as Guardian or Guard.) , Sep- tember 10, 1959, p. 7. The Times, September 10, p. 6, gave much the same story, but added: "Yet, in spite of the strain to follow and an oc casional loss of detail, most people would have agreed that this intimate style was preferable to pompous, oratorical declamation for so predominantly lyrical a programme. And in all dramatic, as opposed to reflective, readings (as, for instance, the sleep-walking scene . . . ), just as in humor ous or narrative poems, Dame Edith really did rouse herself from her dreamy, trance-like rapture, and made her points with obvious gusto . . . ." 238 matic as those offered in other parts of the country.22 Meanwhile there was an increase in professional poetry reading outside the sponsorship of the Apollo Society. The English Stage Society sponsored a program of Negro poet ry,. "Black and Unknown Bards," on Sunday, October 5, 1958, but seems not to have repeated the experiment. Two years later, on December 18, 1960, it offered "a programme of song in relation to spoken prose and verse dialogue," Song in the Theatre, with Freda Jackson, Alan Dobie, Zoe Caldwell and six others in the cast; although it seems to have been a sort of lecture-demonstration, it gained some notice in the rampant press because a Lady Listowel was returning to the stage under her former name of Stevie Wise. The major activity in poetry reading, however, cen tered about the recital room at Festival Hall. There, on Tuesday, April 29, 1958, a Richard Morris offered "Hamlet (arranged for solo voice)"; he followed it with "Tribute to Byron" on September 17, "The Splendour of Shelley"2^ on April 8, 1959, and "The Magic of Keats" on September 2, 1959; on April 27, 1960, he offered Prometheus Unbound. No reviews of any of these were found. Martin Starkie began a similar series of recitals on October 11, 1959, with "From 23 As early as 1955 the Society's concert at the York Festival contained scenes from Comus, The Duchess of Malfi, Marriage a la Mode, and The Lady's Not for Burning. 24 This contained scenes from The Cenci. 239 Chaucer to Dylan Thomas"y The Stage remarked upon his "beautiful diction and excellent vocal projection," his "ob vious love for and understanding of both English poetry and the English tongue," and upon his unfortunate habit of gas- 25 ping when he breathed. On April 10, 1960, he and Marcella Salzer offered "a spoken anthology" called "In the Spring."26 In the middle of 1959 there began a series of Bertie Scott Memorial Concerts by former pupils of a drama coach; as The Stage reported it: Part of the scheme to keep alive the work of Scott includes the publication of his book, "Dynamics of Act ing, " for which funds and subscriptions are being col lected. 27 On June 14, Catherine Lacy, Robert Flemyng, Jenny Laird and John Glen offered a program of Shaw, Frost and Fletcher. On September 20 Constance Lome read from Shaw's opera reviews, Robert Marsden read from Julius Caesar and "The Passing of Arthur," and Natalie Jordan read some poems for children; and then, apparently, all three did a scene from The Ri- 28 vals. On November 15 Elizabeth Sellars, Pauline Letts and Michael Anthony read some drama criticism and Henry James's account of Tennyson's reading aloud; and "interspersed . . . 250ctober 15, 1959, p. 17. 26 Marcella Salzer was mentioned above, p. 133. 27June 18, 1959, p. 12. 26The Stage, September 24, p. 17. 240 were two groups of works in that most effective mode which its exponents, Freda Jackson and Ian MacIntyre, have named 29 ‘Lyra Musica.'" There were other concerts on September 20, October 18, December 6, and the following January 31? read ers included Marius Goring, Rachel Gurney, Bernard Braden, Marie Ney, Joan Miller and several others.30 The series seems to have used a wide variety of poetry— especially non- British poetry— and a considerable amount of prose written about the theatre, as well as excerpts from the drama. Hedli Anderson, whom the Times called "at once sing er, reciter, and diseuse," offered a recital of Brecht's songs at the Arts on April 20, 1959; "the programme roused admiration for [herj interpretative quality as well as it 31 enhanced appreciation of Brecht's lyrical achievement." She offered another program at Festival Hall on January 21, 1960. On February 19, 1960 Beatrix Lehmann and Richard Ainley, accompanied by Eric Hope playing the piano and vir ginals, offered the first of a series, "D. H. Lawrence and His Contemporaries"; this was followed by "Oscar Wilde and OQ L. G. S., The Stage. November 19, p. 12. 30 This was the only reference to Joan Miller encoun tered in the present study. Marriott grouped her with Giel gud and Williams as one of the pioneers of "The New Enter tainment" in the article reproduced in Appendix below. But see too his reaction to Freda Jackson, pp. 229-31 above. 31 Times, April 21, 1959, p. 4. 241 His Contemporaries" on November 13, I960; and by "Shakes- 32 peare and His Contemporaries" on May 28, 1961. A series of "dramatised anthologies" upon universal themes was begun on May 22, 1960, by Sylvia Read and William Fry, with The Beast and The Angel; Dominion of Danger followed on Novem ber 10, 1960, and My Brother1s Keeper on May 12, 1961. Of the last named, The Sunday Times reported: I will not say that the . . . recital . . . was ex citing? I will only say that it excited me. I went to it out of a sense of duty, and I stayed for delight. . The montage . . . was subtle. Practically every item ranging from the Authorized Version of the Bible to Bet jeman, Jennings and Nash raised the power of every other item through the skill of its placing. . . .At times mannered, and at times very simple, Miss Read and Mr. Fry, though honourably defeated by an impossible extract from "Brand," brought off effects which pierced the mar row like a thin, clean sword.33 A fourth program, For Better For Worse, which played a one- night stand in London a year later, before going on tour, was criticized for excessive levity by the Times: If we are to savour the humour, . . . [they} must allow it to speak for itself much more than they do at present. We often feel they are inviting us to laugh at their way of doing a thing and that by complying we miss the point of what they actually have to say. The review praised scenes from A Doll's House and Anne Bol- eyn, and Fry's reading of an extract from Jane Eyre j "the 32 The Wilde concert was given the night after Mich- eal Mac Liammoir ended his Apollo run in The Importance of Being Oscar; see below, p. 316 . But apparently none of the leading papers saw a story in it; no reviews were found. 33 The Sunday Times (hereafter cited as Sunday Times or Sun. T.), May 14, 1961, p. 16. 242 comedy scenes on the Whole provided nothing comparable. Inasmuch as the present study unearthed almost no reviews of.these concerts, it can offer no assessment of their probable influence or even of their success. But per haps three observations are warranted. The titles often im ply their membership in a series, and thus to refer to ear lier programs within the series; inferentially the early pro grams must have been successful enough to justify such refer ence by the later ones. Secondly, these readings by Morris, Starkie, Lehmann and others were produced by several differ ent organizations: Classic Presentations Ltd., The New Lon don Theatre Group, Orlando Productions, Theatre Group Pro ductions, University Records— these are some whose names ap peared on the advertisements. Their numbers suggest a com petitive business, if not necessarily a thriving one. Last ly, as prices usually ranged from four shillings to ten-and- six, a sellout at the Recital Room— with its two hundred seats— would have brought in perhaps seventy pounds, and the 150-seat Annexe might add another fifty guineas. The Apollo Society's 1960 series appears to have con tinued the trend set in the years immediately previous: on February 7 Flora Robson and Denis McCarthy read contemporary British.poetry; on March 6 Dame Edith Evans and Christopher Hassall brought to Festival Hall a program which they had 34 The Times, January 24, 1962, p. 13. 243 often given in the provinces, and which contained scenes from As You Like It, The Dark is Light Enough, and The Im portance of Being Earnest; and on April 3 Margaretta Scott and William Squire repeated a 1959 Audley-Squire concert that included scenes from Samson Agonistes and Sweeney Agon- 35 istes. On November 27 Miss Scott and Mr. Hassall read "The Browning Romance"— a program of poems and letters of the Brownings. Siobhan McKenna read Irish poetry in a solo concert on December 11. Hence the year would have been un usual for the Society even without its special concert: two programs had used excerpts from drama and two had used prose; no concerts had used the conventional format. But in addi tion, on November 6 the Society offered a special concert celebrating what it said was its fiftieth performance in 36 Festival Hall. Hugh Burden read Max Beerbohm's short story, "Savonarola Brown," and at the appropriate point in plot, Savonarola, the play which Beerbohm facetiously at tributed to his hero, was read by a cast that included Max ine Audley, Sir Lewis Casson, C. Day Lewis, Marius Goring, Christopher Hassall, Robert Harris, Derek Hart, Laurie Lee, John Neville and William Squire. According to the Times: The players themselves became as infected as the audience with the gala spirit, laughing with their lis teners instead of merely providing opportunities for laughter . . . . Mr. Burden read the introductory ac- 35 Times, March 31, 1960, p. 3. 36 See above, p. 164. 244 count of the fated author with deliberate consciousness of the audience; Miss Audley soared gracefully into the lyrical flights . . . of Lucrezia. Sir Lewis never overlooked the author's precise care for scansion and Mr. Goring accepted the rich melodrama of the title role. Their numerous colleagues were never*less than power fully spirited. It is a pity, however, that the authorfe crowd scenes necessarily went by default.37 Apparently this was the only concert reading attempted by the Apollo Society until it co-sponsored The Vagaries of 38 Love as a possible West End production two years later. In brief summary, records were found of thirty-six Apollo Society concerts at the Royal Festival Hall during the period 1955-1960: this total includes two "Poets' Even ings" in 1958 and a special, anniversary program that in cluded a concert reading; but the total does not include two "Words and Music" programs given at the Old Vic in 1958. As in years previous, most of the readers were professional act ors and actresses— John Betjeman, Cecil Day Lewis and Dame Edith Sitwell were the most notable exceptions. Most of the programs employed one man and one woman as readers; but there was one quartet, which was repeated once, one trio, one concert reading with a cast of eleven, and six solo readings— including the two "poets' evenings." Musical ac companiment was usually piano or lute, but string quartets, piano duos and Irish harps were used. Such music was now 37 November 7, 1960, p. 16. 38 See below, Chapter IX. 245 used mainly as a bridge between internally unified but not closely related sections of reading. Moreover, the material chosen for reading was no longer exclusively lyric poetry: long sections of narrative poetry were used early in 1957; Shakespearean anthologies were offered by Gielgud in 1956 and by Irene Worth and George Rylands in 1958; letters were used in 1960; and from 1958 on, otherwise conventional pro grams might include excerpts from such dramas as The Impor tance of Being Earnest, The Dark is Light Enough, Atalanta in Calydon, Samson Agonistes, Henry VIII, Macbeth, Othello and As You Like It. A concert of narrative poetry in 1959 used Enoch Arden as a melodrama, and a special concert in 1960 consisted of a group reading of "Savonarola Brown." It is reasonably clear that although the Society's concerts were still essentially poetry readings with musical interludes, during the years 1957 to 1960 they were changing slowly in the direction of drama and the dramatic. Further, the period 1955-60 saw an increase in pro fessional poetry reading outside the sponsorship of the Apollo Society. Colyn Davies offered A Book of Ballads at the Hovenden Theatre Club in 1955; at the Arts in 1957 Freda Jackson recited poems and prose to musical accompaniment in Lyra Musica. a program highly praised in one of the two major theatre annuals. From 1958 until its closing in 1961 the recital room of the Royal Festival Hall was booked fairly often for poetry recitals by Richard Morris, Martin Starkie, 246 Beatrix Lehman, Sylvia Read and others— each of whom gave a series of roughly semiannual concerts, usually dealing with the words of a given poet. Seven concerts late in 1959 and early in 1960 were given as a memorial to a drama coach, Bertie Scott; several well-known actors participated; and their materials ranged from foreign poetry to theatrical criticism, with a number of excerpts from drama. None of these recitals ran beyond a single performance, so far as could be discovered; and although their focus seems to have been clearly upon the oral realization of the material— rather than upon the novelty or the sufficient beauty of the written material itself— they probably were not intended to provide a livelihood for these professional entertainers. But even without the evidence of Gielgud's The Ages of Man, Peggy Ashcroft's Portraits of Women and Dorothy Stickney's A Lovely Light, it appears likely that by 1960 the poetry readings of professional actors had become a minor but persistent form of professional entertainment in London. II. THE AGES OF MAN. 1959-60 Sir John Gielgud's Shakespeare recital, The Ages of Man, opened in London at the Queen's Theatre on July 8, 1959, a full six months after having played coast-to-coast across the United States and Canada. In a sense the production might be considered an American import: some of the London 247 critics implied as much; and in New York Sir John was re ported as saying that his early experiment with the form had been called "a desecration of Shakespeare" by the Times of 3Q London. J But the actual genesis of the show was not en tirely in the prophet-without-honor tradition. The present section attempts to trace the history of the production in Britain, to report the press reaction to its opening at the Queen's and its revival at the Haymarket, and then to weigh its probable contribution to professional oral interpreta tion . Although Gielgud gave a lecture-recital, Shakespeare in Peace and War, for E.N.S.A.— a sort of British U.S.O.— 40 during World War II, the immediate source of The Ages of Man was a recital at the Arts Council— the government agency for support of the arts— on August 1, 1956. He offered se lections from George Rylands' Shakespeare anthology,4^- and was accompanied by Julian Bream, the lutanist. The Times, in the only review encountered, and the one to which Gielgud was almost certainly alluding in New York, did not directly 39 The New York Times, January 4, 1959, II, p. 5. 4®Hallam Fordham, John Gielgud; An Actor's Biography in Pictures (London; John Lehman £1952 pp. 95, 99; Basil Dean, The Theatre at War (London; George G. Harrap & Co., Ltd., 1956), pp. 191, 498. 41 George Rylands, An Introduction to The Ages of Man; Shakespeare's Image of Man~and Nature (New York; Doubleday, Doran and Co., Inc., 1940). 2 4 8 or indirectly call the recital a "desecration"y its tone was of pain, rather than outrage, at what it termed "Mr. Hy lands' s rapacious practice of tearing jewels from their set ting." As for the performance, it concluded: The passages, undeniably, were beautifully spoken: Sir John Gielgud is king of the soliloquy. But . . . it was plain that even in reflective lines a sacrifice of dramatic context means also a sacrifice of music. Shorn of their situation, the full-blooded speeches verged on comedy— particularly the exhortation, "On, on, you noble English," which Sir John Gielgud delivered full out to the Arts Council audience, who sat through it flanked by Picassos, very quiet and correct.42 The following December he repeated the program as an Apollo Society concert in Festival Hall; this seems to have been the first drama recital so sponsored, but no reviews were 43 found. On August 26, 1957, less than two weeks after his triumph as Prospero in Peter Hall's production of The Tem- 44 pest, he presented The Ages of Man for one afternoon per formance at the Freemason's Hall in Edinburgh, as part of the 1957 Festival. One review, in The Observer, was reluc tantly favorable; two others, in the Sunday Times and Punch, ^ Times, August 2, 1956, p. 12. 43 Moreover his name did not appear on the list of 62 "artists who have appeared for the Apollo Society," in the programmes for the 1962 concerts at the Aldwych; MSS in the files of the present investigator. 44 This subsequently became the first Shakespearean play in 28 years to be booked into the enormous Drury Lane— nowadays used for American musicals. 249 said it was the high point of the Festival.4^ Several pa pers that had offered extensive coverage of the Festival ig- 46 nored this recital? their silence is a little surprising, considering their agreement upon the general inadequacy of the other productions.47 A possible if unlikely explanation may appear in a characteristic pronouncement of Tynan's: A few new definitions seem to be in order. Apart from the odd foreign company, drama in Edinburgh is en tirely composed of plays that have been induced to use the city as a touring date on their way to London: the critic takes a premature, embarrassed peep at them, fully aware t&a't he will have to review them again a few weeks later.48 But as Gielgud had then just begun his Stratford The Tempest, his recital may have been overlooked simply because it was a recital. ^Kenneth Tynan, The Observer (hereafter cited as Observer or Obs.), Sept. 1, 1957, p. 10; Harold Hobson, Sun. T.Sept. 1. p. 17? Eric Keown, Punch, Sept. 4, p. 279. 46 Eg., Times. Tele.. Daily Express (hereafter cited as Express or Exp.), Daily Mail (hereafter cited as Mail), and Sketch. Queen, June 25, p. 28, and The Illustrated Lon don News (hereafter cited in notes as I.L.N.), Aug. 31, p. 356, both announced it eagerly but did not review it. 47 Among the contretemps Maria Callas refused to per form and the cast of the major dramatic production, The Hid den King, called a conference of the critics to protest their harsh treatment. According to the Mail, Aug. 26, p. 6, that play had cost between £15,000 and £25,000? so its failure sharpened the money difficulties that had bothered the Fes tival since spring. 48 Obs., Aug. 25, p. 10. Marriott's "Review of the Year," SYB 1958, p. 16, said: "The Edinburgh Festival, poor in drama in 1957, was unable to send anything of importance to London." 250 In the three reviews of the Edinburgh performance there was only a hint of the charge leveled against his re cital at the Arts Council— that the "full-blooded" speeches verged on comedy? Keown said in passing, "Among a number of speeches that stirred an afternoon audience to laughter the most surprising was Hotspur's 'My liege, I did deny no pri soners.'" Indeed, the consensus was if anything the com plete reverse. Hobson, who found the show "at moments al most unendurably exciting," described it thus: For some time we were conscious only of a tall, graceful figure in a perfectly unostentatious, and un ostentatiously perfect suit, reading noble verse in a noble voice. It was cultural: it was pleasant: it was rather dull. The Sir John sprang back from his reading- desk, broke the bondage of his manuscript, and shocked [us] into awareness . . . with an exceedingly vigorous rendering of the Queen Mab speech . . . [setting] the audience cheering for the first time. Keown did not detect this sudden transition, claiming that Gielgud was "largely to ignore" the lectern from the outset; but he agreed with the basic contention: In the simplicity of Sir John's delivery one often forgot he was an actor, until the reminder of his elo quent hands? but occasionally he let himself be seized by the power of the verse, and then, eyes half-shut, one could imagine him in costume. In Leontes' "Too hot, too hot!" particularly. Tynan, the least impressed of the three, was perhaps the most insistent upon the program's restraint: His hands were protectively clasped, where Sir Laur ence's would have been vulnerably outspread? yet he held one through-out, alike with the ironic nose-twitches that are his comic instruments, and the vbcal cerebration, as of an older rhetoric tamed and chastened, which he reserves for tragedy. 251 These accounts disagree about the vigor of the delivery, the amount of gesture, and the presence and effectiveness of Gielgud mannerisms; but all of them imply that if Gielgud erred it was on the side of restraint. The reviews were unusual in the amount of space they devoted to centering. Of this, Hobson said: It is not Sir John's way thus to subsume the pity and loveliness of an entire speech in a single carefully chosen phrase. He sees the speech whole, ordered and regular in its music and architecture, and he presents it to us, not, as Olivier does, luminous in one reveal ing detail, but in all its unbroken beauty. Neither method is better than the other, and the results of both can be moving in the extreme. By an amusing coincidence, a similar analysis issued from the rival eminence on the same day: In any given sentence, Sir Laurence will pounce on one emphatic word or phrase: Sir John will pause, modu late and give us half a dozen interpretations simul taneously. The former dives: the latter slides in and treads water. One understands Sir John: but one appre hends Sir Laurence: and it is this which makes Sir Laur ence a greater actor, though a lesser l e c t u r e r .49 Keown praised several specific speeches, and said that "never are we likely to hear the sonnets spoken more nobly, with more exquisite feeling or more complete grace." Briefly, then, the single performance of Sir John 4 q . ■ ^Tynan, Obs., Sept. 1, p. 10. The contexts of his and Hobson's remarks do not indicate whether the generaliza tions about centering were based upon the Edinburgh recital or were part of a recurrent discussion of the standards of "verse-speaking" in Shakespearean plays. See the 24 inter views in Laurence Kitchin, Mid-Century Drama (London: Faber and Faber, 1960), especially pp. 140, 147, 164, 169; see too his discussion, pp. 37-38, 55. 252 Gielgud's The Ages of Man was praised enthusiastically in two reviews and reluctantly in a third? it was ignored in most of the press, even though competing productions were agreed to have been weak. The three reviews noted the.care ful informality of his clothing, the beauty and nobility of his voice, and the hold which he retained upon his audience. Two of them referred to the simplicity of his gesture? two commended his abandoning or ignoring the reading-desk? and two compared his centering with that of Sir Laurence Olivier Eric Keown alone suggested that the "programme [was] far too good for a single hearing": "London," he said, "will be un lucky if this rare treat is denied it." London was denied it for almost two years. It played at the Berlin Festival in October? the British Council sent "The Seven Ages/ of Man" to Paris in November?^ under the title Ages of Man the production toured Canada and the United States late in 1958? but for most of those two CO years Gielgud was busy with half a dozen other productions. ^Times, October 9, 1957, p. 3. 51BC Report 1958, p. 97. 52 After the triumphant run at Stratford he played Prospero when the production moved to Drury Lane in December? he directed Graham Greene's The Potting Shed, which opened in February, 1958, and Terence Rattigan's Variations on a Theme, in May? he played Wolsey in Henry VIII in May, and toured Paris, Brussels and Antwerp in the part? then he di rected the very successful Five Finger Exercise, which began its run of 602 performances in July? after his American tour, September to February* he directed Greene's The Complaisant Lover, which opened in June, 1959. 253 When he did bring the recital to London, he came for a limi ted run of three weeks, as a way of officially reopening the Queen's Theatre. The Queen's, a large and luxurious theatre seating 1,028, had had a rich history before its bombing in 1940; and its reopening was a matter of both sentiment and symbolism— in a land and profession not entirely averse to either. The aura of reminiscence may have obscured the per formance: many of the critics had seen Sir John play the roles from which the speeches in this program had been drawn To this context of the ceremonial and the occasional might be added three other extrinsic details: the Americans had seen it first— and liked it; London was suffering a heat wave; and the night previous Sir Laurence Olivier had opened with his towering Coriolanus. Under the circumstances it is not surprising that the reviews contained more apparent ir relevancy than usual: Wilson and Findlater, for example, gave more space to the Queen's than to Gielgud; and, as will emerge in the following discussion, there was a note of pretentiousness discernible in several of the other reviews. The Ages of Man opened on July 8, 1959, and closed on schedule on August 1, after a.run limited to twenty-eight ^Cecil Wilson, "Gielgud Brings the Queen's Back to Playgoers," Mail, July 9, 1959, p. 3; Richard Findlater, "I've Just Seen a West End Miracle," Sunday Dispatch (here after cited in notes as Disp.), July 12, p. 5. Findlater's miracle seems to have been the opening of the first theatre in the West End in twenty-eight years. 254 performances; it was revived at the 900-seat Haymarket on April 13, 1960, for another limited run of three and a half 54 weeks. Of the ten 1959 reviews encountered m the present study, two were enthusiastic, four were favorable, two were moderately or reluctantly favorable, and two were unfavor- 55 able. Of the seven 1960 reviews encountered, one was en thusiastic, two were favorable, three were moderately or 54The programme for the Queen's performance, MS Ent- hoven, lists the following items, here severely abbreviated: "Part I, Youth: PassPil.; Cym. IV, ii; Ham. I, ii; sonnet 11; MSND.. II, i; Temp. Ill, ii; R&J. I, iv; MSND, I, i; V, i; TwN.. I, i; MofV. V, i; MAdo. II, iii; LLL. V, ii; sonnet 18; R&J.. I, v; sonnets 116, 130; R&J., II, vi; T&C, IV, iv; R&J., Ill, v; WT., I, ii; sonnet 129; MM., II, ii. Interval. "Part II, Manhood: H5 chor. IV; 1H4 I, iii; 3H6 II, v; R2^ III, iii; IV, i; JC. I, ii; Sonnets to Sundry; Ham. II, ii; Interval. "Part III, Old Age: Sonnets 73, 30; 2H4 III, i; R3 I, iv; MM. Ill, i; JC. II, ii; R2 III, ii; Ham. II, ii; III, i; Sonnet 29; R&J. V, iii; Lear V, iii; sonnet 138; H8 III, ii; Ham. V, ii; Cym. IV, ii; Temp. V, i; MAdo. V, iii." 55 . ^Arranged approximately m decreasing order of en thusiasm: Bernard Levin, "A Show You Can't Afford to Miss," Exp., July 9, p. 4; Harold Hobson, Sun. T., July 12, p. 12; Philip Hope-Wallace, "A Recital by Gielgud," Guard., July 10, p. 5; Times, July 9, p. 9; Findlater, Disp. loc. cit.; Wil son, Mail, loc. cit.; W. A. Darlington, "Ovation for Giel gud's 'Ages of Man': Queen's Opens," Tele., July 9, p. 8; Alai} Pryce-Jones, Obs., July 12, p. 10; A. Alvarez, "The Presence and the Voice," Hew Statesman (hereafter cited in notes as New States.), July 18, p. 76; Milton Shulman, "I Find King Lear in a Bow-Tie is Distracting," Stand., July 9, p. 10. Punch and I.L.N. were suspended by a strike; when they resumed publication Keown said, "It would be hard to imagine [.the speeches] spoken more beautifully, or with bet ter understanding," and Trewin, not unpredictably, referred to a "protean performance of splendour"; August 12, p. 26, and August 15, p. 32, respectively. 255 reluctantly favorable, and one reluctantly unfavorable. Of the total seventeen, nine were clearly favorable. The following discussion was based largely upon the 1959 re views, and whenever the 1960 data have been used in computa tions such use is stated explicitly. The London reviews of this production do not lend themselves to the practice,followed elsewhere in the present study, of prefacing the detailed discussion with a sort of overview compiled from short illustrative quotations. If the quintessence had to be found, it might best be phrased as, "Hurrah! but . . . ," where the magnitude of what was left unsaid could cancel the stated verdict. To an unusual degree the critical opinion of The Ages of Man was obscured by gratuitous comment, odd juxtapositions, displays of hauteur, and other seeming irrelevancy; so that the context became especially important. Alan Pryce-Jones, for example, turned from a review of Olivier's Coriolanus thus: There can be no proper comparison between this lusty, eager piece of straight theatre and Sir John Gielgud's Arranged approximately in order of decreasing en thusiasm: Bernard Levin, Exp., April 14, 1960, p. 4; R. B. M. Qarriott?3, "Shakespeare Purified," Guard., April 16, p. 3; R. A. H., "Gielgud's Ease in Many Roles," Tele., April 14, p. 14; Irving Wardle, Obs., April 17, p. 23; T. W., "A Taste of Shakespeare," Mail, April 14, p. 3; J. C. Trewin, I. L. N., April 30, p. 748; Qn.s.], "Sir John Gielgud Handi capped : Two-Hour Recital Given with a Cold," Times, April 14, p. 15. 256 lonely appearance on the stage of the Queen's Theatre, wearing a dinner-jacket, and turning, from time to time, the pages of a neat little lectern. To try it would be like comparing a Rodin with a Giacometti. And yet it was impossible, while listening to Sir John's beauti fully modulated solo, not to wonder how a similar even ing might have fared in the hands of Sir Laurence. The leading question and the gratuitous reference to a "neat little" lectern have at very least diminished the persuasive force of "beautifully modulated solo." He continued: And yet there was never any doubt of Sir John's suc cess. Even after two hours of concentrated attention, there was not a stir in the house. There was not even the feeling that there is something inappropriate in putting poetry chiefly dramatic to so lyric a purpose. Without forcing his voice, Sir John managed to bring every kind of cadence into it. He was born— he grew up, and he died under our eyes. He was even funny, although perhaps a second programme might perhaps contain more of Shakespeare's humor and less of his speculative pessi mism.^' This review was classified above as "reluctantly favorable," in that the actual details spell out a considerable achieve ment but the tone throughout is cold if not disparaging. In the most nearly hostile of the reviews Milton Shulman said that "the evening is likely to appeal to those with a Read er's Digest approach to culture," and that "with a growing interest in this type of Victorian recital," it would be un doubtedly successful. He referred to the "grandiloquent" 58 title, ° and then ventured into Shakespearean criticism: ^ Obs., July 12, p. 10. Italics added. 58 Actually he said it had been "grandiloquently as sembled under the title".; perhaps his reference to the abun dance of "deliciously witty speeches" should be considered 257 I wish, too that Gielgud . . . had sprinkled his scrapbook with more of the deliciously witty speeches that abound in the comedies. The blunder was hardly necessary to expose his pretense; but it may give rise to the suspicion that the main difference between his tone-— "unfavorable"— and Darlington's— "moder ately favorable"— lay not so much in any disagreement about the performance as in Darlington's somewhat greater sophis tication. Darlington mentioned the Queen's and the fact that Gielgud had earned the ovation given him; then he pro- Having said that, I find myself critically at a standstill. This reading . . . has been seen and praised by me before at Edinburgh Festival. It has toured America with enormous success, and must have come as an eye-opener to the many playgoers there whose ex perience of Shakespeare is rudimentary. To us it is an exhibition of jewels largely familiar, strung together with a minimum of explanation and a maximum of s! who has not seen it As this performance was, so far as could be determined, only its fourth in Britain, the reference in an opening night re view to "everybody who has not seen it" seems disingenuous. He continued immediately: But while I am on the subject might I suggest that there might be another exhibition, a companion or alter native to this one, of jewels less familiar? ceeded: should rush I have always wanted to hear, for instance, what a not so much pretentiousness as loose writing. 59 The praise of the Edinburgh performance could not be found in the probable issues of the Telegraph. 258 great actor could make of that remarkable thumb-nail character Barnardine in "Measure for Measure," the scoundrel who refuses to be hanged so stoutly that the prison authorities hang somebody else instead.60 Such an ending may of course be merely a cheerful irrele vancy, but in a context that twice raises the issue of "the familiar" it does not appear so artless. These lengthy quo tations— the Observer and Telegraph reviews have been given almost complete— may illustrate a difficulty posed with un usual frequency in the assessment of this production: the weighing of details which appeared in ambiguous or reserved or unfavorable contexts, but which, removed from those con texts— and especially when combined with discrete details from other reviews— are not only favorable but informative. Two of these three reviews, for example, proposed a further recital and the third predicted great success; in context they may imply that Sir John would be better occupied with something else. Some of the adverse criticism was explicit enough. Shulman said Gielgud was "using his mellifluous and punc- tillious voice like some genteel strainer," so that "char acters inevitably play a second place to verbalf sic 1 man- 60 Perhaps the suspicion that this is mere pose would be allayed by a more intensive study of Measure for Measure IV, iii, 22-65, than was possible in the present investiga- tion. But there would remain some implication within his suggesting an alternative program "while . . . on the sub ject" of rushing to this one, and within his early reference to American inexperience as a factor in Gielgud's success. 259 nerisms and if the speaker's name were not told to us in advance we would be hard put to it to guess whether a speech belonged to Polonius, Othello or Julius Caesar." Alvarez was less blunt: It was a magnificent technical tour de force. Yet it was, at the same time, curiously unaltering. The Gielgud voice is always the Gielgud voice, no matter whether the man who produces it is supposed to be Hot spur or Leontes, Oberon or Angelo. There is always the same lengthening of the open vowels and nasals, the same faint tremolo on the stressed word, a quiver that is not so much excess of feeling as an unvarying trick of speech. Gielgud remains Gielgud, no matter what. Alvarez attacked too the "ineffectual stage presence" and 61 the "pettish gesture." In 1960 the Mail echoed Shulman's earlier complaint about the brevity of the selections: "Magnificent [certainly]— but the evening is all sips, with the quality and the frustration of a wordy wine-tasting." In 1959 the Guardian agreed with the Observer that the con nective links were too short: "One thought of the over- zealous disk-jockey, though seldom." The Times, elaborating upon this point, reversed the process of damning with faint praise: If there is any serious criticism to be made of the recital, it is that it picks but nothing but the best. This imposes a certain strain on the audience .... Sir John Gielgud tries to arrange for resting points . . . by introducing sonnets, but since he always picks out the best sonnets, it may be questioned whether they ^Kitchin, op. cit., pp. 38, 55., offers an excited rebuttal of this last charge and the further one that Giel gud treated Shakespeare as merely "verbal magic." 260 really gave our responsiveness a fair chance to recover its freshness. But if the audience is conscious of strain no sense of strain appears in Sir John Gielgud. He is as fresh at the end of the recital as he was at the beginning. And the Sunday Times took this speed as one of the major attractions, in that Gielgud appeared "on one summit of Shakespeare's verse after another, without ever descending to the intervening valleys." Objections to the familiarity of the material, im plicit in Darlington and Shulman, were not shared by other reviewers. Levin denied that it was a disadvantage: Even the most familiar lines . . . spring fresh and meaningful from this great actor's reading, and rub home the truth that there are no hackneyed lines in Shakespeare, only hackneyed audiences. 2 The Times found the familiarity of the selections a positive advantage: Many of the speeches . . . he has already spoken in character on the stage, and it is fascinating to notice which are obviously his favourites and to hear him treat them as solo pieces to which he can give his undivided attention. Criticism of the material on grounds other than brevity, familiarity or concentration was favorable. Criticism of the performance of individual items was usually favorable. Levin wrote two reviews in this vein: Is there anything more beautiful— sadly, hauntingly beautiful— than Clarence's Dream spoken by Sir John Gielgud? ^ Exp., July 9, p. 4; see too April 14, 1960, p. 4. 261 Is there anything more intensely dramatic, more bit ter and fanatic, than Cassius's denunciation of Caesar delivered by this great artist?63 Hobson offered a summary like this: His first great hit is with the Queen Mab speech; his second with Benedick's commentary on what is pleasing in women; his most characteristic, at least of his early manner, Clarence's terror-stricken dream; his finest, his selection from "Richard II." This is the great pearl that Sir John . . . offers us, . . . that enormous threat of kings about "armes of pestilence" which is the sole, high, silver-trumpet note of our twentieth cen tury stage. The Times and the 1960 Guardian reviews contained other lists of favorites; but perhaps the most detailed criticism came from Hope-Wallace: I find it hard to think that any other actor living could so deliver Clarence's dream speach: this was like great singing, not to be analysed paradoxically in words. But it is quite possible to like some of the choices better than others and opinions will vary on the wisdom of, say, doing Lear's death out of context and out of costume. Two dubious successes, it seemed to me, were Othello before the senators and, though the. audience was stirred, John o' Gaunt's celebrated lament for England. On the other hand, such diverse things as Mercutio's Queen Mab speech, Henry the Sixth envying the fustic [sic] swain after Towton Field, the mirror speech from Richard II and Cassius with Brutus were wonderfully done, as were three speeches of Hamlet and three of Prospero. The speeches he selected for praise were those generally praised. The Lear scene, which he questioned and which Al varez and Shulman condemned as "distracting," was mentioned in passing by three others, and briefly praised in two more. In 1960 the Guardian praised it as "moving us to horror and 63Exp., April 14, p. 4. 262 tears," and the Telegraph in 1960 commented thus: We were confounded . . .by the ease with which he assumed each new part to the full, from Romeo's first sight of Juliet to the great climax of Lear's death scene, with its unearthly h o w l.64 Hence eight of the entire seventeen reviews mentioned the Lear scene, two favorably and three adversely. Except for Hope-Wallace's misgivings about the Othello and Gaunt pas sages, the Times' 1960 reference to Richard II when played with a cold, and the examples cited by Alverez and Shulman to support their generalized strictures, there were no ad verse comments about any other specific scenes. Implicit in many of the foregoing there are, of course, assessments of the characterization; but perhaps enough have been cited to discourage the inference that the general endorsement of the individual scenes meant a general approval of the characterization. Findlater, it is true, said that Gielgud "is by turns Lear, and Prospero, and Ham let, and many more"; Trewin in a belated notice affixed his label "protean"; the Telegraph in 1960 referred to the as sumption of "each new part to the full"; and Levin, the most enthusiastic of all, said that Gielgud "not only peoples the 64 In an interview in the Times, July 31, 1959, p. 9, Gielgud was quoted thus: "The most successful part of my recital has been a hotch-potch of the last scene of King Lear." In all four performances seen by the present inves tigator in 1962 and 1963 Gielgud carried an invisible but slab-like Cordelia and gave a realistic animal howl on the line, "Howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones!" 263 stage, but fills our minds and imaginations with an incom parable intensity of understanding."®® But both Shulman and Alvarez claimed that the characters were lost in vocal man nerism, even though Alvarez began with the concession: The problems, of course, of a one-man poetry reading are very different £from those of Coriolanus ~ 1 . . . . The question of theatrical illusion is hardly here or there; instead, the interest is all in the artist's range and technical skill. In 1960 the Mail concluded its brief review thus: "It is Shakespeare; but Shakespeare at one exquisite, sensitive, dinner-jacketed, gold-ringed, remove." And Wardle summed up an equally brief review in the Observer: "Speeches of Leontes and Hotspur have emotional force; but the perfor mance is best taken as an awe-inspiring demonstration of scales and arpeggios." Perhaps the safest generalization here would be that references to specific scenes and speeches were usually favorable, but that the praise was directed at the beauty of the delivery rather than at the vividness of characterization. In rough summary, the production was censured or damned with faint praise on a number of grounds: the mate rial was too familiar; selections were too short, and Giel gud's mannerisms too pronounced, to permit of convincing characterization; the linking material was too short; the playing of emotional scenes out of context and out of cos 65Exp.. July 9, 1959, p. 4. 264 tume was distracting; there was not enough humor? the pro gram required too close attention. Such objections were often left to inference, especially in the tepid reviews. Most reviews praised the technical mastery. Seven of the seventeen offered lists of favorite characters and scenes— of which Richard II, the Queen Mab speech, Cassius, Leontes and the Hamlet soliloquies were perhaps most often mentioned. Two other reviews, in the Standard and New Statesman, gave lists of ineffective scenes, # but both praised the mirror speech of Richard II. There was a hint of condescension in several of the reviews. Although the program was widely conceded to be a technical tour de force, the details of its technique re ceived somewhat less attention than had those of similar programs in the past. There were at least eight references to Gielgud's dinner jacket in the seventeen reviews? one of them was a sneer: "Shakespeare at one exquisite, sensitive, dinner-jacketed, gold-ringed, remove." Two reviews men tioned his appearing without toupee. Hope-Wallace alluded briefly to gesture: "[.He] makes some play with a book-rest, a volume, and the occasional informal nose-scratching." Alvarez attacked it: "The language seemed undercut by his angular, almost pettish movements." In 1960 the Mail said, "his eyes sweep the theatre like an eagle searching out prey"? and the Observer noted: NO one else combines such clarity with such pace, 265 and the physical demands they make on the rest of the body are fascinating to watch— the effect of tone on facial expression, the statuesque displacement of space.66 But aside from descriptions of the reading-stand, to be con sidered later, the discussion of method was concerned chief ly with voice. This preoccupation was not entirely uninvited. The programme at the Queen's in 1959 carried a two-page "arti cle" by George Rylands, elaborating on Granville-Barker's % comment about the supremacy of the human voice as a musical instrument? it said in part: How important then it is to listen to the leading Shakespearean actor of the day, a non-pareil of verse- speaking on the Shakespearean stage. We delight so in- defatigably in Shakespeare's "characters" that we forget he was, first and last, a poet? and that the poets . . . write for the voice and ear. The classic stage of Ath ens and France almost dispensed with spectacle and thus permitted the utterance of the human voice, the perfect instrument, to come into its own. Yet Shakespeare is a far more varied, idiomatic, intuitive virtuoso in words than Sophocles or Racine. We can appreciate his diversity by listening to a varied programme recited by the leading Shakespearean actor of our time who also cares sensitively and pro- The verbalistic displacement of sense is less interesting— even as an example of the pretentiousness the program elicited— than the effect ascribed to tone. Did the controlling of tone distort the facial expression that should have accompanied it? (Cf. the Times' account of his over compensating a cold.) Or is it implied rather that the voice is properly the agent of expression in a recital, and that Gielgud's facial expression was an involuntary accom paniment? (Cf. letting the words speak for themselves.) 266 foundly for English poetry.6^ Invited or no, much of the highest praise for the perfor mance was accorded his voice. Hobson's reference to the "sole, high, silver-trumpet note of our twentieth century stage" has been cited above, as has Pryce-Jones's claim that he managed every kind of cadence without forcing; too, Hope-Wallace said that one speech was "like great singing, not to be analysed paradoxically in words." Levin devoted most of his two reviews to voice; in 1959 he said: To begin with, Sir John Gielgud's is the most beau tiful and musical voice in the English theatre. The famous vibrato, quivering over half an octave at the end of a line, is his especial device, but it is never used— as Sir Laurence on Tuesday [in Coriolanus ] too often used his own repertoire of effects— simply as decoration. This, like the absolute perfection of his diction (no actor makes his final consonants sound like Sir John Gielgud), is used entirely in Shakespeare's service, to illumine and enrich his author's meaning. And in 1960 he said at one point, "To be able to make music like this is enough." Alvarez' case, quoted in part above, was almost the mirror image of Levin's: Gielgud, not Oli vier, used his tricks for decoration; the tremolo was faint, unvaried, and employed on the stressed word; he treated the poetry as "verbal magic," and not, as did Olivier, "as the 67 MS Enthoven Collection. The article is almost certainly the same as the "appreciation" in Playbill (Lyceum Theatre, New York), April 15, 1963, pp. 26-29. 267 expression of the most profound human insights of the great est writer in any language."68 Further, the voice, "like Galli-Curci's, . . . seems almost disembodied," in that it accorded with his 1 1 strangely ineffectual stage presence" only in the roles of Benedick, Richard II or Hamlet. Shul- man's view, that the voice had been used as a "genteel strainer," has been cited above. The Telegraph said in 1960 that on the contrary he was never guilty of "soaring grace fully from cadence to cadence, one-third of the mind on the meaning . . . and the rest occupied in admiration." The Times offered a special analysis, noting that for his open- 69 mg at the Haymarket he was suffering from a cold, and that as a consequence: He was anticipating some of his effects, and was, so to speak, striking a note prematurely to make sure that on this occasion he could reach it, as he is accustomed to do as a matter of course on normal occasions. The effect of the anticipation . . . was to alter and transpose his own particular rhythm in . . . certain speeches, like those of Richard II. It was then as if we were listening to the echo, rather than to the origi nal sound of the actor's voice .... [LaterU the "echo" was practically silenced. The voice, that is, had recovered its cutting edge. The metaphor does not indicate clearly whether the fault lay in vocal quality or in centering and phrasing. In all, twelve of the seventeen reviews commented upon Gielgud's 68 See above, p. 251. 69 Cf. John Moynihan, "In London Last Night," Stand., April 15, p. 14. 268 voice, ten of them favorably. There was some analysis of the centering of certain lines. The Times' 1960 review, cited immediately above, proceeded to a discussion of three words and phrases in the speeches of Cassius and of Richard II, and concluded: And to hear Sir John say "the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals," is to realize, perhaps for the first time, how the two nouns strike a balance in each part of Hamlet's sentence. At the same time the most enthusiastic of the reviewers, Bernard Levin, delivered himself of this: It will, I trust, be generally agreed that the love liest couplet in all Shakespeare is Oberon's:- "And the imperial votaress passed on In maiden meditation, fancy-free." But the "votaress" is not a female elector, she is a priestess and the correct way to pronounce the first of those two unsurpassable lines is to make both "votaress" and "passed" into words of two syllables. This is not hair-splitting, and it is not a trifle. As Sir John says the line now, it sounds ugly. And ugliness is the one thing that is to be found nowhere else in his great gallery of passion, humour, pity, terror and— above all— beauty. 7 0 0, reform it altogether! Perhaps surprisingly inasmuch as Olivier had opened the pre vious night, the 1959 reviews offered no further comparison 70 Exp., April 14, 1960, p. 4. His beginning was matched, perhaps, by his claim that "Leontes1 great outburst Cis] . . . surely a greater study of jealousy even than Othello," Exp., July 9, 1959, p. 4. And see his review of A Lovely Light, below, p. 278. 269 of Gielgud's architectural sense with Olivier's sense of the crucial, as there had been in the Edinburgh reviews.^ The Times did refer to his "sense of the architectural quality of a verse," and Levin claimed that for Gielgud "there are no unimportant words; every 'and,' every 'the' is fully and properly stressed into its place in the sentence." But only three critics compared Olivier's performance with Gielgud's: Pryce-Jones and Alvarez implicitly chose the former and Levin explicitly chose the latter. The uniqueness ascribed to The Ages of Man may have been influenced by some of the peculiar circumstances of its opening at the Queen's in 1959, but little evidence was found to support or contest the possibility. Four reviews devoted considerable space to the Queen's, so that their references to "a miracle" and "something wonderful" became ambiguous. Five referred to the production's American suc cess— one patronizingly; but many other factors may have precluded surprise. For whatever reasons, the first hints of surprise came in 1960, when the Telegraph was "astounded" by the virtuosity and the Observer found it "awe-inspiring." And the only such reference that was clearly not stylistic came in the Guardian: The effect of the recital is not as strong on a second visit. The element of complete surprise has gone that accompanied the realisation that a man alone could 7 1 See above, p. 251. 270 indeed hold us for two hours with snippets from the plays and a handful of sonnets.72 In 1959 Shulman referred to "a growing interest in this type of Victorian recital." Although Darlington twice called the production a reading, six other reviewers indicated that the book was only a prop. The Mail, for example, said he crossed "to a small table to turn only an odd token page of his script," and the Times said: The speeches and sonnets . . . are spoken from mem ory. A big book stands on a round table, and the actor periodically makes a pretense of turning its pages, but he himself stands at some distance from the table and, alone on a stage hung with crimson curtains, passes with a few words of introduction from one famous speech to another. ^ This "round table" was described variously as a "rostrum," a "reading desk," a "reading stand," and "a neat little lec tern." Perhaps more important, though, is that only six of seventeen reviews saw fit to mention it at all. The term most often applied to the production was 72 The piece was signed "R. B. M."— the way Marriott often signs articles in The Stage. Cf. his discussion, Appendix. 73 No one suggested that the reading stand was redun dant; but in 1962 and 1963 the present investigator noted the Gielgud's usual preface, whether he consulted the book or not, was to clutch the curtain behind him, by way of gathering his forces, and then trip briskly forward in the character he had taken such public pains to assume. To the present investigator, either the clutching or the page turn ing was misleading. 271 "recital"— in seven of the Queen's reviews and three of the Haymarket. Two of the former called it a "solo" recital, Alvarez called it a "poetry recital," and Shulman called it "Victorian." Darlington called it a "Shakespearean reading" and simply a reading; Levin said it was a "gallery of per formances," but he also used "interpretations" and "read ings"— both in the sense of "versions"— and finally "act ing," in a reference to those who care for "the English lan guage, or verbal beauty, of acting." It may be coincidence that the only reviews which predicted any future for the method were hostile or reluc tantly favorable. Shulman predicted large and appreciative audiences because of "a growing interest in this type of Victorian recital"— but offered no other examples of the type. Pryce-Jones and Darlington proposed an alternative recital that contained more humor or more of the unfamiliar. The silence of the others may have been conditioned by the variety of Gielgud's activity at the time: he had directed five plays and appeared in two others; considering his repu tation for experiment in classical productions, there might seem no reason for taking this recital as a harbinger. In deed, the Guardian took it as evidence that he could still play Hamlet. For whatever reason, Gielgud was not thought, as Williams had been thought in 1951, to have discovered a new career for himself— and this despite the retrospective tone of some of the criticism, and despite the fact that his 272 most recent roles, Prospero and Wolsey, might have suggested he was past his prime. In summary, the London reviews of The Ages of Man were generally favorable but reserved. Two were clearly un favorable, and three— two of them by the same reviewer— were clearly enthusiastic; but the other twelve that were encoun tered in the present study were inclined to treat the show as a virtuoso display of verse-speaking and as an opportuni ty to listen to one of the two leading British actors play some of his most famous roles again. Criticism of indivi dual scenes and speeches was almost always favorable— and frequently retrospective— but the praise was usually direc ted at the beauty of the delivery rather than at the vivid ness of characterization. By and large this was considered closer to a poetry reading than to a 'dramatic performance. Adverse criticism was as likely to be left to in ference as to be stated openly, and it concerned such mat ters as these; the familiarity and brevity of the excerpts, the abruptness of the transitions, the scarcity of humor, and the intense concentration it required of the audience. The unfavorable reviews attacked Gielgud's vocal mannerisms; but twelve of the total seventeen commented upon the beauty of his voice, nine of them in detail and ten of them favor ably. Although three reviews compared him to Olivier, one of them speculating about Olivier's approach to such a re cital, there was almost no indication that Gielgud's method 273 offered any promise for other actors— or indeed for Gielgud himself. One critic saw a growing interest in such recitals, and comparatively few others thought it necessary to des cribe the method in detail; beyond these slight hints,there was little evidence that The Ages of Man was seen as any thing but a display of Gielgud's unique talent. III. PORTRAITS OF WOMEN. 1958 The genesis of The Ages of Man— Arts Council, Apollo Society, Edinburgh Festival and eventually London— was par alleled to a surprising extent by a solo production that featured one of Gielgud's most frequent leading ladies, Dame Peggy Ashcroft. Apparently it never did get to‘the West End, however, and is reported here as indirect evidence of the success of Gielgud's method. On October 30, 1957, fifteen months after Gielgud had appeared there, Dame Peggy presented a solo program called Aspects of Women at the Arts Council. The Times was no better satisfied with her than it had been with Gielgud: A distinguished actress reading poetry has problems not encountered on the stage. She must avoid establish ing a too direct relationship, reminiscent of cabaret, with an audience deprived of dramatic illusion: and she must be ready to identify herself with literary atti tudes remote from dramatic action. As founder of the Apollo Society, Dame Peggy Ashcroft . . . is exception ally experienced in this difficult undertaking. Her dramatic art, too brittle for high comedy, and too personal for tragedy, is naturalistic and lyrical, and her choice of poems . . . by authors ranging from Chaucer to Mr. John Betjeman, wisely avoided rhetorical 274 effects outside her range. Here, one expected, would be a virtuoso expression of subtle nuances, lit up when the chance arose by theatrical resources .... However [she] evaded the danger of exhibitionism by effacing her personality .... One was left with a voice, and a voice so earnestly devoted to conveying literal meaning that even . . . ironic changes of tone . . . were missed. Adding that only in "The Wife of Bath's Prologue" she "threw away austerity," it concluded: The naturalistic reading of poetry, like the geo metrical abstract painting of the thirties, has already served its purpose and need no longer restrain a mature talent.74 The following year the production, now called Por traits of Women, was listed with the major productions at the Edinburgh Festival.^ It was offered at the Royal Ly- 7 €\ ceum Theatre on Tuesday afternoon, September 9, 1958. Both of the reviews encountered were favorable, perhaps en thusiastic. Eric Keown called it "certainly one of the high lights of the whole Festival," and praised it as being so informal that "Dame Peggy's spectacles were on the table beside her; it was as if, after dinner in a friend's draw ing-room, we had persuaded her to entertain us." He sus ^October 31, 1957, p. 3. 75 Among the others were Eliot's The Elder Statesman, O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night. Schiller's Maria Stuart, and "ballets by the dozen"; Times, March 3, 1958, p. 3. 76 The program included: "Barbara Allen," "The Brown Girl," "She is Like a Swallow," "The Cherry-Tree Carol," Roy Campbell's "The Zulu Girl," Lawrence's "The Collier's Wife," Hardy's "A Trampwoman's Tragedy," and part of the "Wyf of Bath's Prologue," Othello V, Pope's "Epistle to Martha 275 pected that the Wife of Bath may have "shaken the Edinburgh matrons a little," but concluded: Dame Peggy reads beautifully and very naturally, every word clear and every meaning made exact by per fect timing and inflection. A. V. Coton, writing in the Telegraph, said the Wife of Bath "was the most uproarious and enjoyable piece of verse- speaking heard on a British stage for a long time." The program was too brief to reveal more than a "few facets of the female personality," but "each portrait was flawlessly cut and most flashed with the true fire." The women thus evoked were "in lyrical, satiric, dramatic, and sometimes fairly pedestrian situations." Coton too praised the deli very: Dame Peggy was in heroic voice, the whole-sized syl lables sustaining the reverberant vowels and unequivocal consonants so that every shade of every part of utter ance made effect. Apparently Dame Peggy, like Sir John before her, took pains to avoid the criticism leveled at the Arts Council recital. Although J. C. Trewin said he was going to see this "collection of promise,he did not review it. The fol- Blount," Donna Julia's letter from Don Juan, and the Lily Small and Polly Garter sections of Under Milk Wood. Pro gramme, MS Enthoven. ^Eric Keown, Punch, September 17, 1958, p. 380. 78 Tele., September 10, 1958, p. 10. 79 ' I.L.N., September 6, p. 398. 276 lowing day Dame Edith Evans and Christopher Hassall gave a standard new-style Apollo Society concert and received a an mixed review in the Telegraph; b u t there was no further reference to the previous show. Portraits of Women was presented by the Apollo Soci ety at Claydon House in Buckinghamshire on July 10, 1960, at Croydon on January 24, 1961, at Rosehill, Cumberland, in 81 May and at Dyrham Park, Bath, on July 8, 1961. It seems not to have been performed in London at all; nor was evi dence found of plans to bring it there. IV. A LOVELY LIGHT, 1960 On June 9, 1960, eleven months after The Ages of Man opened at the Queen's, the American actress Dorothy Stickney brought to the Globe her solo dramatization of the poems and letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay, A Lovely Light, in which she had recently triumphed at the Hudson Theatre in New 82 York. The Globe (907 seats) was where Williams had played Dylan Thomas Growing Up; Miss Stickney planned a limited run 80 September 12, p. 10. ^Programmes and announcements, MSS Apollo files. 82 "What the Critics Say," New York World-Telegram, February 9, 1960, p. 22; New York Theatre Critics' Reviews, Vol. 21 (1960), pp. 373-76. 277 of two and one-half weeks,® 3 b u t closed after ten d a y s . ® ^ None of the eight reviews encountered was favor- Q C able. 3 Darlington reported that he "left the Globe . . . rather tepid about Miss Millay, but full of warmth about Miss Stickney." The Times concurred: "It is not, one feels, unjust to give the glory to the player rather than her poet." The Guardian thought her "unilateral achievement" remark able, in that she could "awaken our interest in this wri ter." Hobson was even more noncommittal than Trewin's "some will have been glad to have heard these poems . . . and to have observed Miss Stickney's poise and feeling." The Ob server ended a short review: "She is never embarrassing, but she looks very lonely." Peter Lewis put the case as favorably as anyone in the completely popular press: [Millay] died ten years ago after a quiet, unremark able life. Apart from a few poems in some of the an thologies her work is little known in England. 83 Announcements, Tele., April 20, 1960, p. 14? Times. April 22, p. 18. 84 Theatre advertisements, Times, June 18, p. 2. QC Bernard Levin, "It's Only Fair that I Should Say/ That After an Hour I Stole Away," Exp., June 10, p. 11; Peter Lewis, "It Ought to Be Read in Silence," Mail, June 10, p. 3? W. A. Darlington, "Dramatising Unfamiliar Poetry: Ac tress's Charm," Tele., June 10, p. 16; Milton Shulman, "Homespun Americana— It's Out of Place on a London Stage," Stand., June 10, p. 17; Norman Shrapnel, Guard., June 13, p. 7; J. C. Trewin, I. L. N., June 25, p. 1136; Irving War- dle, Obs., June 12, p. 24; Qn.s.J, "Personality of a Poet: Player's Fine Solo Performance," Times. June 10, p. 4. Har old Hobson gave it a two-line mention, Sun. T., June 12, p. 35. 278 It is a strange, almost foolhardy thing, therefore, to put on the stage a dramatisation of her poems and letters lasting two and a half hours. It is also remarkable that the American actress Dorothy Stickney, who gives a one-woman performance with the aid only of a desk and an armchair, can sustain such an evening. Milton Shulman ventured rather further into mathematics and agriculture: There seems to be a limitless flow of American act resses eager to prove their ability to hold a large audience single-handed. Treading in the footsteps of the late Ruth Draper and Cornelia Otis Skinner comes Miss Dorothy Stickney. It is a long time since I have been so knee-deep in such lush New England corn. After a good deal of sneering at Millay— none of it clearly on target— he concluded that the performance was appropriate to "the Grand Rapids Branch of the Daughters of the American Revolution." Bernard Levin, who had been the most enthusi astic of Gielgud's critics, began like this: The verse of Edna St. Vincent Millay Strikes me as dull and rather sillay, Devoid of true poetic feeling And very speedily congealing. (What's that? I'm sorry, I thought you'd know: American— died ten years ago.) She wrote of sorrow and love's sweet pain Again and again and again and again; (Though it's only fair that I should say That after an hour I stole away. Still, I sat it through for one whole act And I dare any man to say I slacked: For George Jean Nathan, that great, good man, Once laid it down that the critic can 279 More profitably his evenings spend Than waiting for bad plays to end.) Hence, of the eight notices long enough to be called reviews none was clearly favorable, three were tepid or mixed, one was noncommittal, two unfavorable, and two might be classi fied as vicious. One of the major weaknesses, it seems clear from five of the reviews, was that Millay was unknown in London. Darlington generalized: When a theatrical tribute is paid to a literary per son, it is in my view important that a large part of the audience should be familiar with that literary person's works.86 Lewis expressed a corollary which might have been closer to the actual case than the widespread charge that she was too sentimental: "She wrote light, bright, and very often slight lyrics of the kind that England's poetry, if not an America's, has always possessed in abundance." The Times gave the fullest description of what the Telegraph called "a perfectly beautiful performance": The performance itself is delightful; Miss Stickney 86 There was an attempt to repair the omission in a long interview, "Mainly for Women," Sun. T., June 12, p. 34. It concluded: "I meant in fact to talk about Miss Stickney and instead I seem to have talked about Edna St. Vincent Millay. But somehow, I am sure, Miss Stickney will under stand." 87 The other perceptive comment was Wardle's, about "the writer's alternate personae of female Byron and hearty comrade: [but} the woman remains inviolably concealed be hind the attitudes"; Obs., June 12, p. 24. 280 openly dramatizes what she reads, moves freely about the black-curtained stage from grey desk to red couch (upon which she sits tensely, relaxes happily and in moods of contentment curls up.) She seizes every opportunity for unashamed acting, triumphantly becomes the poet choosing a work to shock an unappreciative audience at a reading and makes her way slowly upstairs— as it were— after the poet has scribbled her last words, a note to her daily help. It praised her "moving sense of identity with her author," and her aging "with nothing but an almost over-complex use of lighting to help her." The Guardian and the Sunday Times agreed that the performance was at least impressive; but the Observer said she offered "reverence and not much else," and Lewis said she lacked vocal variety and tended "sometimes to read to us as though we were children." Levin used a lot of doggerel to deny her dramatic ability, and Shulman agreed: Miss Stickney, reading in a twangy monotone, crink les her nose to indicate youth and exube ranee and lifts her chin and addresses an upper left-hand box when she is being radiant and profound. About Miss Stickney's performance, then, one review was en thusiastic, two were favorable, one mixed, one noncommittal, one unfavorable, and two hostile. In summary, Dorothy Stickney's A Lovely Light did not finish its limited run; the reviews ranged from sympa thetic and mixed to vicious. Much of the fault was imputed to the author's sentimentality and lack of variety; but Miss Stickney's performance was satisfactory to only half of the reviewers encountered here. She was criticized adversely 2 8 1 for a lack of variety in voice and expression? but the Times and Telegraph praised her dramatizing her readings. The Telegraph said explicitly what other reviews hinted: that to succeed in the theatre a presentation of literature had to use familiar material. Although no one said so, the amount of space devoted to introducing Miss Stickney sug gests that the performer had to be well-known too. IV. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS Record was found of sixty-six productions of poetry reading by professional readers and actors along the London theatrical fringe during the years 1955 to 1960. This total included thirty-six Apollo Society concerts at Royal Fes tival Hall and two at the Old Vic, but none of the concerts at Edinburgh or in other parts of the country. Other shows which had, apparently, one-week runs at theatre clubs were here counted as one production each: A Book of Ballads at the Hovenden and Lyra Musica at the Arts. Record was found of three other single performances in theatre clubs, two at the Arts Council, and twenty-one at Royal Festival Hall. Of this last twenty-one, five were recitals by Richard Mor ris, two by Martin Starkie, three by Beatrix Lehmann and Richard Ainley, three by Sylvia Read and William Fry, one by Hedli Anderson, and seven by various readers as part of a memorial series to a drama coach named Bertie Scott. Programmes of the Apollo Society indicated a shift 282 from the almost completely lyrical toward a greater variety of literary types: long sections of narrative poetry, and sometimes complete long poems, were used after 1956; Shake speare recitals were offered in 1956 by Gielgud and in 1958 by Irene Worth and George Rylands; letters and excerpts from prose drama were used in 1960; and from the middle of 1958 an otherwise conventional lyric concert might include ex cerpts from poetic drama. A program of narrative poetry in 1959 included Enoch Arden arranged as melodrama and recited to piano accompaniment; and in 1960 there was a special con cert consisting of a group reading of Beerbohm's "Savonarola Brown." Although the greatest number of selections still came from lyric poetry, this tendency toward dramatic mate rial was clear. Material used in other recitals was almost equally varied. Besides the self-explanatory A Book of Ballads, a program of Negro poetry and another of Brecht's lyrical po etry were offered in theatre clubs; Lyra Musica was a col lection of familiar poetry and prose recited to musical ac companiment. At Festival Hall the readers inclined towards series of semiannual concerts each with a title similar to that of the previous item in the series: Morris' series, "Tribute to Byron," "The Magic of Keats," "The Splendour of Shelley" is a case in point. The Bertie Scott memorial con certs, however, used a very wide variety of material— espec ially foreign poetry, drama criticism, letters and scenes * 283 from drama. The Read-Fry series appears to have been almost as far-ranging and as frequently dramatized. The continuity implied by so many series would in dicate that poetry readings by professional actors was an established form of theatrical entertainment during the lat ter part of the decade. The supposition is strengthened by the number of producing agencies that booked these artists into Festival Hall and the clubs* The British Council spon sored at least six tours abroad for poetry readers and dra matic recitalists in the period 1957-59; presumably such performances were regarded semi-officially as ways of cemen ting cultural relations and foreign ties. And one program, Lyra Musica, was listed in Stage Year Book's "Review of the Year" as one of the outstanding productions of 1957. However, such evidence cannot be pushed very far without encountering contrary data. The totals cited above were considered nowise complete, because the design of this study did not include semi-public literary organizations such as the Poetry Society, which often gave concerts in their clubrooms, nor the many small gatherings to hear poets read from their own recent work; nevertheless, some infer ence may be drawn from the fact that a search of the pro grammes of theatres, theatre clubs and the Apollo Society, and a survey of the weekly advertisements posted by the re cital halls, yielded a six-year average of eleven recitals per year. Most of these concerts were held in a room that 284 accommodated two hundred but could be expanded to take three hundred and fifty. Assuming, in the face of explicit evi dence to the contrary, that all of these shows— including a week's run for Lyra Musica and A Book of Ballads— had had full houses, they would have drawn a yearly average of forty- three hundred people, or less than a week's capacity house in the average West End theatre. Perhaps significant too was the number of reviews which these sixty-six programs in spired in the part of the theatrical and popular press con sulted in the present study; sixty-six programs received a total of sixteen reviews. Thirty-eight Apollo Society con- OQ certs in London got a total of five reviews; Lyra Musica got three, not including the Stage Year Book puff; the seven Bertie Scott memorial concerts got a total of two, neither much more than announcements; and six other recitals were reviewed once each. None of these data can be taken at a high level of confidence: the study was not designed to fix limits, and quantitative data may reflect the design more than the situ ation. But with those cautions in mind, it might be pro visionally concluded that professional poetry reading was a minor but persistent form of entertainment along London's theatre fringe during the period 1955-60, and that although it seems not to have been influential, it may have helped to Q O The three reviews of Edinburgh concerts have been excluded here. 285 maintain the interest and the audience necessary to support the major productions during their limited runs in the West End. The data from such major productions were likewise inconclusive. Sir John Gielgud's The Ages of Man and Dame Peggy Ashcroft's Portraits of Women had similar beginnings, about a year apart: each gave a single performance at the Arts Council, in 1956 and 1957 respectively, and was ad versely criticized in the Times; each gave a single perfor mance at the Edinburgh Festival a year later and was ac claimed as one of the highlights of its particular Festival; each was praised in Edinburgh for elements almost the com plete opposite of those chosen for censure at the Arts Coun- 89 cil. Portraits of Women did not go to London; The Ages of Man opened in London after a highly successful American tour, and in the ceremonial context of opening the first new West End theatre in twenty-eight years. It was successful enough in its limited run that it reopened for a further three-week season at the Haymarket in the spring of 1960. But in the summer of 1960 when Dorothy Stickney brought her New York success, A Lovely Light, to the West End she got a poor press and did not finish her limited run. The reviews of The Ages of Man were generally 89 Portraits of Women may even have gone abroad, as did The Ages of Man; see BC Report 1958, p. 97. 286 favorable but reserved. Three reviews— two by the same re viewer— were enthusiastic and two were adverse. The remain ing twelve were inclined to view it as a virtuoso display of verse-speaking, or perhaps as a montage of Sir John's Shake spearean career, and to accord it their rather reluctant ad miration. Criticism of individual scenes and speeches was almost always favorable, and almost always concerned with the beauty of the delivery. Some comment was put in terms of the roles played, but there was little specific praise of characterization. Quite clearly the program was consid ered to be nearer a conventional poetry reading than a drama tic recital. None of the London critics echoed their erstwhile colleague, Kenneth Tynan, who had said in New York that this was one of the best things Sir John had done.90 Nor was there reason to suppose that any, save possibly Bernard Levin, could have endorsed such a view. Two critics, both cool toward the show, suggested the possibility of a further recital. The most hostile of the reviewers saw it as part of a trend toward "Victorian" recitals; but inasmuch as he also saw in Ruth Draper, Cornelia Otis Skinner and Dorothy . Stickney a "limitless flow" of American soloists, he may have been inclined to extrapolate heavily. The majority of 90 The New Yorker, January 10, 1959, p. 68; Curtains: Selections from the Drama Criticism and Related Writings (London: Longmans, Green and Co., Ltd., 1961), p. 228. 287 the critics seem to have taken The Ages of Man as yet one more of Sir John's classical experiments, sufficient unto itself, and with no implications for the next production. The eight London reviews of Miss Stickney's Millay program ranged from the sympathetic to the vicious, with none favorable, and about half unfavorable. Her perforance was rated higher than the end result: about half were fa- 91 vorable to enthusiastic. . She was criticized for a lack of vocal variety, and for having chosen an unknown and senti mental author. The Times and Telegraph praised her drama tizing her readings— a rather unusual reaction to such a treatment of verse in Britain. But perhaps the clearest in ference drawn by the reviewers was that a presentation of literature had to use familiar material in order to succeed in the theatre. One last observation may be in order. In almost none of the fifty-odd reviews cited in the present chapter was there any cross-reference to other programs. This may be particularly significant in the reviews of the major pro ductions. On two or three occasions during the development of The Ages of Man a critic speculated upon the possibility of Sir Laurence Olivier's offering a similar Shakespearean There was little correlation between those hostile to her and those hostile to Gielgud. She was attacked by the critic most enthusiastic about Gielgud and the one most hostile; her most enthusiastic review came from someone tepid toward Gielgud. 288 recital? but no one alluded to Dame Peggy's recital, Which may have been waiting in the wings, so to speak; nor did any compare the Stickney program with the Gielgud. There was no mention of Williams, except once in a Stickney inter view. The productions were hermetically sealed: and so Shulman's reference to a growing interest in Victorian re citals is almost completely canceled by R. B. M.'s surprise that one man could hold an audience with such a recital. The absence of such references to the development of a trend or a tradition is less easily explained than formerly by the critics' reluctance to make comparisons, perhaps invidious, between productions: Olivier and Gielgud were frequently compared during the entire postwar period, and perhaps even more often during the late fifties as their rivals fell away. On the basis of the data in this chapter, the conclusion seems more tenable that the outlines of the tradition had not yet emerged, and that The Ages of Man was seen largely as a recital peculiar to Sir John Gielgud. Its implications might extend to Olivier, but hardly any further. CHAPTER SEVEN SOLO PRODUCTIONS, 1955-1960, INCLUDING THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING OSCAR. 1960 The success of Emlyn Williams' Dylan Thomas Growing U£ in 1955, described in Chapter V above, might be expected to encourage solo productions, especially in the ostensibly experimental theatres on the fringe: his earlier Dickens readings might have been regarded as particularly talented or particularly lucky variants of the standard old music- hall Dickensian turn, and therefore not to be emulated by rising young actors impatient of tradition; but the Dylan Thomas program used contemporary literature, required no physical resemblance between author and actor, and pointed a way to the staging of almost any author whose work was suf ficiently dramatic. Indeed, the programme for the 1958 re vival, A Boy Growing Up, explicitly commended the method to the v . ’ orks of Wilde and Hugo. Ivor Brown, Who was quoted in Chapter V to the effect that Williams and Joyce Grenfell had proved "the sovereignty of the actor,saw a mixed advan tage in their method: If "singleton" performances can so well satisfy the public, the economic problems of the time are obviously eased. But these successes can hardly be viewed with unqualified pleasure by "the profession," members of a ■^See above, p. 224. 289 290 calling with a 40 per cent unemployment list.2 Unless that forty per cent were united enough to state its displeasure openly, however, the very size of the unemploy ment list might be supposed a factor to increase rather than diminish the number of solo attempts. The present chapter discusses the solo productions— impersonation, story-telling, monodrama, et cetera— that occurred in the period 1955-60. Its first section deals very briefly with two West End productions, Arthur Blake's impersonations at the Duchess in 1955 and Nel Oosthout's one-woman theatre at the Fortune in 1956. The second sec tion discusses the activity in fringe theatres. The third describes briefly Hal Holbrook's visit to the 1960 Edinburgh Festival with Mark Twain Tonight, a production which did not reach London but which for several reasons could not be safely excluded from the present study. Fourth, and most important, is a section concerning Micheal Mac Liammoir's lecture recital, The Importance of Being Oscar, which played for a two-week limited season at the Apollo Theatre late in 1960 and for another limited run at the Royal Court early in 1961. The fifth and last section offers some provisional conclusions. 2 Ivor Brown, Theatre 1954-5 (London: Max Reinhardt, 1955), p. 13. I. WEST END SOLOS, 1955-1956 291 In addition to Ruth Draper's three-week season at the St. Martin's in June, and Emlyn Williams' Dylan Thomas Growing Up at the Globe during the summer, there was playing in the West End in 1955 one other solo production which may have had some relevance to the present study— Arthur Blake's See the Stars. Arthur Blake is an American mimic who gives "impres sions" of famous contemporaries— Eleanor Roosevelt, Cary Grant, et cetera; his work therefore bears little more rela tion to the present study than did the solo revues of Joyce Grenfell or Beatrice Lillie, but perhaps ought to be men tioned at least in passing. See the Stars, a collection of such "impressions," opened at the 494-seat Duchess for what was announced as a four-week run,^ but closed a week early, on August 20.4 The Times' review was highly unfavorable: Mr. Blake is not, strictly speaking, trying like the great solo artists of the theatre to hold the stage com pletely alone since the success of his performance de pends entirely upon one's immediate recognition in his miming of the style of another— Mr. Charlie Chaplin Qet cetera] . . . . But even on this secondary level, Mr. The Times (hereafter cited as Times), Aug. 1, p. 10. 4Theatre advertisements, Times, Aug. 20, p. 8. See also John Parker and Freda Gage (eds.), Who's Who in the Theatre . . . 12 Ed. (London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, Ltd., 1957; hereafter cited in notes as WWT 12), p. 158. It is not listed in "The Stage" Year Book (hereafter cited as Stage Year Book or SYB)~ 1956 (London: Carson and Comerford, Ltd., 1956). 292 Blake's work seems hopelessly inadequate fare for an evening unrelieved. It suggested that if the occasional "lucky hits" were gath ered together they might make "an amusing short turn in a variety bill."1 5 A far more unusual program was offered a year later at a theatre often used for revues— among them At the Drop of a Hat and Beyond the Fringe— the 441-seat Fortune Theatre in Drury Lane. There for the week of September 11-22, 1956, the Dutch actress Nel Oosthout alternated solo performances of Klabund's The Chalk Circle and Shaw's St. Joan. Miss Oosthout, whom the Times called "distinguished," the Daily Mail, "a middle-aged, copper haired actress from The Hague," and The Observer, "strapping," received courteous treatment in four of the five reviews discovered,6 although a note of incredulity appeared even in the Times. The clearest description of her method was given by Darlington in the Telegraph; She wears a jerkin above cherry-coloured hose, and 5 Aug. 3, p. 10. The Illustrated London News (here after cited in notes as I.L.N.) listed it but did not re view it; Aug. 20, p. 322. 6 Cecil Wilson, "Dutch 'St. Joan' Plays 19 Shaw Parts," Daily Mail (hereafter cited as Mail), Sept. 18, 1956y p. 3; W. A. Darlington, "Cast of One in St. Joan: A Dutch Actress's Tour de Force," The Daily Telegraph (hereafter cited as Telegraph or Tele.), Sept. 18, p. 8; Times, Sept. 18, p. 3? Sept. 20, p. 5. The sour review was Kenneth Ty nan's in The Observer (hereafter cited as Observer or Obs.), Sept. 23, p. 11. 293 at her back hangs a long cloak so cut that it can be draped in front of her body so as to suggest either a skirt or a cassock. By manipulation of its folds, and by changes in the voice, she slips from character to character. With her knees together and her voice in her head, she is Joan. Knees apart and chest voice denotes a sol dier or courtier, cloak across and lower register a churchman. The Times noted that she "has a prodigious vocal range, and is able to change character by an imperceptible droop of the mouth, a modified gait, or even a shoulder movement with her back to the audience." The Mail agreed, but added that the effect was a little like a ventriloquist with mobile lips; nevertheless, she had "some surprisingly dramatic moments, considering how inevitably we tend to watch the wheels go round rather than care what they convey." Like the Tele graph , but not the Times, it considered her English service- 7 able. It added that such a feat of memory in a foreign tongue was "astonishing." The Times and the Observer said she was more successful with male roles than with female; the Times explained: The technical reason for this is interesting, al- Some hint of that English may be gained from the programme, MS in the Gabrielle Enthoven Theatre Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum (hereafter cited as Ent hoven) . To link Scene iv with Scene v it began: "Joan, in spite of . . . her great merits towards her country, has not succeeded in making herself beloved." It ended: "So she was considered a heretic and the burning at the stake awai ted her. With this her tragic end is explained." 294 though temperament itself plays its part. As Robert de Baudrecourt, perhaps the best of Miss Oosthout's gallery of portraits, she has the guileful, suspicious eye, the rolling voice, the whole blustering yet quizzical air of one who presents all the outward rages of authority that spring from inward uncertainty of character. But the feminine contrast has to be made from the equipment of the same actress— -which means she may not dare, to the same extent, the masculine fervour of Joan's peasant forthrightness. The result is a rather too childish pipe and the fixed smile of gentle sainthood.® The Mail, which for a popular paper had been a model of de corum, did break out momentarily in italics: "Noble, but not really necessary." Tynan concluded: Johnson, long ago, had the last word on exhibitions like this. Did he not say something about hell having no fury like a dog walking on its hind legs, because you are surprised to find that she has legs at all? (I may have got this wrong.) Anyway, you see what I mean. But the others were gentle in their disapproval. No evidence was discovered that either had attracted strong or lasting attention; and so there appeared no reason for believing that Arthur Blake or Nel Oosthout had had any significant effect upon subsequent productions. II. SOLOS ON THE FRINGE, 1955-1960 The present section continues the discussion, begun in Chapter IV, of the solo dramatic performances in the club theatres, dramatic societies, recital halls and other cen ters of theatrical activity outside the established West End commercial theatres. The data have been arranged by year. The record for 1955 can be stated briefly. Accord 8Sept. 18, p. 3. 295 ing to Stage Year Book 1956, Maria Fein gave a dramatic reading of Per Schwierige, the play by Hugo von Hofmannsthal at the Arts Council on March 28;^ but as there was a news paper strike at the time, there were no reviews. The Hoven- den Theatre files in the Enthoven Collection contain a refer ence to a "rehearsed reading" of The Diamond Necklace, with an Irene Williams, on October 23; it is an open question whether the generic term "rehearsed reading" is more indica tive of the nature of the performance than the single cast listing. In 1956 there were five solo productions at fringe theatres— if the St. Pancras Town Hall be admitted tempor arily to that classification. There on January 30 Robert Rietti played the only role in a playlet by Renato Simoni, The Theatre Without a Stage. T h e Irving Theatre offered two solos. Beginning March 13 a German diseuse, Ernestine Costa, appeared in "scenes and songs" as a curtain-raiser to the late-night revue, Negro Moods.^ The Manchester Guardian reviewed her thus: Miss Costa, dressed in tulle and rumpling yards of veridian silk scarfing, brandished a powerful personali ty at us in the accents, and with the kittenish manner isms of the youthful Elisabeth Bergner. For those who relish Brecht and Heine in German there was something to enjoy. The monologues in broken English were less 9SYB 1956. p. 96. 10SYB 1957, p. 97. ^Programme, MS Enthoven. 296 successful. Dorothy Parker's drunk animal-lover f'Just a Little One"J , for instance, somehow did not go in the whining Berlin diction here employed. But a confronta tion of wife by mistress, written by Strindberg [The Stronger1, had its astringent moments.I2 She was booked into the Irving again in June, for a program called Glove. Necklace and Gun, but an indisposition caused her to cancel. Prom September 4 to 9 the Irving ran a pro gram called James Stevenson Again.^ According to The Stage. Mr. Stevenson had "the ability to put over simple material well," and "brilliantly" did a recitation about an actor; but his "major fault" lay "in an inability to believe in his 14 own limitations." And even The Stage was not kind about another solo, which ran for a week at the Arts, beginning November 26, of Daniel Hyatt's Cameos of the Theatre. Mar riott said, "It was a boring, tasteless affair. Mr. Hyatt is lacking in craft, personality, voice and command. The Times offered considerable evidence in support of its 12 The Manchester Guardian (after August, 1959, The Guardian; both hereafter cited as Guardian or Guard.), March 15, 1956, p. 8. 13 Programme, MS Enthoven. The first half was as fol lows: "Fairground Mime, to music of Carousel by Rogers [sic]; 'Lived!' by Sally Baylis; A Visit to Grandpa ['s] arid The Hand by Dylan Thomas; and Feather on the Water, by Mary Hay- ley Bell." In this last, according to the notes, "Anthony, awaiting an operation on his brain, returns in spirit to the home of his childhood to meet: Undine; . . . His Mother; Clodder. The man he hated; Venetia, The girl he wanted to marry." 14 L. G. S., The Stage, September 13, 1956, p. 13. 15 r- . ' -i R. B. M. [arrxott] , The Stage, Nov. 29, 1956, p. 9. 297 verdict: "as diverse in content as it was tasteless in exe cution."16 Apparently the most noteworthy and the most success ful of the solo fringe productions was Rosalinde Fuller's Hearts and Faces, which opened at the Arts (339 seats) on October 8 and remained for upwards of a month. The program, a development of her experiments at the Watergate in 1950,17 consisted of seven short stories; on October 30 she intro duced a second version, and thereafter played the two on 18 alternate nights. Six reviews were found, all of them cordial except in their references to her Shakespeare adap- . . . 19 tation. 16November 27, p. 3. 17 See above, Chapter IV. Her director was again Richard Ainley, who later appeared with Beatrix Lehmann in poetry readings at Festival Hall; see above, Chapter VI. 18 Programmes, MSS Enthoven, according to which "Pro gramme One" was as follows: Katherine Mansfield, "The Tweed Cap"; Guy de Maupassant, "The Two Sisters" and "The Confi dant"; Arthur Schnitzler, "The Marble Heart"; Maupassant, "Caresses"; Interval; Maupassant, "The Old Actress"; "Love in Verona," adapted from Romeo and Juliet. The "Second Programme": Mansfield, "The Lady's Maid"; Maupassant, "The Window Game" and "The Two Sisters"; Schnitzler, "The Marble Heart"; Emile Zola, "The Dance Pro gramme"; Interval; Mansfield, "The Tweed Cap"; Schnitzler, "Fraulein Else." The reviews indicated that "Programme One" was the later addition. 19 W. A. Darlington, "One Woman in Playlets," Tele., Oct. 9, 1956, p. 8; R. P. M. G., "Stories Told on the Stage," Ibid., Oct. 31, p. 8; Stephen Williams, "Rosalinde Fuller is So Modest," The Evening News (hereafter cited as News), Oct. 9, p. 5; J. C. Trewin. I.L.N., Nov. 10, p. 806; 298 Both the Times and the News, on far different levels of sophistication, praised the modesty of the production and gave similar analyses of the method; said the News; Rosalinde Fuller is modest . . . She does not at tempt to play 49 characters at once or "people the stage" with phantoms. She tells about half a dozen short stories in monologue and holds our interest by sympathetic characterisation and well-contrived dramatic tension. Each sketch is definitely a "story"— by a master of an art that seems curiously remote nowadays— and we are .eager to know what happens next. Trewin called hers an "accomplished protean programme" in which monologues were managed "with genuine art"; and at the other extreme Darlington wrote a cheerful and chatty review that praised her continuing youthfulness, the smoothness of the transitions and the speed of the costume changes. Except for Darlington's claim that she played young girls "with complete plausibility," and the News1s reference to her characterization, there was general agreement that she remained firmly the narrator, and did not always char acterize even that role. For example, the second Telegraph review said: The character of the narrator was more often than not only superficially assumed. In Maupassant's "Car esses," for instance, Miss Fuller hardly suggested a sister in some religious order. Yet the anecdote . . . was made wonderfully effective— more moving, indeed, Times, Oct. 9, p. 3; Oct. 31, p. 3. In addition the Mail, Oct. 9, p. 3, announced she was "introducing what she calls her Kinsey report on women characters from a wide range of literary classics." 2 9 9 than I remember it on the page. The second Times review said that watching her mingled shame and self-satisfaction in "The Window Game" was "almost as rewarding as to read the story," and Trewin said he doubted whether it "could have been better told." In all, three re views selected "The Window Game" for special praise, and three other stories were also nominated as the best of the collection. Apparently Miss Fuller's was a precarious success. The first Times review concluded: "This actress has become much more disciplined since she was a familiar figure on the London stage, and there has been a corresponding gain in 20 ' power." Reviewing her second program it noted that "when introducing scenes to the audience her manner became far more stagy than it was in performing them." The Telegraph thought her "a more perceptive interpreter of authors than of their characters"; when she became involved in the action, said the Times, she showed "a dangerous fondness for five- star prose." Perhaps for these reasons her adaptation of Romeo and Juliet was judged a disaster. Trewin called it "a dive into Shakespeare" that "did not come off," and offered some satiric titles for other such adaptations. The Times 20 Darlington said, "It must be 30 years since we first saw her in London." WWT 13, pp. 501-02, carries a very long and very favorable article, which indicates that Miss Fuller was at this time fifty-five years old, and that she had been very active in plays in various fringe theatres in the twenties. 300 said: Of "Love in Verona" . . . the less said the better. The text was full of tasteless line substitutions, and Miss Fuller's delivery, formerly well controlled, broke into self-confident contralto rant, not obscured by con tinuous music. Although she seems to have had at least a month's run in what Marriott claimed was a generally "disappointing" year 21 at the Arts, the reviews were more friendly than enthusi astic, and there was no hint that this kind of storytelling might have a professional future. Rosalinde Fuller returned to the London fringe in later seasons, with scantier suc- 22 cess; and the genre she exploited may be traced also in With One Eyebrow Slightly Up and Kreutzer Sonata.23 In 1957— the year in which Gielgud's The Ages of Man played in Edinburgh and Ashcroft's Aspects of Women appeared at the Arts Council— the only four solo dramatic productions in London were on the fringe. Madalena Nicol, whose pro gramme said she had gained fame doing English and Portuguese plays in Brazil, appeared on successive Mondays, February 4 and 11, at the Arts,^ and received reviews that might have 21 SYB 1957, p.. 11. One of its productions was a ser ies of advanced cooking lessons in comedy form; but it also introduced The Waltz of the Toreadors and The Bald Prima Donna. But 1956 was, of course, the year of Look Back in Anger, and The Quare Fellow. 22 See below, p. 302. ^See below, p. 369-75. ^The programme, MS Enthoven, listed the following: 301 been portents of the rest. The Telegraph began: Of all the arts the most desperate is surely the solo stage performance where only echo answers the most fervid passion torn to tatters. Even, let it be whis pered, a Ruth Draper did not always sidestep a longueur. Nor did Madalena Nicol at the Arts last night.2"5 And the Times concurred: Only the very great can of course survive an evening in which the player appears entirely alone, and Miss Nicol's talent and resources were severely taxed. 6 Both reviewers were more impressed with her poems than her monologues, although the Times thought that "in much of her work the phrasing seems to be rather more musical than dra matic." The Telegraph concluded: The invisible "Other woman" of Strindberg's "The Stronger" remained out of sight. The strong may be si lent but when they are silent as that they might as well not exist at all. The Times thought that "some of her miming was touchingly compelling," and added that "she was warmly received." Apparently David Kossoff, who played at the Arts for about seven successive Mondays beginning May 6, outlasted whatever warmth there had been at his reception; the Mail, observing that "it takes a brave man to play for two hours to an almost empty theatre," added that "he rose splendidly Cocteau, The Human Voice; Strindberg, The Stronger; five poems in French, English and Spanish, by Lima, Prdvert, An drade, Bandiera and Lorca; O'Neill, Before Breakfast. 25February 4, 1957, p. 8. ^February 5, 1957, p. 5. 302 When a bare handful turned out," and invited them forward.27 His program, With One Eyebrow Slightly Up. was praised by Cecil Wilson as "something new in stage shows," but one that 2ft needed "less mannered precision." The Telegraph called him a "raconteur," and commented thus: His forte is not to assume characters in the manner, for instance, of the late Ruth Draper or Cornelia Otis Skinner, but rather to introduce them. Thus were brought before us the absorbing inhabitants of a little village near Lublin .... The tales in which they took equal parts with the teller were origi nal .... After the interval Mr. Kossoff exchanged his dinner jacket for more comfortable attire and became more abandoned in the familiar television character of Prsetzel £in a Wolf Mankowitz playlet.J2^ The Times, offering a similar summary, concluded that he was "a sound actor" whose material fell short.3® Songs and Stories was presented by Harold Scott and Rosalinde Fuller at the Chenil Galleries, Chelsea, on Sep- 31 tember 6; and for three days, October 18-21, at "Britain's Smallest Theatre," the Hovenden, Ernestine Costa, now assis ted by Valerie Hovenden, played the program she had post- ^"Tanfield1s Diary," Mail, June 11, 1957, p. 10. 28Mail, May 7, 1957, p. 3. 29 R. P. M. G., "Jewish Tales of a Village: Raconteur at Arts," Tele., May 7, p. 10. 3®May 7, p. 3. In addition, the Evening Standard (hereafter cited as Standard or Stand.). June 4, p. 5. re ported that he fell off the stage and sprained his thumb. 31SYB 1958, p. 92. 303 poned at the Irving the year previous, Glove. Necklace and 32 Gun. No reviews of either production were found. In 1958--the year Emlyn Williams brought A Boy Grow ing Up back to the Globe and John Gielgud began his American tour with Ages of Man— there were only two solo productions recorded among the seven surviving club theatres: both were one-woman productions which had Monday-night runs at the Arts. Elspeth Douglas Reid offered her "One Woman Theatre" for what seems to have been only one performance, on Novem ber 10; Rosalinde Fuller played Subject to Love for, appar ently, two Mondays, December 1 and 8. Elspeth Douglas Reid, whose character sketches in the manner of Ruth Draper have been mentioned above in dis- 33 cussions of the fringe m 1950-52, had been playing at various provincial festivals since her last London appear ance at the Mercury in 1952. In 1956, for example, she was at the Pitlochry Festival in northeast Scotland for the en- 34 tire summer; in 1958 she was part of the fringe at the Edinburgh Festival, playing from August 25 to September 13 35 at Gartshore Hall. She brought what she advertised as her 32 Programme, MS Enthoven. This subtitled it "Stor ies in Acting and Song," and listed works by Brecht, Strind berg, Heine, and Maupassant. 33 See above, Chapter IV. 34SYB 1957, p. 45. 35 Programme, MS Enthoven. Its front page had the 304 "Edinburgh Festival Season Programme, 1958" to the Arts on November 10. Doris Lessing, writing in the Observer, gave her short shrift: Elspeth Douglas Reid's one-night stand . . . disap pointed after what some critics claimed for her. A good enough actress, though she hardly "peoples the stage with imaginary characters." Perhaps her trouble is her material?36 The Times was more detailed, but no more favorable: There are not many soloists capable of flooding an empty stage with imagined characters, and [she] . . . is not among them. No matter how earnestly she invoked the ghosts that used to flock so readily at Ruth Draper's summons she remained alone with a table and a few chairs performing one-sided dialogue and winning one's respect for her occasional ingenuities and dauntless application.3? It contrasted her "workmanlike writing" with her "indiffer ent performance, " but added that the writing "went wrong" whenever sentiment intruded and it then drew attention to the shortcomings of performance. In three of the major sketches she "failed to place imaginary figures and proper ties precisely, grew spasmodically uncertain in delivery," and paused carelessly. The review concluded with a refer- inscription, superimposed in red, "Complete Show booked for London West End." Inside were listed the following: "A Country House: set in the year 1941; Sufficient Beauty: the manager's room in a large West End store; In a Scottish Kit chen; Interval; Lovers' Meeting: imagining a last scene be tween Tess Jpf the d'Urbervillesj and Angel Clare; Overture and Beginners: a riverside palace in Elizabethan time." 36 November 16, 1958, p. 19. ■^November 11, 1958, p. 4. 305 ence to the "chilly audience." Rosalinde Fuller was little more successful with Subject to Love, her new "Short Story Recital"-*8 of works by Chekov, Dickens, Maupassant, Henry James, Dostoevsky and Mansfield in "her own dramatizations."39 The Mail noted only that the performance had been offered; the Times gave her a mixed review: [Her] performance was forceful and pointed as long as she concentrated on the actual story and its charac ters .... When she attempted to go further afield and make every sentence . . . dramatic in itself, her effects were frittered away. The narrators [of four different stories) quickly came to seem one and the same character, since all had the habit of illustrating or miming practically every thing they said. In a Henry James story she "showed more discrimination"; and the sentences "were as though chiselled by the mind" of the narrator. Miss Fuller took Subject to Love to the 1959 41 Edinburgh Festival, where The Stage reported it "an out standing event on the fringe . . . a joy from start to 42 finish." She toured for the British Council at least 38WWT 13. p. 83. 39 Announcement, MS Enthoven. ^December 2, 1958, p. 14. 41 Programme, YMCA Theatre, Edinburgh, MS Enthoven, listed the following: Maupassant, "The Window Game"; Henry James, "The Uncompromising Spirit"; Dickens, "David Copper- field f sic]"; Chekov, "Regrets"; Daisy Ashford, "Mr. Sal- teena's Plan." It indicated piano interludes as well. 4 9 E# A., The Stage, August 27, 1959, p. 8. 306 three times: to the Middle East in April and May, 1958; to South Africa and Northern Rhodesia in April, 1950; and to the German Federal Republic in March, 1 9 6 1 . But there was no evidence that she returned to London during the period covered by the present study. No further instances of impersonation or monodrama on the London theatrical fringe were discovered in the present study. Allowing a wide margin for error, it would seem likely on the basis of past evidence that there were two or three one-night stands per year, some of which doubtless were reviewed by one or another of the metropolitan papers; but the probable influence of such productions is clearly very small. So far as this study could gauge, solo imper sonation and monodrama became wellnigh extinct in the fringe theatres. Part of the explanation may be found in the diffi culty of assigning any given performance to a category. The present study might have attempted closer distinctions among the "poetry readings" discussed in the previous chapter, and included some— the Enoch Arden melodrama, for example, or Morris' Prometheus Unbound— in the category of impersona tion. Or the fact that two actors shared the dramatized 43 The British Council, Report for the Year Ending 31st March (hereafter cited as BC Report), 1959, p. 98; 1960, p. 105. See also Times, April 10, 1962, p. 15, for announcement of tour of Australasia. 307 "telling" of Kreutzer Sonata need not have allowed it to qualify as a "reading drama," for discussion in Chapter VIII, rather than a multiple impersonation, for discussion here. Second, the fringe itself was shrinking. Where Stage Year Book listed twelve club theatres in 1955, it listed five in 1960. In 1961 Mander and Mitchenson listed two— the Arts and the Hovenden. The others had "been swept away by rising costs, a more liberal censorship and some few enlightened managements who risk public production of the more non-commercial play."^ Investigation of these were far beyond the bounds of the present study; it could find no agreement upon the number of theatres in London, 1950- 1962;^5 nor upon production costsnor upon the size of the audience and its decline; ^ nor upon the effects of 44 Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson, The Theatres of London (London: Rupert Hart-David, 1961), p. 256. ^See, eg., SYB 1951, p. 23; Times, April 28, 1955, p. 13; Richard Pindlater, Obs., April 14, 1957, p. 6; SYB 1961, pp. 259-63; Mander and Mitchenson, op. cit.; William Kendall, "The City Fathers and the Theatre," Drama: The Quarterly Review (Winter, 1962), p. 36. 46 Cf. Charles Landstone, Off-Stage; A Personal Rec ord of the First Twelve Years of State Sponsored Drama in Great Britain (London: Elek, 1953), pp. 158, 178-79; The Stage, March 22, 1951, p. 8; Ivor Brown (ed.) Theatre 1954- 55, p. 8; George Devine, "Court Account," Guard., April 2, 1962, p. 7. 47 Landstone, op. cit., pp. 183-84; J. C. Trewin, The Theatre Since 1900 (London: Andrew Dakers, Ltd., 1951), p. 306 n.; Times. April 28, 1955, p. 13; Findlater, Obs., loc. cit.; W. A. Darlington, "About the Theatre," Tele., March 20, 1961, p. 6; June 19, 1961, p. 6. Cf John 308 48 television. ° But clearly implicit in many of the works consulted was the belief that Britain has been undergoing a social and economic revolution, and that the results of that revolution manifest themselves in the strangest of ways and 49 of places. But maybe a third factor is implied in the reviews of the productions themselves. Few of the impersonators were held to be very talented: Elspeth Douglas Reid, one of the most persistent, got cool reviews in 1951, 1952 and 1958? O'Callaghan, "Portrait of the Cinema in Decline," Guard., April 14, 1962? and the controversy over the Market Research Report commissioned by the Football Association to discover why attendance had declined eleven million in ten years: Guard., November 18, 1962, p. 4? Times, leader, February 10, p. 9; Times, April 12, p. 3? Obs., April 15, p. 18; The Sun day Times (hereafter cited in notes as Sun. T.), April 15, p. 21. 48 Burton Paulu, British Broadcasting in Transition (London: Macmillan, 1961); John O'Callaqhan, loc. cit.; ""En tertaining an Audience on the Move," Times, January 20, 1962, p. 4; "Introductory Course for Theatregoers," Ibid., Febru ary 15, p. 8; "Falstaff Gives the Lead to Ariel," Ibid., April 21, p. 4. 49 The history of the Watergate may be a case in point. When its theatre in the Strand was demolished, it reorganized and, with much publicity, leased the 828-seat Comedy for a series of banned plays; Mail, September 7, 1956, p. 3; Times, September 10, p. 3. SYB 1957, pp. 11-12, hailed its success in "coping with the vagaries of the Lord Cham berlain's edicts," but hastened to add: "The New Watergate are not specialising in banned plays; it just so happens that some of the plays they intend to present . . . have so far been frowned on by our Censor . . . ." It produced A View From the Bridge (1956), Tea.,and Sympathy (1957), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), and then, according to SYB 1959, p. 9, "fizzled out." Mander and Mitchenson, op. cit., p. 51, think it altered the censor's outlook and rendered itself obsolete. 309 only two reviews of her were found to be generally favor able.5® Rosalinde Fuller had a friendly press in 1956, but seems constantly to have been in danger of letting her art get out of control. From 1957 onwards, there was almost a standard introduction to reviews in this genre: "Of all the arts the most desperate is surely the solo stage perfor mance . . . "; "Only the very great can of course survive an evening in which the player appears entirely alone . . . "; "There are not many soloists capable of flooding the stage with imagined characters . . . . " Milton Shulman applied the formula to a two-character play: It takes either genius or presumption to people a stage with only two characters for an entire evening. . . . Actors, of course, are fascinated by parts that can be measured by yards. And managements are tempted only too easily by the prospect of tiny overheads. The awakening comes when the audiences turn out to be almost as small as the cast.5^ - And even when the intention was completely kind, the gener alization might be only partly so: "Solo performers are of two kinds; those like Miss Ruth Draper who surround them selves with a crowd of bustling ghosts, and those who are 52 genuinely alone." Quite clearly the reviewers considered these solo productions part of a dubious tradition; the burden of proof was likely to fall on the performer, and the 50See above, pp. 134, 139. 51 Stand., July 8, 1958, p. 8. 5 2 . Times, May 23, 1956, p. 3; the object was a mime. 310 preceding discussion has indicated how rarely were the per formers able to shoulder such a burden. It is in this context that the complete absence of compensatory data may become significant. During the period of the present study no production of relevance to that study— impersonation, monodrama, storytelling, or, indeed, concert reading or poetry reading— transferred from a fringe theatre to the West End, with the rather special exception of Gielgud's The Ages of Man. Many a standard production did so: about ten per cent of the Arts' productions trans ferred during the Clunes regime, and Waiting for Godot, Waltz of the Toreadors and The Caretaker were among those that came from the Arts later; At the Drop of a Hat came from the New Lindsey; The Boy Friend started at the Play ers'; and the frequent transfers from the Royal Court and the Theatre Royal in Stratford East were chiefly responsible for keeping those companies solvent and above the status of the ordinary fringe. Not only did none of the "relevant" productions transfer, but there was no evidence that anyone who had prepared a "relevant" production for the fringe ever appeared subsequently in a "relevant" production in the West End. The separation of the classes appears to have been complete— a point which may merit further discussion in Chapter X. For the present the inference seems warranted— from the scarcity of data about solo productions on the theatri- 311 cal fringe, from the absence of data about the transfer of such productions to the West End even briefly, from the scarcity of favorable reviews of such productions, from the persistent tone of misgiving in the reviews of such produc tions, from the predominance of unfavorable reviews over favorable ones, and from the rapid and almost complete dis appearance of theatres and recital halls from that fringe: it is probable that impersonation, monodrama and storytel ling on London's theatre fringe made no strong contribution to the development of oral interpretation as a form of pro fessional theatre during the years 1951-62. III. . MARK TWAIN TONIGHT, 1960 A year after his triumph at the Forty-First Street Theatre in New York Hal Holbrook took his one-man produc tion, Mark Twain Tonight, to the 1960 Edinburgh Festival. He gave three evening performances at the Freemasons' Hall— C3 on August 30 and September 1 and 3. The present study found five reviews, all favorablebut the show was ig 53 Programme, MS Enthoven. This programme, "for the benefit of those who are in distress and wish to fan them selves," purported to be largely by Twain; it listed twenty- seven sketches from which a selection would be made. 54 Peter Lewis, "He Makes Us Think He Is Mark Twain," Mail, September 1, 1960, p. 3; W. A. Darlington, "Mark Twain As He Was: Pointed Creation by Hal Holbrook," Tele., Septem ber 2, p. 14; Kenneth Tynan, Obs., September 4, p. 24; Har old Hobson, Sun. T., September 4, p. 34; Times, September 2, p. 13. 312 nored by several papers that gave otherwise good coverage to the Festival.^ It did not play in London, nor was evidence discovered of any plans to take it there. Three reviews explicitly and a fourth implicitly praised the accuracy of the impersonation. In this they may have been following the suggestion of the programme, which described the "years" of research that went into the produc tion. Lewis, for example, said this: With American thoroughness Holbrook has studied his master's voice and manner from old films, old records, old acquaintances. He takes three hours to put on his make-up. He Mark Twain, as near as makes no differ ence . Darlington, comparing Holbrook's with the "more brilliant success" of Emlyn Williams' Dickens programs, was more cautious: In each case the actor has made so close a study of his subject as to be able to give an impression alleged to be exact. Certainly the character presented . . . is very much like the Mark Twain of our imaginations.-*^ The Times thought it "a singularly convincing impression of what it must have been like to hear Mark Twain in the role ^-*For example, Daily Express (hereafter cited as Ex press or Exp.), Stand., Guard., I.L.N., The New Statesman, Punch. Probably the biggest hit that year was the revue Beyond the Fringe. 56 Darlington was not so dubious in 1951, when Wil liams was "in fact, giving a sustained and brilliantly suc cessful impersonation of Charles Dickens," Tele., October 30, 1951, p. 6. 313 of platform entertainer." Only Tynan appeared less inter ested in the accuracy than in the realism of the character ization; although he called it "a riveting impersonation," and described the makeup and the mannerisms, the point of his review seems rather that this was realistic acting: [As Huck Finn] Mr. Holbrook brings off the rare feat of mimicking an old man mimicking a boy. One finds oneself extending to this remarkable actor the kind of indulgence that one habitually extends to the aged .... Naturally he gets carried away, we have to remember that he's an old man. When moving a chair, Mr. Holbrook does not lift it, he drags it, because at his age one must conserve one's energy. Hobson's review, here reproduced in its entirety, implied that he was with the majority: Hal Holbrook in a Mark Twain recital has been show ing that Emlyn Williams is not the only man who can turn himself into my favourite author.5? Except for Hobson, all the reviewers described in some detail the makeup, the costume, the walk, and the long pauses in the delivery of jokes. Each of these components had been emphasized in the programme; but as there were no stylistic echoes from one review to another, the critics had seen them from their own viewpoints. The references to Twain were favorable and brief, as if his merits were well- 58 known; there was nothing of xenophobia in the reviews. 5^The brevity may indicate a lack of enthusiasm. But his was a weekly review, and he was covering both London and Edinburgh in this issue. 58 Possibly this was a greater tribute to Holbrook 314 Although the Mail said the material had "not dated," Dar lington thought that "some of his jests and character sket ches lose their point because they are too familiar," and the Times agreed: The worst that can be said of the material is that, like Hamlet, it seems almost entirely to be composed of familiar quotations and that, unlike the quotations in Hamlet they gain little or nothing extra when put into their proper context. These were the least favorable observations that occurred in any of the reviews. Prominent in three were comparisons with Emlyn Wil liams. Hobson's note has been quoted above. Darlington's much longer review had essentially the same organization; it developed the statement: "Mr. Holbrook does for Mark Twain almost exactly what Emlyn Williams has been doing with even more brilliant success for Charles' Dickens.The Times broadened the comparison into a wide generalization: It is seldom easy to believe in a character in a play if he has been given the name of a great author. But it begins to look as though it lies in the power of the individual actor vividly to evoke the image and the mind of any dead author who gave public readings of his own works. Mr. Emlyn Williams was the first to than it might at first seem. The critics had just been given a stronger than usual dose of Scottish chauvinism in a major production based upon the life of William Wallace, and may have been poised to retaliate. 59 The verb tense is puzzling: except for the odd charity matinee, Williams had not "been doing" anything for Dickens since 1952. 315 discover this form of impersonation, and his study of Dickens as a public performer remains in a class of its own. On only a little lower plane stands Mr. Hal Holbrook. There was, however, no mention of other authors to whom the method might be applied. Nor, although the Times and the Telegraph reported that the audience was large and enthusi astic, was there any suggestion that the show should be ta ken to London. In summary, four of the five reviews of Mark Twain Tonight stated or implied strong praise of the accuracy of the impersonation, and the fifth praised the vividness of the characterization of an old man. Four mentioned the makeup and the mannerisms; although the references to Mark Twain were favorable, there was some disposition to think the material too familiar. Three reviews mentioned Emlyn Williams, two of them expressing a preference for his per formance as Dickens over Holbrook's as Twain; no specific reason for the preference was given. None of the reviews alluded to its probable success if brought up to London. IV. THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING OSCAR, 1960 Micheal Mac Liammoir, actor and director at the Gate Theatre in Dublin, first played The Importance of Being Os car, his lecture-recital of the life and works of Oscar Wilde, at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin for four performance^ September 19 to 24, during the Dublin International Theatre 316 Festival of 1960. The show opened in London at the 802-seat Apollo Theatre on October 31, for a limited run of two weeks, and closed on schedule on November 12 after sixteen perfor mances.®0 It was revived on January 23, 1961, for a four weeks' limited run at the 439-seat Royal Court.It moved to the Lyceum in New York for thirty-one performances begin ning March 14, 1961; there too it received a very favorable press. Writing from Dublin the Times' "special correspon dent" reported: "Mr. Micheal Mac Liammoir has almost in vented a new art albeit a minor one. Instead of writing a 62 life of Oscar Wilde he has spoken it." Perhaps that "new art" is best described in excerpts from two of the early London reviews: We meet Mac Liammoir-Wilde first in a delightful opening tableau, elegantly supine on a Recamier chaise- longue, smoking langorously, lilies and wine to hand, the glorious aesthete soaring to the height of his powers. 60 Some idea of the Apollo's commercial position in Shaftesbury Avenue may be gained from the fact that he moved out to make way for something called Watch It, Sailor. The Royal Court, at the other extreme, has been the home of the "angry" theatre. ^Seating data for both theatres, WWT 13, p. 1410. Mander and Mitchenson, op. cit., p. 30, place the Apollo at a capacity of 893. 62 Times, September 20, 1960. p. 14. In this, and in all subsequent citations in this section, the accent marks in the spelling of Mac Liammoir's name and of French words have been preserved or omitted exactly as in the original; and comments like sic]" have generally been avoided. 317 We part with him after a moving evocation of the broken days in the Hotel d'Alsace, in the Rue des Beaux Arts.63 Thus the Mail described the setting and implied the method; of the material the Times said this: . . . . . [it] is a selection from Wilde's life chosen to illustrate the development of his personality during the different stages of his life .... [Mac LiammoirJ intersperses these selections with a carefully construc ted biographical picture of Wilde. The performance thus becomes in part a spiritual biography of the man and in part a study of the writer's development as an artist.64 The programme, which traced the genesis of the performance back to a 1953 tour in Hedda Gabler. said that the notion of impersonating Wilde, in the way Williams had impersonated Dickens, had been discarded early. The present discussion was based upon eighteen re views: one of the Dublin opening,ten of the Apollo 63 Robert Muller, "Wilde Feast," Mail, November 1, 1960, p. 3. See n. 62. 64 "Stage Picture of Wilde: Mr. Mac Liammoir's Keen Sensibility," Times, November 1, p. 16. 6 5 Programme, Apollo Theatre, MS Enthoven; cf. pro gramme, Royal Court, loc. cit. The list of selections began as follows: "Part I. The Happy Prince and The Green Carnation. "H^las— Introduction to an aesthete— Theocritus— Li ly Langtry— Art in Leadville— To Portia and To Ph4dre— The Green Carnation— Lord Goring and a Buttonhole— The Harlot's House— The Picture of Dorian Gray— Lord Alfred— Art and Life— The Jewels of Herod— Lady Bracknell says "No" . . . ." 6^Times. September 20, 1960, p. 14. 318 opening,67 and seven of the revival at the Royal Court.6® Only one of these was not clearly favorable: Philip Hope- Wallace wrote a chatty and rather desultory piece that called it "at best 'as good as a play'"; his censure was neither strong enough nor focused enough to qualify the review as "mixed," and so here it was provisionally classified as "re luctantly favorable," or better, "cool." With this one ex ception, the press reaction was favorable and more. "As I left," said Levin, "they were just starting to cheer. I dare say they are cheering still." Muller called it "a wholly enchanting evening," "magnificently touching and mag nificently funny, and always utterly engrossing." Hobson called it "an unmatched evening of beauty and cleverness and delight"; Tynan, "a glittering exhibition"; and Trewin, "a grand flare of the theatre theatrical." Keown said it was Bernard Levin, "A Great Actor Gives Us an Exciting Three Hours with Mr. Wilde," Exp., Nov. 1, p. 7; Robert Mul ler, loc. cit.; Patrick Gibbs, "Personality of Wilde: Witty One-Man Evocation," Tele., Nov. 1, p. 14; Milton Shulman, "It's Brilliant, This Oral Biography of Oscar Wilde," Stand., Nov. 1, p. 12; Philip Hope-Wallace, "Too Kind to be Wilde," Guard., Nov. 2, p. 7; J. C. Trewin, I.L.N., Nov. 12, p. 862; Eric Keown, Punch, Nov. 9, p. 680; Kenneth Tynan, Obs., Nov. 6, p. 30; Harold Hobson, Sun. T., Nov. 6, p. 35; Times, Nov. 1, p. 16. 6®Robert Muller, Mail, Jan. 24, 1961, p. 3; E. S., "Anthology as Fine as Ever," Tele., Jan. 24, p. 14; Caren Meyer, "You Must Rush to See This!" Evening News, Jan. 24, p. 5; Eric Keown, Punch, Feb. 2, p. 222; Harold Hobson, Sun T., Jan. 29, p. 37; Anthony Cookman, The Tatler and Bystand er (hereafter cited as Tatler), Feb. 1, p. 223; Times, Jan. 24, p. 13. 319 "the most exciting theatrical experience of the year." Its revival at the Royal Court led three critics to urge their readers to seize the extra opportunity to discover (as one put it) "how brilliant romantic acting can be." According to the Mail at that time, it was "one of the most splendid entertainments now on view"— one which, said the Telegraph, "will glow in the memory." Four of the seventeen in London testified to the enthusiasm of the audiences. Not since Emlyn Williams' first Dickens "Mixed Bill" in 1951 had a comparable show aroused such excitement; of the eighteen re views— Dublin and London— seven should probably be called enthusiastic, six very favorable, four clearly favorable, and one cool.69 More significant and more curious, from the view point of the present study, was the strength of the tone of surprise. The Dublin correspondent has been quoted above about the invention of a new art; and at least five of the Apollo reviews and two of the Court seemed to find the per formance wholly unexpected. Trewin called it "an astonish ing feat"; Hobson called it "extraordinary," and, two months later, "almost incredible." Levin referred to its "magnifi- The proportions remained roughly constant. Of the seven judged "enthusiastic," for example, three were Apollo and four were Court' of the six "very favorable," one was Dublin, four Apollo and one Court; of the four "clearly fa vorable," two were Apollo and two were Court. The difference between "enthusiastic" and "very favorable" was, of course, a subjective judgment of the present investigator. 320 cent audacity." Shulman was surprised most by the freshness of such a worked-out subject and by the fact that the trials could be safely omitted. Perhaps most paradoxical, the "cool" review began thus: The idea of this solo lecture-recital about the life and works of Oscar Wilde is so successful that one mar vels that no one thought of doing it before— or thought to such good effect. No one saw in it any similarity to Williams' biography of Dylan Thomas; indeed, until two weeks before the end of its second London run, no similarity to any previous production was remarked. Not only were the reviews laudatory in sum; most of their details were favorable too. Muller attacked most directly, but his tone was genial— if not a little preten tious : He is fairly terrible as Herod (in Wilde's original French), but then everybody always is fairly terrible as Herod (in Wilde's original French.) Keown thought the show "could be cut with advantage to some thing nearer two hours." Shulman said there was "a little too much of Dorian Gray," and that "Lady Bracknell's quips are a little too familiar for surprise"; in this latter criticism he was joined by "E. S.," reviewing the Court pro duction for the Telegraph. "E. S." went on to object: 70 The idea appeared in the programme for the 1958 revival of A Boy Growing Up, if nowhere else. See above, p. 217. 321 Sometimes last night the air would suddenly fill with a sonorous booming, a style of playing unfamiliar enough in this theatre [the Court, a pioneer in the angry and absurd] and not ineffective, but sometimes out of keep ing with the intimacy of the portrait being presented. In the earlier Telegraph review, Patrick Gibbs said: Sympathy with the subject was admirably communicated — indeed excessively, some may think. If I had a reser vation it was that the proceedings were a trifle too adulatory. Trewin implied as much, although he phrased the objection rather as praise of Mac hiammoir; Anthony Cookman said that perhaps the actor "slightly exaggerates the literary value of De Profundis." And Hope-Wallace seems to have been ob jecting chiefly to the material: But ought one to insist on a less fond, a more ob jective portrait of the man? The drama is there, super ficially; but not, precisely, the dramatic irony— at least not sufficiently. At best "as good as a play," at least a formidable display of bonhomie and volubility, it even stayed this side of straining the actor's voice- manship, with "himself destroyed entirely by talking" as Margaret says of the Playboy, or nearly. This success of- the Dublin Festival is here for two weeks and like some cheerful little revue will presum ably shape itself a trifle neater as its run goes on. But it earns its time on the stage without question. There was, then, adverse comment in six of the favorable or enthusiastic reviews; only in Hope-Wallace's somewhat queru lous piece was such comment extensive. Most of the details thus censured were praised in other reviews. Trewin thought the Salome episode done "very wisely in French"— a deft ambiguity— but Hope-Wallace said the French was "extremely creditable." The excerpt from 322 Dorian Gray was praised by seven of the eleven who mentioned favorites at all; it was "his wittiest,"'brilliantly quoted," "superb." Muller said Mac Liammoir was "brilliant" as Lady Bracknell— as did Shulman himself if he were held strictly to his grammar. Six reviewers praised the actor's voice, four of them emphasizing its sensitivity.^ At least five reviewers defended the accuracy of the portrait, some with at least as much fervor as any of which Mac Liammoir was accused; however, questions of the accuracy and of the lit erary taste must be discussed at length below. Very high praise was accorded the selection and ar rangement of the material. "Mr. Mac Liammoir's skill in weaving criticism and biography into his dazzling recitals from Wilde is almost incredible," said Hobson in his. Court review; Caren Meyer, in the News, emphasized the variety of material that had been included. Seven reviewers praised the brilliance and wit of Mac Liammoir's linking commentary. Muller said it was "urbane and sad and comic and entirely apposite"; three others advanced the idea that in such pas sages "the actor's wit is often happily not far below that of the author' s [sic.] ." The Times and the Mail have been quoted above as tracing the biographical design of the 71 ■ xInsofar as the objection to the "sonorous booming" was chiefly that it spoiled the intimacy of the presentation, it might be noted that "E. S." was the only one to detect such intimacy; the general view was that this was "romantic," almost lurid, "a grand flare of the theatre theatrical." 323 program; the Standard contained an even more detailed anal ysis, and the Express1 was hardly less so. Of the five Who thus analyzed the structure in detail, Hope-Wallace was alone in considering it not so much a praiseworthy summary of Wilde's literary or spiritual development as the oppor tunity of an actor's lifetime: You do not have to be over modest as an actor to re lish the chance— in a matter of ten minutes, to offer a potted and brilliantly quoted "Dorian Grey f sic 1,1 1 then (left) Herod's jewel speech to Salome in extremely cred itable French (roars of applause) and a moment later, on the prompt side, to assume the imaginary gloves and bustle of Lady Bracknell .... Inevitably the second part of the evening, "De Profundis," is filled with sad ness, even though cheerfulness break [s] in, but the lasting effect is of happy laughter. Although they did not praise the design of the program for permitting such versatility, two other Apollo and three Court reviews offered extended praise of the versatility it self. Said Keown, for example: With unfaltering skill, Mr. Mac Liammoir pulls out all the stops. He recites the poems, he acts scenes from the plays, he reads from the letters, and he con nects these items with anecdotes superbly told and a fluent biographical commentary that is very charmingly delivered and often so witty . . . that Wilde himself might have been glad to borrow from it. * Cookman, agreeing on the point of versatility, added that there was "nothing of the flashy tour-de-force" in such a performance. But although they were practically unanimous in their approval of Mac Liammoir's performance, comparatively 324 few of the critics devoted much space to an account of the actual physical goings-on. Four of the earlier and one of the later reviews described the stage setting; a sixth mentioned that the actor was "accompanied by a desk, a chaise-longue, a chair and a few dozen lilies." There was one reference to his clothing. Eight mentioned his deliv ery, three praised his memory, four said expressly or im plicitly that he got his effects effortlessly, and four praised the apparent spontaneity; but only Levin tried to go into detail like this: The vividness— luridness almost— of his acting, which reminds me of the description of Kean's Shylock— "Like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning"— is apt to blind us to the meticulous quality, to the care and thought and hard, hard work that has gone into it. Mr. Mac Liammoir's hands, for instance, demand a whole review to themselves. Clasping and unclasping, their fingertips now to gether, now spread wide, now pointing accusingly into the audience, now "flung abroad for agony and loss"— it is difficult to believe, and unnecessary to remember, that each movement . . . has been worked out . . . and rehearsed to this pitch of effortless spontaneity. It is the same, of course, with the modulations of his voice, with the tiny touches of his brogue, and the roughening and thickening of it as the end grew near. It is the same with . . . [his] rolling eyes, and the subtle gradations of movement in h^s full, mobile lips. Nothing is haphazard, all is in place. Hope-Wallace has already been quoted as implying that it was a little ragged; the Mail1s Court review called it a "per fectionist evocation." The Dublin review said his timing 325 was perfect, and that The Picture of Dorian Gray had been "compressed and presented with acted parts as an Irish story-teller might have told it round the fire." The ten dency among the eight who considered delivery was to make a passing generalization, like the Observer's: "Every bit as magnetic as one would expect from an actor whom I have al ways regarded as the theatre1s answer to the late Aneurin Bevan. " Seven reviews mentioned his voice. Three have been cited: the Telegraph*s claim that a sonorous booming had violated the intimacy of the Court performance, the Express1 reminder that the brogue and the thickening had been planned, and the Guardian's concession that the performance "had stayed this side of straining the actor's voicemanship." Shulman said Mac Liammoir was "using his mellifluous voice 72 like a startled organ," and the Times' Dublin review of fered this comparison: . . . A voice of liquid baritone assisted by a ton gue that wraps itself with the speed of an adder's round the involved movement of Wildean epigram re-cre ates probably for the first time since Wilde's death an image of what the voice, which could conjure loveliness out of nothing, may have sounded like. Gibbs may have intended the same point when he cited Shaw and Graham Robertson to the effect that the charm of Wilde's anecdotes and stories depended largely upon his own way of 72 Cf. Gielgud's "using his mellifluous and punctil ious voice like some genteel strainer," p. 258 above. 326 telling them; Mac Liammcfir, he added, was someone who could "make something of them." Cookman was more explicit about the effect of the voice: . . . It may be [he] slightly exaggerates the lite rary value of De Profundis. We may think so and yet perhaps hold that this strange document is at least sin cere in the hope of sincerity and in the belief that its author has indeed come by a new humility. In any case, Mr. Mac Liammoir makes good his interpretation by read ing the relevant passages in a voice which has suddenly taken wing. In summary, all but one of the eighteen reviews were clearly favorable; the exception was disorganized and cool. A tone of surprise was discernible in eight. Adverse criti cism appeared in seven: it was directed against the trite ness of the Lady Bracknell scene, the length of the Dorian Gray episode and of the whole program, the performance of Herod in French, the actor's "sonorous booming," his adul ation of Wilde and Wilde's works, and its lack of neatness. Most of these were seen as matters for praise in other re views. There was general approval of the structure of the program; five traced the structure in detail, four praising it as an accurate summary of Wilde's career and the fifth noting it as a meaty role for an actor. Seven reviews noted the brilliance and wit of the linking commentary, three suggesting that it was "Wildean" in its deftness. Five discussed Mac Liammoir*s versatility. Although the eighteen were almost unanimous in approving his perfor mance— the strictures upon his French, his "sonorous boom- 327 ing" and his lack of neatness were the only exceptions— few of them discussed the physical details: six described the set and one his clothing; three praised his memory, four his spontaneity and four his facility; a total of three offered something approaching a detailed analysis of his delivery. Similarly, of the seven references to his voice, perhaps four were specific. Finally, four reported that the audi ence reaction was favorable. Much of the criticism, naturally enough, centered around the fidelity of the portrait presented. It was gen erally conceded that there had been no attempt to "imitate" or "impersonate" Wilde in his physical appearance: seven made the point explicitly, and Hope-Wallace's reference to "lolling, quipping, impersonating" is almost certainly not to be taken literally. But there was some difference as to what was being attempted. Announcements in the Times and elsewhere had said it would be a "recital of readings"; and indeed "recital" was the term most commonly applied, "al though it appeared in only five reviews. The Express, the Times' Dublin review and the Sunday Times called it "act ing, " and the Times1 Court review said he "hardly ever" acted Wilde. The Telegraph called him a "raconteur," and the performance an "evocation"; later it suggested "stage- anthology." The idea of a portrait or a biography was pro minent in four reviews, although biographical references were of course common. The Times' Dublin review called 328 this spoken biography a new art. This scattering of terms suggests there was little agreement in describing the essence of the production. Shulman said Mac Liammoir was "essentially an oral biograph er— sometimes wry, sometimes impatient, but always impas sioned against the social wrongs he feels Wilde suffered." Muller thought he "re-creates for us Wilde's work, and, through it, the life of a poet [ofj greatness." Gibbs pro vided a rationalization for this view, observing that no writer was "more autobiographical" than Wilde, but his own view was a little different: Mr. Mac Liammoir does not so much impersonate Wilde as conjure up his personality. No attempt is made to achieve a likeness of appearance, though a likeness of manner is to be inferred from the many contemporary descriptions. The Times1 Dublin correspondent has been quoted to the ef fect that Wilde's speaking style had been re-created, and the Times' Apollo reviewer that he presented "in part a spiritual biography of the man and in part a study of the writer's development as an artist"; the Court reviewer's estimate was more conservative: "We see not the man in his habit as he lived, but the man who at one stage wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray and at another De Profundis." Punch said he brought "the spirit of Wilde to life" at the Apollo, and that he built up "a picture of Wilde as a man and a writer" at the Court. Shulman said that "one can see the full, amply-built young man with a Babylonian face carrying 329 in his pale, pointed hand a lily which he sniffed disdain fully while uttering something shockingly pithy." Caren Mayer was surprised at how much of Wilde's versatility had been included. Perhaps the majority view, then, was that the performance evoked Wilde the writer; a large minority held for Wilde the man; and in practice most of the review ers discussed both interchangeably. Judgments of Wilde himself did not play as clear a part in the assessments of the performance as might be ex pected. Two or three of the reviewers were strongly com mitted to the controversy, and perhaps inevitably their prose turned horticultural. "He makes the. blossoms of Oscar Wilde's genius bloom again in all their manifold splendour," wrote Muller; and Levin, after referring to "that unspeak able judge's sentence," offered these of his own: * As the noble voice speaks on, even our hatred and contempt for the hypocrisy of the society that destroyed him is burned and purged away. Across the years Mr. Mac Liammoir has joined hands with his great countryman and laid a beautiful flower on his tragic grave. Shulman, less botanical, was no less acrobatic: "One rec ognizes the lifting of a soul to artistic splendour by the tearing anguish of pain and humiliation." It may be that an antipathy to Wilde was responsible for Hope-Wallace's halt ing analysis: But ought one to insist on a less fond, a more obj ective portrait of the man? The drama is there, super ficially; but not, precisely, the dramatic irony— at 330 least not sufficiently. Trewin drew a distinction between the performance and its subject: The actor does everything to commend Wilde to us. . . . But I find myself admiring Mr. Mac Liammoir much more than I admire Wilde. And Hobson's breeziness may imply that the controversy was irrelevant: "Micheal Mac Liammoir, disarming prejudices, fights for Wilde with the panache, the gaiety, the ease of a brilliant fencer." But the majority of the critics held that his partisanship, though clear— and sometimes distrac ting— was not such as to distort the truth, and might indeed have helped to reveal it. Cookman said in the Tatler, for example, that Mac Liammoir's reading was almost enough to allay misgivings about Wilde's sincerity; the Times' Court review— (perhaps Cookman again)— said that "the actor per suades us that . . . he does justice to those works and to their author." Similarly Patrick Gibbs, who found "the pro ceedings a trifle too adulatory," concluded that the result was "true enough in essentials." The selections which the reviewers picked out for special praise were, in the main, those of spiritual auto biography. Tynan was alone in generalizing that the "Meph istophelean roles" were best; even Hobson, who also prefer red to see this as an exhibition of romantic acting, of fered the following as his example: . . . Half-way through his extraordinary perfor- 331 mance, when, in a letter to Robert Ross, Wilde first loses his splendid and insolent self-assurance, he is very moving indeed. Of the eleven other reviews that mentioned specific favor ites, eleven cited De Profundis; moreover, The Picture of Dorian Gray was mentioned in eight, The Importance of Being Earnest in five, The Ballad of Reading Gaol in four, and The Ideal Husband in two; Gibbs referred in addition to the poems to Lily Langtry and Ellen Terry. De Profundis and Dorian Gray, in short, were praised more often than all the others combined. The result, said Punch. was to establish a "fresh idea of Wilde's genius"; or, according to the Telegraph, "to throw a kinder light on a darkened reputation"; and, in the eyes of the Dublin reviewer: In one sense this performance puts biographies of Wilde out of date. No biography with the possible ex ception of Frank Harris's has evoked in print the essential quality of the most remarkable conversation ever to fall from the lips of a human being. Mr. Mac Liammoir is the last inheritor of the tradition of elo quent Irish conversation .... He is perfectly equip ped for the evocation of Wilde's style. Punch, the Observer and the Times' Court review agreed that the program was peculiarly appropriate to Mac Liammoir's talents. As to the intrinsic value of the method, or its ap parent future, the reviewers were generally silent. At the beginning of the Apollo run Muller objected to its two-week limit: 332 London audiences have persuaded Siobhan McKenna to stay longer with us than she had intended. We must similarly influence Mr. Mac Liammrfir. But in his Court review he said little more than that "you are advised not to miss it." No one took up a possible hint in the Royal Court programme, to the effect that the origi nal plans had called for an evening of Wilde, Joyce and Yeats. The production came and went almost in a vacuum; there were only two references to suggest a similarity to any other program— although in 1960 there had played in Lon don The Ages of Man, A Lovely Light, Dear Liar and Abelard and Heloise, and in Edinburgh, Mark Twain Tonight. The first of the comparisons occurred in the beginning of the Times' Apollo review; Mr. Micheal Mac Liammoir has come over from Dublin to show that he is as capable as any of our celebrated English virtuosos of holding the stage alone and an audience rapt for the whole of an evening. In the Tatler. Cookman too emphasized the fact of its being a solo: The period is singularly rich in one-man shows that rise easily above the second-rateness associated with this sort of enterprise in pre-Ruth Draper days. There is nothing of the flashy tour-de-force in Sir John Giel gud's Shakespeare recitals, in Mr. Emlyn Williams's ap pearances as Dickens at his platform reading-desk, or in Mr. Hal Johnson's f sic 1 impersonation of Mark Twain lecturing. These are completely considered performan ces which have held audiences all over the world spell bound, and Mr. Mac Liammoir's stage biography of Oscar Wilde belongs in the same class. It may be idle to wonder why the production was classified with other solos rather than with, say, other imports— Mark 333 Twain Tonight. A Lovely Light and Dear Liar, for instance. Dear Liar, Which he excluded, would accord better with Cook- man's rather fanciful explanation for the group's popularity than would The Ages of Man, which he included: the reason for such popularity, he speculated, was that actors instinc tively rejected the modern playwrights' attempts to make historical persons ordinary and mean, and were forced to turn biographers themselves to show "a Dickens, a Mark Twain or an Oscar Wilde . . . with all proper heroic cir- 7 3 cumstance." For whatever reason, the only comparisons made between Mac Liammoir's and other productions were on the bases of their being solos and their concerning liter ary figures. In summary, the uniqueness of the production seems to have been imputed largely to its being a stage biography that managed to show a wide variety of facets of Wilde the man and the artist. The selections most highly praised were those in which the artistic and spiritual autobiography was clearest. Although two or three critics revealed themselves as partisans of Wilde, and perhaps two others antagonistic, there was little tendency to measure the performance by its subject; most of the reviewers accepted Mac Liammoir's apol ogia for what it was, and concluded that it did not greatly 73 Cf. the Times' and perhaps Cookman's earlier ver sion of this idea, p. 314 above. 334 distort the facts of the case. A few— notably the Sunday papers— implied that the old controversies were largely irrelevant to the present performance, which they preferred to see chiefly as flamboyant acting. The terms applied to the performance were varied, and few were insisted upon: "acting" appeared prominently in four reviews; "recital" appeared in five; "portrait" or "biography" or "evocation" were other choices. Descriptions of its essential nature varied no less widely, but it was generally agreed that no attempt had been made to impersonate Wilde. Only two re views detected a similarity to other productions. V. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS The present chapter attempted to describe three solo performances in the West End, one at an Edinburgh Festival, and nine of the thirteen solo performances recorded on the London fringe during the period 1955-60. Of the West End shows, Arthur Blake's See the Stars, at the Duchess in 1955, did not finish its limited run; the Times' review indicated that the mimicry of famous persons was not adept and that the show might better be compressed to a variety turn. The second of the West End productions was Nel Oosthout's one-week season at the Fortune in 1956, when she offered The Chalk Circle and St. Joan as monodrama. Four of the five reviews encountered were respectful but un favorable; she was conceded to have an enormous vocal range, 335 and considerable physical versatility, but her female char acters were totally eclipsed by her males. The fifth review was derisive. There was no indication that either Blake or Oosthout had any influence upon subsequent productions. On the fringe, record was discovered of thirteen solo productions, of which nine secured a total of nineteen reviews. Five of these shows were in 1956: four of these received a total of ten reviews, of which six dealt with Rosalinde Fuller's short-story recital, Hearts and Faces. This production seems to have been the only solo of any consequence on the fringe during this period. It played, in one or other of its two versions, for over a month at the Arts, and received a cordial if not entirely favorable press. She was praised for the modesty of her aims, and for her strong grasp of story line; half of the reviewers praised her characterization of the narrators, but only one praised her characterization in general. There was an undercurrent, of apprehension lest she abandon the discipline which was felt to be the essence of her appeal; an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet was unanimously censured as tasteless and over done. Reviews of the other 1956 productions were mixed at best. Five reviews were discovered of two performances among the four recorded in 1957. Madalena Nicol was cen sured in both the Telegraph and the Times for her failure to characterize the invisible listeners in her monologues, but 336 the Times reported that her audience at the Arts was favor able. David KOssoff's program of Jewish tales, With One Eyebrow Slightly Up, received three mixed reviews, but ap parently could not command a sufficient audience to allow of more than seven successive Mondays at the small Arts. In 1958 Elspeth Douglas Reid brought to the Arts her program of character sketches which she had offered on the fringe of the Edinburgh Festival. She was praised in the Times for her perseverance but not her talent, and dismissed as routine in the Observer. Rosalinde Fuller brought a new program of short stories to the Arts, Subject to Love, and got a mixed review in the Times. No further record of solo fringe productions was found. Part of this disappearance was blamed on the design of the study, part upon the system of classification em ployed; but a greater part of the reason was undoubtedly the shrinking of the fringe itself. From twelve club thea tres in 1955 the total decreased to five in 1960 and two in 1961. Further, there was no evidence that the solo produc tions had been of a quality to merit some new outlet: none of the nineteen London reviews here discovered was enthusi astic, although one from Edinburgh was; six reviews of Hearts and Faces and two of With One Eyebrow Slightly Up were cordial, but over half of the total were unfavorable or worse. There was apparent in the beginning paragraphs of the later reviews a pattern of foreboding: only the very 337 talented, ran this refrain, can hold an audience alone, and such-and-such is not among the elect. It seemed unlikely that these solo performances exerted any beneficent influ ence upon subsequent productions in London; nor was there any clear reason for believing that they had been considered important enough to serve as a warning or example. Hal Holbrook's three performances of Mark Twain To night at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival received at least five reviews, all favorable,- but it was ignored by at least six other papers that were covering the Festival. Four of the five praised the historical accuracy of the impersonation, and the fifth praised rather the vividness of his character ization of an old man. Four offered some description of the method; three mentioned Emlyn Williams' Dickens productions and two ranked them higher than Holbrook's Twain but offered no reason for the preference. Although the reviews all were favorable, none suggested the show should go to London; five months later the Times * chief critic, writing in the Tatler, had forgotten Holbrook's name. Micheal Mac Liammoir's lecture-recital, The Impor tance of Being Oscar, played for a total of six weeks, in two limited runs at the Apollo and Royal Court theatres during the late fall and early spring of 1960-61. All but one of the eighteen reviews encountered were favorable if not enthusiastic; the lone exception was reluctantly favor able or cool. The details selected for adver&e criticism in 338 these reviews were scattered, and were likely to be those chosen for specific praise in some other review. There was general approval of the structure of the program, and seven reviews praised the pertinence and the wit of the linking commentary. Except for three adverse comments, none ad vanced strongly, there was unanimous approval of his deliv ery, though few critics stopped to analyze it: four of the seven references to his voice were reasonably specific, and perhaps three described his physical behavior in detail. It was generally conceded that there had been no attempt at a physical impersonation, although there was no clear con sensus as to whether the person "evoked" was Wilde the man or Wilde the artist. The majority treated it as both. The two selections most highly praised, compressed versions of The Picture of Dorian Gray and De Profundis, might support either option. Although two or three critics revealed their partisanship in the controversies about the justice of Wilde's fate, the majority held aloof; they indicated that Mac Liammoir1s own obvious commitment, though sometimes distracting, did not seriously compromise the accuracy of of his version. With one exception they would have agreed that the portrait "was true enough in its essentials." There was a tone of surprise discernible in eight of the eighteen reviews; one called it a new art, and even the least enthusiastic marveled that no one had thought of such a program before. No one detected any similarity to Emlyn 339 Williams' biography of Dylan Thomas, nor to Dear Liar, the dual evocation of Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell that had played at the Criterion less than three months be fore. No one saw any similarity to the storytellers on the fringe-— Rosalinde Puller or David Kossoff. Indeed, in only two reviews was there any indication that the show was not completely unique. The Times mentioned in passing that Mac Liammoir was "as capable as any of our celebrated English . J virtuosos"— (unnamed)— of holding a stage alone. The Tatler linked him with Gielgud, Willdans and "Johnson" (Holbrook) as an example of those who gave the "completely considered" one-man shows in which "the period is singularly rich." There may be equal significance in its being seen as unique— almost ten years after Williams-— as in its having been compared with other productions purely on the basis of its being a solo, when other categories were so conveniently at hand. For example, like Dear Liar, A Lovely Light and Mark Twain Tonight, to mention no others, it was a foreign import. Cookman's own explanation— that actors had turned biographer because, unlike modern playwrights, they wished to show historical figures and especially authors in all their grandeur— does not so clearly apply to The Ages of Man, which was included, as to Dear Liar and A Lovely Light, which were not; and the explanation should be probably be considered whimsy. Moreover, the use of the solo as a laudable category of West End performance contrasts strange 340 ly with the connotations of foreboding which it had worn in fringe productions from 1957 to 1959 at very least. Perhaps a reason for the prominence of this rather superficial category may be gained in Chapter VIII, which concerns the dramas of 1960-61 in which there were fairly clear elements of oral interpretation— dual storytelling, the "comedy of letters," and, by extension, the drama of letters. CHAPTER VIII READING-DRAMAS, 1958-1961 This chapter concerns four London productions which used storytelling or public reading as an intrinsic part of their presentation, and Which in addition demonstrated enough unity of plot, conflict of character and clarity of dramatic structure to qualify them at least debatably as plays. Dear Liar, Jerome Kilty's dramatization of the cor respondence between George Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell, is a familiar example of this kind of play; in deed, it is the major example in the present chapter. For want of a better term, such productions have here been given the arbitrary label, "reading-drama"? but the name is not to be insisted upon. Kilty called his play a "comedy of letters." That term might have been adopted here except that Sir Michael Redgrave used it for his con ventional staging of Henry James's The Aspern Papers; more over it is inappropriate to the rather mournful Abelard and Heloise. This last was subtitled "a correspondence for the stage"; Love and Lectures, another case in point, was called merely a "concert reading" in Chapter V above; Kreutzer Sonata was "a theatrical entertainment for two characters" who, the programme added, were "simply going to tell you the 341 342 story." None of these alternatives is clearly superior to "reading-drama" as a description of a play that used public reading as an important part of its form. The present chapter devotes a section to each of the four productions in turn; section five offers some provi sional conclusions. The first section concerns Love and Lectures, an unusual concert reading of parts of the Shaw- Terry correspondence; discussion of this program was de ferred from Chapter V above.^ Section two describes the London reaction to Dear Liar, which played at the Bath Fes tival and then at the Criterion Theatre in the summer of 1960. The third section treats briefly of a controversial play by Ronald Duncan, Abelard and Heloise, which opened at the Arts a few months later. The fourth concerns Kreutzer Sonata, a sort of storytelling duet which some critics linked with Dear Liar and which played at the Arts in the summer of 1961. The Art of Seduction, The Royal Shakes peare Company's 1962 adaptation of Laclos' Les Liaisons Dangereuses, might have well have been included in this chapter; but as it clearly derived from The Hollow Crown— to be discussed in Chapter IX— its treatment has been de- 2 ferred to that chapter instead. ^See above, p. 192. 2 See below, pp. 412-21. I. LOVE AND LECTURES. 1958 343 Like Don Juan in Hell, Love and Lectures was a con cert reading whose English premiere was surrounded by so many adventitious circumstances as to lead all too easily to fruitless speculation; the temptation is to believe that if either production had opened a few weeks or months later than it did, it might have changed the course of oral inter pretation as a form of professional theatre in London. In April, 1958, when it did Love and Lectures, the Theatre Workshop was highly respected by the avant-garde in Paris and London, but doubtless was little known to the or dinary playgoer, except perhaps for its 1955 production of The Good Soldier Schweik and its 1956 success, The Quare Fellow. Under the leadership of Joan Littlewood and John Bury it combined "method" acting, Brechtian stagecraft and left-wing politics in "people's theatre" productions at the 502-seat Theatre Royal, out in the London working-class 3 district of Stratford East. Love and Lectures opened there on April 15, 1958, and ran for two weeks as a curtain-raiser to a revival of 3 Seatxng data from Lytton's Theatre and Concert Hall Seating Plans, 1960-61 (London: The Dancing Times, Ltd., 11960151 capacity is set at 487 in Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson, The Theatres of London (London: Rupert Hart- Davis, 1961), p. 250. Stratford (Chaucer's Stratford-atte-Bowe) is called Stratford East in the present study to distinguish it from Stratford-on-Avon. 344 Shaw's The Man of Destiny. As The Times explained, "by re calling to the audience the circumstances through which [Shaw's play} struggled towards its first production," the Workshop hoped to justify its playing, without benefit of stars, a piece designed chiefly for bravura acting. It con tinued: Extracts from the Shaw-Terry letters outline the comedy of negotiations between the self-consciously in corruptible critic-dramatist and the unhurrying, mis trustful Irving with the amused Ellen Terry as go-be tween. The prologue achieves its purpose. It whets our appetite for the play which is to follow. But the ironic conclusion to the evening is that there appears to be much more fun in the letters than in the play which they are discussing. The Manchester Guardian too thought that the relationships among the three "turned out to be more fascinating" than the 5 play. Cecil Wilson commended the reading as "a more per sonal peep at Shaw" than My Fair Lady promised to be, and he described the method thus: They are given as straight as Emlyn Williams's readings from Dickens and Dylan Thomas. No dressing up and, in this case, not so much as a Shavian beard.® Kenneth Tynan stated the implicit conclusion: 4"The Man of Destiny: Revival With Historical Pro logue," The Times (hereafter cited as Times), April 16, 1958, p. 3. 5 The Manchester Guardian (hereafter cited as Guar dian or Guard.), April 17, p. 8. 6 Cecil Wilson, "A Private Peep at Shaw," Daily Mail (hereafter cited as Mail), April 16, p. 3. 3 4 5 From the evening as a whole two thoughts emerged: one, that Irving was quite right to turn the piece down, and two, what a wonderful evening, as enthralling as any but the best of Shaw's plays, might be made out of ex tracts from his correspondence (with Mrs. Pat as well as Ellen T.) and his critical articles in the Saturday Re view. "Shaw the Non-Dramatist" might be the title. And he went on immediately to an even more explicit recom mendation: If a Welshman can cope with Dickens he can manage almost anything: and I therefore call on Emlyn Williams to find two congenial, actressy women, back them up with a disapproving bust of Irving, and go ahead. In short, the production secured reactions of surprise and approval from the four reviewers known to have covered it. It was, however, ignored by at least seven of the national dailies and weeklies; and the Guardian referred to "a very small audience." The reviewers1 enthusiasm does not seem to have been aroused by any marked excellence they saw in the perfor mance so much as by the possibilities they saw in the method and subject. Of the performers Wilson reported merely that "Richard Harris stood reading Shaw's letters; Jill Booty sat reading Ellen Terry's; and James Booth provided the linking commentary." The Guardian called Harris "untidy and uncer tain whether to be Welsh or Irish"; the Times praised Miss Booty for reading "with a charm that somehow loses itself" in the play to follow. Tynan said nothing of the acting, 7 N Kenneth Tynan, The Observer (hereafter cited as Ob server or Obs.), April 20, p. 15. 346 but he suggested that someone else do the show he envi sioned. The mention of Emlyn Williams in half of the reviews is unusual; there appeared no clear reason for associating him with this production rather than half a dozen others that have been discussed above. However, a month previous he had directed and acted in a new play of his, Beth, which proved unsuccessful; so there may have been some gossip about his future as a playwright in an age of "angry" thea- g tre. For whatever reason, the connection was not cemented; Williams returned to the Globe in September with a revival of A Boy Growing Up— in the programme of which he in turn proposed that his method be applied to the works of Wilde g and Hugo. It was an American, Jerome Kilty, who prepared the dramatization of the Shaw-Campbell correspondence which Tynan partly foresaw;'*'® ironically, when Dear Liar came to London, Tynan reviewed it— favorably— in less than one par enthetic sentence.^ g Cf. Marriott1s and Findlater's earlier speculations, p. 11 above. 9 See above, p. 217. • * ' 0In point of fact, Dear Liar had opened in Chicago a year previous, but until Katharine Cornell and Brian Aherne agreed to take it on tour in the U.S. and Elisabeth Bergner played it in Berlin— about six months after Love and Lec tures— there would seem no reason for Tynan to have been aware of its existence. ■^See below, p. 352. 347 The major irony, however, was that four weeks after Love and Lectures finished its run at this out-of-the-way and relatively unknown theatre, Theatre Workshop mounted its enormously successful A Taste of Honey, which transferred to the West End for a run of 350 performances; and six months later it produced The Hostage, which also transferred and "immediately became the fashionable show for English theatre- 12 goers to see." The following year the Workshop won the popular— almost lowbrow— Evening Standard's award for the year's best musical with Make Me an Offer; and it followed up with the even more popular Fings Ain't Wot They Used t 'Be. In February, 1960, the Workshop had three hits run ning simultaneously in the West End. Love and Lectures, then, was produced about two months before Theatre Workshop became the talk of the town. The inference is almost inescapable that if it had opened just after A Taste of Honey instead of just before, it may have been no more successful, but at least it would have been noticed. Beyond this there can be only speculation. No evi dence was found of Love and Lectures' possessing the drama tic structure that would make it an early reading-drama and ^prances Stephens (ed.). Theatre World Annual (Lon don) : A Pictorial Review . . . (hereafter cited in notes as TWA), 1959-1960 (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1960), p. 34; see also p. 7. 348 a true precursor of Dear Liar. The Times saw it only as a prologue. Tynan objected to the adaptor's having "inex plicably omitted" Shaw's letters to Irving protesting the play's refusal; whether this suggests that the structure was incomplete or merely untidy is an open question. All that is clear is that Love and Lectures was a concert reading that excited four influential reviewers, one of them so much that he saw in the form potentialities of "enthralling" theatre of the highest quality. II. DEAR LIAR, 1960 Dear Liar, "a comedy of letters adapted by Jerome Kilty from the correspondence of Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Pat rick Campbell,was first played at the Studebaker Theatre in Chicago; it opened on April 26, 1957, with Kilty and his wife, Cavada Humphrey, as the cast. In October 1959 Elisa beth Bergner played it in Berlin; and about the same time Katharine Cornell and Brian Aherne began to tour in it across the United States, visiting sixty-six cities before opening in New York at the Billy Rose Theatre on March 17, 1960, and playing there for fifty-two performances. New York reviews "ranged from lukewarm to red hot.'1*-4 Ten days 13 Title page of the published version (London: Max Reinhardt, 1960). See too p. 6 for some production dates. 14,lWhat the Critics Say," New York World-Teleqram, March 18, 1960, p. 24. See also New York Theatre Critics' Reviews, XXI (1960), pp. 317-20. 349 after the Cornell-Aherne version closed in New York, the Humphrey-Kilty cast played it at the Olympia in Dublin, and then moved on to the Theatre Royal, Bath, where it opened on May 20 as part of the 1960 Bath Festival. On-June 14 Jerome Kilty and Cavada Humphrey began a seven-week run at the Cri terion in London. v .. Three reviews were found of the Bath production— all favorable, and all mentioning the almost empty theatre. Each was surprised by the production: Darlington said that "besides its more solid qualities [it] had that of complete novelty"; the Times' drama critic— and not a "special cor respondent"— called it "unusual and fascinating"; Trewin called "this unexpected piece" "a theatrical experience that will surprise," and went on to explain: Maybe this does not sound inviting: two players, un known here, holding a theatre with quotations from a bunch of letters. All I can say is that, within ten minutes, one becomes absorbed. Shaw and Mrs. Campbell were naturally theatrical figures. The letters cannot help being dramatic, and Mr. Kilty's arrangement keeps the curve of the friendship . . . through the years to final moments that should touch any playgoer. . . . Darlington said there was "throughout a clever avoi dance of the monotony which at first seemed inevitable." All three reviews were cordial to the performers. ^W. a . Darlington, "Letters into Vivid Play," The Daily Telegraph (hereafter cited as Telegraph or Tele.), May 19, 1960, p. 14; J. C. Trewin, The Illustrated London News (hereafter cited in notes as I.L.N.), June 4, p. 994; Times, May 19, p. 18. 350 The Times and Telegraph referred to the absence of "imper sonation" and "disguise"? The Illustrated London News said "the two players had made little attempt, vocally or visual ly, to impersonate Shaw and Mrs. Pat." Two mentioned Kil ty's "touch of an Irish accent." Miss Humphrey was "a flex ible speaker" in Trewin*s account, and had, for the Times, a "grace that pleasantly suggests that of Miss Lynn Fon- tanne"? Darlington said: Mr. Kilty is a lively and amusing actor and Miss Humphrey, though she lacks at times the force which any impersonator of Mrs. Pat should have, rises well to her best chances.16 The Times referred in addition to the "remarkable theatrical assurance" of the production, and the Telegraph agreed that "it holds you with a strange certainty for two hours and a half." As for its future, Darlington did not commit him self, but Trewin went this far: I am not saying that this is an occasion for all playgoers? but I believe that those who submit them selves to the experiment will be astonished .... And the Times said that "if a small theatre can be found for it there should be a welcome in London for this sensitive and out of the way theatrical entertainment." 16Darlington later said he never saw Mrs. Pat in "any of her more famous performances"? Tele.. April 10, 196], p. 15. But he probably saw her in her prime? Cookman, who may have written either or both of the Times reviews, al most certainly saw her at the height of her career. Cf. Hope-Wallace, p. 360 below. 351 A fairly small theatre was found— the 660-seat Cri terion in Picadilly Circus, where Williams first played his Dickens "Mixed Bill" in the West End.-^ The opening, on June 14, 1960, was two months after Gielgud revived The Ages I of Man at the Haymarket, four days before Dorothy Stickney's A Lovely Light closed prematurely, and about ten weeks before Mac Liammoir 'brought The Importance of Being Oscar to the Apollo. It was a lively summer in London: Pinter's The Caretaker had just moved to the Duchess; Guinness was play ing in Ross, Olivier in Rhinoceros, Redgrave in The Aspern Papers; and a hit musical, Oliver!, had just opened at the New. A minor complication— in the weekend reviews, if not in the bookings by summer visitors-— was the concurrent re vival of Shaw's Candida, with Michael Denison and Dulcie 18 Gray, at the Picadilly. Hence Dear Liar's lasting to the end of July, for a total of fifty-four performances, appears 19 a respectable achievement indeed. ■^See above, p. 83. 18 The Picadilly, logically enough, is not in Pica dilly but in Denman Street; it is hard to believe that a number of casual playgoers were not confused by the ambig uous permutations of "that couple in the Shaw thing in Pica dilly. " Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray appeared in Drag on 's Mouth; see above. Chapter II. 19 The day after it opened, Muller pointed out m an other connection that in the previous three months, twelve productions had lasted "less than a fortnight: there have been more quick flops than ever before," Mail, June 15, p. 6. Frances Stephens, "Review of the Year," TWA 1959-60, p. 7, said: "The first part of 1960 is likely to be remem- 352 A total of eleven reviews was found, of which Ty nan's parenthetic reference to a "sprightly duologue" is too 20 21 short perhaps to be counted. Of the remaining ten, Shulman's alone was enthusiastic: he thought it "an evening to be savoured by theatre lovers." A. V. Coton, of the Telegraph, thought it "as cunningly devised a piece of thea tre as we have seen for a long time"— one that "confirms the warm opinions expressed in these pages" by Darlington. Trewin confirmed his own earlier review of "this summoning and touching programme"; and the Times alluded to its ear lier notice of what it now called "an entertainment of rare bered for the unusual number of short runs, while towards the end of the period [i.e., May 31, 1960] a positive land slide occurred, which, as might be expected, made headlines in the popular daily press." 20 Kenneth Tynan, Obs., June 19, 1960, p. 24. He de voted one and one-half columns to a Brecht production at the Mermaid; then he inserted the Dear Liar squib into some gen eralizations about Candida. As he had foreseen an "enthral ling" evening from this kind of program two years before, the implication is that he was dismissing Dear Liar, what ever his explicit wording. ^Arranged roughly in order of decreasing approval: Milton Shulman, "This Was a Night to Savour," Evening Stan dard (hereafter cited as Standard or Stand.), June 15, 1960, p. 16; Eric Keown, Punch, June 22, p. 887; A. V. Coton, "Cunning Comedy of Letters," Tele., June 15, p. 14; Times, June 15, p. 4; J. C. Trewin, I.L.N., June 25, p. 1136; Har old Hobson, The Sunday Times (hereafter cited in notes as Sun. T.), June 19, p. 35; Richard Findlater, Sunday Dis patch, June 19, p. 32; Robert Muller, "Two Super-Egos Clash with Wit and Charm," Mail, June 15, p. 3; Bernard Levin, "It's Surprising but This is a Wonderful Play," Daily Ex press (hereafter cited as Express or Exp.), June 15, p. 13; Philip Hope-Wallace, Guard., June 16, p. 9. 353 wit, intelligence and originality." Eric Keown called it "a refreshingly witty evening"; Harold Hobson, cooler, said that "in the end its effect is not negligible." Muller was ambiguous, both in his reference to a "civilised, intermit tently witty and charming entertainment," and in his main taining simultaneously that the "almost successful" produc tion had been carried off "effectively." Levin was enthusi astic about the play but strong in his disapproval of Cavada Humphrey. Hope-Wallace concluded that "it is pluckily done and earns its applause honestly," but was generally unfavor able. Excluding Tynan's squib, the ten reviews could be classified thus: one was enthusiastic and four clearly favorable; one was favorable but cool, and one favorable but very brief; two were mixed, with one tending to approval and the other almost adverse; one was generally disapproving. Five reviewers clearly were surprised. "Dear Liar," Keown began, "is a theatrical feat which I should have thought impossible"; he seems to have found two sources of surprise--either of which was enough for the others. The first was that the reading of a collection of letters "turns out to be not at all the unwieldy exercise in sound but an extremely vivid impression of two fascinating people." Levin echoed this idea, albeit contradictorily: he called Kilty's a "brilliant idea," and continued, "The result, against all the odds, is a wonderful play." Muller used three paragraphs to pose the same paradix. Coton's verdict, 354 that "against odds, the piece holds beautifully together," appears to echo Levin's? but it was probably directed at the other major source of surprise: the"sheer bravado," as he called it earlier, of two players' setting out "to create . . . the greatest dramatist and greatest actress of the English Theatre of their period." Keown put it thus: Mr. Kilty and Miss Humphrey begin by reading the letters, and after a few minutes they have suddenly become Shaw and Mrs. Campbell, with the same magic with which Ruth Draper used to merge her personality. Findlater said that "magically they get beneath the skins of the correspondents." Hope-Wallace's "it was pluckily done" might almost have made a sixth, if his main reaction had been more favorable. Adverse criticism of Dear Liar, as with that of The Ages of Man, was marked less by expressions of disapproval than by withholding approval at points where the context made it expected, or by affecting a sort of breezy conde scension— as in Muller's "to spin this worthy exercise into a show . . . ." Examples of this damning with faint praise will arise in discussion of the elements in their turn? here a summary of the sources of disaffection may suffice. One said the show was too long? two referred to flat moments? three objected either to Shaw's letter about his mother's cremation or to the inclusion of such a letter in this pro gram? and— probably the strongest criticism although not clearly the most widespread— four said Cavada Humphrey's 355 performance was inadequate to Mrs. Campbell's reputation. The construction of the program was described by the Guardian thus: . . . [it is] extracted in the main from the pungent correspondence exchanged between George Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell. There is some linking comment, a few imagined and well documented scenes such as the author's rehearsal for "Pygmalion" and the author ex plaining to Mrs. Pat how and why Edith Evans had suc ceeded in the Orinthia scenes in "The Apple Cart." To these the Mail sourly added: "a 25-minute interval, and some snatches of recorded music." There was considerable comment upon the content of the letters. Levin called this correspondence not as "deep" as the Terry letters, "but in range it is far more exciting, elaborate and exquisite." Hobson noted that "Shaw's letters are devastatingly heart less, but a lot of their wit survives." Tynan, trying to review Dear Liar and Candida simultaneously, said that Mor- ell had written Shaw's plays and the poet Marchbanks his letters; then, wrenching his metaphor, he said he could not imagine a better description of this correspondence— which two years earlier he had said would make an enthralling evening— than Marchbanks' description of wicked people: "They have the power to ask love because they don't need it: they have the power to offer it because they have none to give." Shulman noted only that "strangely enough, Mrs. Campbell's own wit and spirit almost matches the genius of Shaw's [sic] •" Six reviews mentioned Shaw's description of his 356 mother's cremation. Shulman was neutral; Hope-Wallace was elliptical: "[the play] has its flat moments: Shaw descri bing his mother's funeral in print is one thing, a deputy speaking the words is another." Muller was hardly less so: "The evening's highlight [was] Shad's piously horrible des cription of his mother's funeral." Muller probably intended this as praise, but his style is too loose for clear infer ence. Levin called it "the most beautiful of all the let ters," and berated Miss Humphrey for lacking the sort of fire it described. Keown regretted Shaw's "gruesome inter est," and Hobson said: "Shaw's celebrated bit of fine wri ting about his mother's cremation still seems to me inex cusable." What Punch called "a feat of selection and arrange ment" was criticized by the Mail as far too long and lacking in conflict. The Telegraph said it offered "a series of in triguing flashbacks on the war of words fought between two giants," and the Guardian conceded that "the clash of tem perament delights any reasonably undemanding audience." The Times thought the structure tighter than that: "The letters provide action and a definite plot moving with pathetic in evitability to a moving conclusion." The Express devoted a column to enthusiastic description of the rise and fall of the action. The Sunday Times said "the story grows in power as the night goes on"; Punch "thought there were slight longueurs in the first act, but none in the second." But 357 the Guardian was dissatisfied with the structure: Mrs. Pat's sad days of penury and meanness need more than occasional illustrating, in fits and comic starts. The total effect is an impoverishment of legend, even of what went between a book's covers; it is theatre which limps a little behind what it treats. This was the strongest, and,with the Mail's, the only sus tained attack upon the structure. Except for the contro versy over the inclusion of Shaw's cremation letter, and some scattered references to dull spots, the other reviews either implicitly approved or explicitly praised the selec tion and arrangement of the material. The presentation of the "duologue" was not dis cussed as thoroughly as was its construction. The Times and the Illustrated London News referred in passing to the sim plicity of the method, but only the Mail offered any de tailed description: Two people, an actor and an actress, impersonating George Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell without the aid of any special make-up, enter the stage, open a hat-box containing the letters . . . and proceed to read them out to the audience. Or rather to speak them. There was almost no other reference to the way the play was done. Five of the eleven reviews, including Tynan's, termed Dear Liar a "duologue," and another two a "duet"; an eighth called it "a kind of charade." Three of these, how ever, also called it "a play"— the term applied by Punch and the Times. Hence "duologue" and "play" were equally popu lar. A total of seven reviews commented upon the imper- 358 sonation. Trewin, Findlater, Shulman and Keown agreed that neither performer had tried to "impersonate" or "imitate"; Muller said they "impersonated without the aid of any special make-up." Coton seems to have misread the programme, which 22 disclaimed impersonation, and said they "set out to create, as they admit, impersonations . . . Hope-Wallace read more closely but was equally unimpressed: Then there is the disconcerting element of the per formers' own personalities which impinge, whatever the disclaimers issued to the effect that they do not wish to "impersonate" Mr Shaw or Mrs Campbell. Kilty was, for example, too short to play Shaw— surely a captious criticism in view of Hope-Wallace*s description of the program as "a staged duologue for male and female voices." After some allowance has been made for metaphor, he was the only critic who clearly invoked the criterion of physical or historical realism. But on the verbal level two critics said the players were impersonating and five said they were not. Judging from their metaphors, five critics endorsed Trewin's verdict: "We are left with the feeling that we have been in the presence of G. B. S. and Mrs. Pat them- 22 The programme, MS in the Gabrielle Enthoven Thea tre Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum (hereafter cited as "Enthoven"), says: "We do not impersonate G. B. S. and 'Mrs. Pat.' We give them to you as we find them in their letters, creatures of the brain and the spirit, to be imagined and fulfilled by the mind of the audience." 359 selves." Keown1s praise of the "uncommonly skilful acting" has been quoted, wherein they were said to have "suddenly become" the characters* cited too was Findlater's claim that they got "beneath the skin" of the characters. Muller des cribed the effect of the players1 "heroic technical accom plishment" as the creation of "two gushing, attitudinising, anecdotal bores, whom we grow to love." Shulman, more pleased with the play, was equally impressed with the play ers: Whether reading about his mother's funeral or abus ing Mrs. Campbell's interpretation of Eliza, one can catch in the high-lilting, Irish cadences of Jerome Kilty's voice the real impish irreverence of Shaw him self. And Cavada Humphrey's statuesque, aloof and cynical ly flirtatious Mrs. Campbell fits in admirably with all we have read of this fabulous creature. The Times disregarded the whole question of verisimilitude: they played "with a variety of mood, an urgency and a grace of wit that matches the letters themselves." Of the remaining five, the Observer said nothing, and four said with varying amounts of vehemence that Miss Humphrey's performance was inadequate to the role. Coton said she "cannot quite re-create the witty, humane and baf fling Mrs. Pat," and Hobson concurred: Miss Cavada Humphrey is pointed and alert, . . . but the magic of her illustrious predecessor is not very evident in her competent performance. Hope-Wallace found the personalities of both performers "disconcerting": 360 We are confronted with the adaptor himself, Mr Jer ome Kilty, who is much shorter and cosier than Shaw, one does not fail to observe, and has transatlantic inflec tions which in the circumstances are infelicitbusly alien to our memories of Shaw's Irish twang. He puts great spirit into his delivery, however, and seemed, of the twain, more at home in the assumption than Miss Cavada Humphrey who gives what seems more like a parody of Miss Martita Hunt than anything that one remembers of Mrs Campbell. And Levin, who had devoted two of his three columns to very high and very general praise of the letters and the struc ture of the play, began his discussion of the performance with a pronouncement straight out of the Ion: But, if you are going to portray a legend like Mrs. Pat, even before an audience who never saw her, you must be almost as good an actress yourself. He said he had seen Bergner in the part, and could "feel yet 24 her flashing fiery strength"; however: In London the part . . . is played by Miss Cavada Humphrey (Mrs. Kilty), and she simply will not do. Her voice is plummy where it should be natural, too often weak where it should be strong, and lacking almost entirely the fire that should consume her words as the fire Shaw describes, in the most beautiful of all the letters, consuming his mother at her cremation. 23 Anything that one remembered of Mrs. Campbell on a London stage would be no more recent than 1928, when one was sixteen and she sixty-three; one might have seen her acting as late as 1933, in Bournemouth, when one was twenty-one. See the relevant entries, WWT 9 and 12. 24 Cf. his review of the Old Vic's The Seagull. Exp., September,2, 1960, p. 13: "The verdict must be that for those who know no bet ter this will do: but for those who have seen the great Tarasova clutch her heart when she hears the shot that has killed her son it will not." 361 Miss Humphrey was singled out for praise in one review, and in four others she shared the praise with Kilty; two disap proved her performance, and two others attacked it. Whether, or to what extent, the players were really being measured by their ability to "become" the historical Shaw and Mrs. Campbell must remain open questions; the an alysis of metaphor— especially in newspaper prose— was far outside the competence of the present study. But the scar city of illustrative detail should be noted. Hope-Wallace mentioned physical height and American accent; two others referred to Kilty's "hint" of Irish accent, and one called Miss Humphrey "statuesque." Probably none of the reviewers except Hope-Wallace assigned his praise or blame on a basis even remotely similar to that which supported, for example, the Mail1s judgment of Holbrook ten weeks later: "He is 25 Mark Twain, as near as makes no difference.1 1 Finally and in passing, there were three references to the actors' nationality. Hope-Wallace found Kilty's ac cent infelicitous "in the circumstances"; Findlater noted merely that they were an American couple; but Coton reflec ted: "For Shaw, in whatever heaven he occupies, it must provide a sardonic pleasure that this bristling biography has been devised and is played hot by English but by 25 Cecil Lewis, Mail, September 1, 1960, p. 3; see above, p. 312. 362 American actors." Dear Liar, then, was received favorably but not en thusiastically by the majority of reviewers who were found to have covered its production either at Bath or at the Cri terion: of the three Bath and ten Criterion reviews, eight were clearly favorable or enthusiastic, and two others were favorable but brief or cool; two were mixed, and one was unfavorable. Eight were clearly surprised, either by the construction of a play out of correspondence, or by the players' success in re-creating such formidable personali ties as those of Shaw and Mrs. Campbell. There was con siderable discussion of the contents of the letters and of their background; six mentioned Shaw's description of his mother's funeral, three unfavorably. One objected to the length of the program, and one attacked it as "an impover ishment of legend"; but except for scattered hints about dull spots, the others approved the structure. Although two of the fourteen said the actors were impersonating and eight said they were not, six praised the acting for its having conjured up the personalities of Shaw and Mrs. Campbell, and one attacked it for having conspicuously failed to do so. Miss Humphrey's performance lacked magic or depth, according to two; two others said it was totally inadequate. The play was not compared to any others, nor was there any suggestion that the method was adaptable to other material. To which might be added as postscript the fact that 363 both Darlington and Shulman remembered it a year later, when 26 reviewing Kreutzer Sonata; but Darlington did not mention it in either of two long reviews of the Shaw-Campbell cor respondence in April of 1961.^ III. ABELARD AND HELOISE. 1960 About three months after Dear Liar closed, there was a brief but lively controversy over a play that consisted entirely of twelve letters, spoken or read by two characters who stood, generally immobile, at opposite sides of the stage and never addressed each other directly. Hence its method was closer to pure public reading or declamation than was that of Dear Liar where— waiving all other considera tions— there were two scenes of enacted rehearsal. The play, Abelard and Heloise, was given closer scrutiny than such an experiment might ordinarily have had to endure because it was written by Ronald Duncan, who, on the basis of his 1945 success, This Way to the Tomb, had at one time been considered by British theatre annalists as one of the leaders, with T. S. Eliot and Christopher Fry, of the postwar "renaissance of poetic drama." Moreover, there was controversy over the authenticity of the letters themselves: they were first advanced— and accepted by the Times, for 26 See below, pp. 369-70. ^Tele., April 10 and 24, 1961. 364 example— as free translations of "a Latin edition published in Edinburgh in 1750"; but Hobson as much as called them spurious; and in the published version Duncan called the play "merely a poem I wrote for the stage after having read 28 the English translation of the letters." Abelard and Heloise played at the 339-seat Arts for approximately one week, beginning October 24, 1960— a week before the London opening of The Importance of Being Oscar and two weeks before the Apollo Society's special concert reading of "Savonarola Brown." Virginia Maskell and Iain Cuthbertson were the cast; "the two actors, darkly robed as a nun and a monk and as darkly lit," said the Times, "move only from writing desks to praying chairs, and the contents 29 of the letters are left to make their own drama." Only one of the eight reviews consulted was favor- 30 able. The Mail said: "Under the surface it engages the 28 Ronald Duncan, "Foreword," Abelard and Heloise: A Correspondence for the Stage in Two Acts (London: Faber and Faber, 1961), p. 11. 29 Times, October 25, 1960, p. 14. 30 In order of increasing hostility: Peter Lewis, "Mr. Duncan Shows His Power," Mail, Oct. 25, p. 3; Times, loc. cit.; J. W. M. Thompson, "Mr. Duncan's Love Story is an Oft-Repeated Cry," Stand., Oct. 25, p. 18; Peter Jenkins, Guard., Oct. 26;, p. 7; Harold Hobson, "A Lively Girl Got tost," Sun. T.. Oct. 30, p. 35; A. V. C. [otonj , "Play of Static Speeches," Tele.. Oct. 25, p. 15; Kenneth Tynan, Qbs., Oct. 30, p. 26; Bernard Levin, "A Play for Two Gets the Ver dict Balderdash," Exp., Oct. 25, p. 15. 365 mind as grippingly as a string quartet . '. . . It contains some of the most distinguished dialogue in the modern thea tre." The Times was noncommittal or slightly unfavorable; the Standard said that at least "it commands respect." The Guardian called it a "ping-pong of passions," and the Sunday Times said it "resembles more the antiphonal form of a ca thedral service than a play"? the Observer dismissed it as "alternate cascades of complaint"? and in the Express Levin • p said he could not "remember ever setting eyes and ears on such a parade of unmitigated balderdash." Of the eight re views— four written by substitutes— one was favorable, two were slightly unfavorable or almost neutral, four were clearly unfavorable; and one was hostile. Moreover, the Times carried a story about someone who stormed out shouting 31 "Rubbish!" and hit Duncan in the eye. The play was attacked first as too static to be a play at all. Jenkins, in the Guardian, saw it as a sign that "the whole Third Programme way of life . . . has re gained a toe-hold in the West End." Levin said, in part: [There arej only two characters, and their only words are gigantic monologues .... The only thing wrong with this, basically, is that it destroys all possibility of anything resembling drama: if the characters never address each other directly, never say anything resembling dialogue, it is hard to see what the thing is doing in a theatre. 31 October 26, p. 12. V 366 Thompson, in the Standard made much the same point: They never meet. Each speaks a letter in turn .... Every one of these letters, except perhaps the final two, is a cry. But is one reiterated cry of pain a play? It might have seemed more like one if Mr. Duncan had somehow conjured more sense of movement, more light and shade even, from the exchange. Instead, he holds remorse lessly to one note. Lewis, the only favorable reviewer, thought that "except in the hands of a writer of tremendous power, this would not make a play at all." Hobson, unfavorable, nevertheless de fended its structure: Yet a play it is, for it has, though slowly, the movement of drama, and its peripeteia, for Heloise be gins in anguish and ends in serenity, and Abelard passes from serenity to anguish. The ground on which Lewis defended its being a play— its distinguished dialogue— was conceded by no one else. The Times said only that the ideas were arranged with lucidity and sincerity; the Telegraph said, "the language throughout is too measured, too prolix," and too convention ally poetic. "The long tides of unmitigated eloquence flow on," said Hobson, "the big words, the gigantic metaphors follow inexorably after each other . . . ." Levin was almost vicious: The language defies description: it will only bear quotation. When it is not being relentlessly mock- poetic ("My heart's been deaf because my soul is dumb"), it is being so flat and dull and anachronistic that it sets one's teeth on edge. He followed this with four prosy examples of "dead-weight," 3 6 7 and concluded that Duncan wrote like a grocer. Hobson's defense of its being a play— its peripeteia — was conceded by no one else. The Guardian dismissed the ending as "a woman's trick," and the Times and Standard called it too abrupt to be convincing. Hobson, incidental ly, devoted one and one-half columns to a discussion of Latin quotations from the historical Heloise's letters— to show "what a racy language Latin can be"— and concluded that Duncan's real mistake was to miss this wonderful woman com pletely. The performance was treated, a little less harshly than was the script. The Mail thought the two actors "suc ceeded remarkably in portraying continuous anguish"; the Telegraph said they did their best; the Standard said they played with "strained emotional tautness." The Guardian said Miss Maskell spoke her part beautifully, and the Times thought her "quietly effective." "Mr. Cuthbertson," added the Times, "is impressive whenever he can restrain his tend ency to shout." Tynan was less tactful: This epistolary duet . . . is intoned by Virginia Maskell (p and mf) and Iain Cuthbertson (f^ and £f, plus beard) .... There can have been few theatrical occa sions on which the need for artificial aids to hearing was less evident. Levin did not mention the actors at all. None of the reviews praised the production method, and at least two censured it. The Times' reference to the darkness and spareness of the production has been cited 368 above; the Guardian and Express gave sarcastic descriptions, but the Observer, Standard and Sunday Times were noncommit tal. Jenkins claimed that the play was the means whereby "the whole Third Programme way of life . . . has regained a toe-hold in the West End"; the charge may have been intended to connote abstract discussion and poetry recitals, but un supported and clearly premature as it was, it is too vague to merit probing. Coton may have been protesting too much in this: I am in favour of any form of stage, any type of production . . . to put across a dramatic idea. This script in two acts is played out inside two hours by Heloise and Abelard conducting alternate monologues of durations from two to 10 minutes. But the rest of his review dealt with the language of those monologues, which made them sound "like the goings-on at a political conference." And Levin, more clearly hostile to the absence of movement and interplay, nevertheless claimed that these "would not alone justify the harshness of my verdict," and opened an even stronger attack upon the lan guage. No one drew any parallel to Dear Liar or to any other production. And so, although there was probably no less objection to a dramatic method which relied upon two stationary actors' reading letters aloud than to the lack of action within the letters themselves, both criticisms com bined do not appear to have been major sources of disaffec tion. Doubtless Abelard and Heloise failed from the sheer 369 weight of its unusual circumstances. Duncan's reputation had been inflated. His subject was one of the great love stories of western civilization, and his hero a major phil osopher of the Middle Ages. His dramatic situation skirted the edges of blasphemy and of ribaldry: a concupiscent woman— worse in a liberal Protestant country, a nun— pursues an impotent man, who refers her to God. The resolution, effected in the last two letters, could easily appear slick: when Heloise turns to God, Abelard is jealous. To give this a significance in 1960 required considerable deftness; and Duncan chose a theatrical form— the public reading of long letters— which, in the absence of bravura performers, put the fullest responsibility upon the quality of his own wri ting, especially when his historical sources were spurious. And whatever might be said about Duncan's writing in Abelard and Heloise, it was not deft. Most of the attacks centered upon the quality of the writing, and there seems no reason to believe that the use of public reading was seen other than as a part of the poor dramaturgy. IV. KREUTZER SONATA. 1961 A little over a year after Dear Liar opened at the Criterion, there appeared at the Arts what W. A. Darlington said was "an almost exactly similar entertainment made out 370 32 of Tolstoy's story 'The Kreutzer Sonata.'" It was, he added, a "more considerable feat, entailing . . . more in genuity in construction and stronger emotion in the acting." Milton Shulman found other antecedents: The vogue for dramatic readings— the Hollow Crown, the Shaw-Terry [Campbell?] correspondence, Gielgud on Shakespeare, Williams on Dylan Thomas— is presumably responsible for this distillation of Tolstoy's novel Kreutzer Sonata [.sic] . . . . 3 The Times1 conclusion about "stage entertainments which are half plays and half readings" may have implied that this 34 was part of another tradition. The programme implied that it was to be storytelling: "This is not a play. We are simply going to tell you the story that Beethoven's Kreutzer 35 Sonata inspired Tolstoy to write." No other production in the present study was given such a varied genealogy as Kreutzer Sonata, "a theatrical entertainment for two charac ters, adapted, presented and performed by Roderick Lovell 36 and Hannah Watt." Kreutzer Sonata played at the Pike Theatre, Dublin, on the last night of the 1960 Dublin Festival— the same one that saw the premiere of Mac Liammoir's The Importance of 32 Tele., July 11, 1961, p. 14. 33 Stand., July 11, p. 5. 34July 11, p. 13. 35 Programme, MS Enthoven. 371 Being Oscar, The Times said it was well played and ''pro- 37 vided an absorbing evening." Afterwards, according to subsequent London reviews, it visited Paris and New York; it opened at the 399-seat Arts Theatre on July 10, 1961. 38 Of the eight reviews consulted, only Darlington's was favorable, and even his was somewhat paternal: "It is a play— a good little play, and firmly acted." The Sunday Times and the News were both noncommittal. Shulman's re view was mixed, or, more accurately, indecisive; he found little to praise, and concluded: "A curious evening that constantly trembles on the laughable but always manages to avoid it." The Express, Mail, Times and Guardian were un favorable, in increasing order of intensity. Muller's thesis will illustrate: "That indifferent acting may . . . obliterate good writing was sadly proved to us last night." ^September 28, 1960, p. 15. 38 Roughly in increasing order of hostility: W. A. Darlington, Tele., July 11, 1961, p. 14; [n.s.J , Sun. T., July 16, p. 32; Caren Mayer, The Evening News (hereafter cited as News), July 11, p. 7; Milton Shulman, "Tolstoy's Sermon on Love," Stand., July 11, p. 5; Bernard Levin, Exp., July 11, p. 10; Robert Muller, "If Only the 'Shocks' Weren't Such a Bore," Mail, July 11, p. 3; Times, July 11, p. 13; Philip Hope-Wallaee, Guard., July 12, p. 9. In addition, the Times, Feb. 6, 1962, p. 15, carried a favorable review of its revival for a week at the Pembroke (arena) Theatre in Croydon. It was "an exciting, subtle, and intelligent duet performance" which found a "sometimes surprisingly healthy" wit in Tolstoy. The players showed a "notably unselfish responsiveness to each other" but some times used "stiltedly melodramatic gesture and pose." There was reference too to "the array of empty seats." 372 And Hope-Wallace was at the extreme: But the drama is always shallow and superficial, with a hint of charades pointing a moral, didactic, con fused, irreconcilable. Of Tolstoy the crank, the maxi mum: of Tolstoy the giant artist, hardly a trace. The acting I cannot praise. Of the eight, then, one was favorable, two were noncommit tal, one was mixed and four unfavorable. The way in which the story-sermon was adapted to the stage was described thus by Caren Mayer: The play is done in a series of narratives, switch ing from husband to wife and back again, intertwined with sketches by one or the other or both. The scenes they act together come to life much more vividly. Darlington, the minority of one, offered this explanation: Tolstoy's grim study . . . has to be carried forward now by verbal exposition directed to the audience, now by acted scenes. That is easy enough when the piece consists, as "Dear Liar" did, of a series of unrelated episodes. It is not so easy when, as last night, there is a narrative tension to be kept taut. The Times claimed that it was often hard to know when nar ration was being exchanged for acting. Two reviews men tioned the recorded music in the background, and one referred to "changes of light and costume." Pictures in the Times and Telegraph showed the actors in period costume, either flirting before a background of nineteenth-century nick- nacks or drinking glasses of tea. Except for Darlington's, most of the reviews implied that a major fascination of the program lay "in the musty but pungent scent of the book itself." 373 Sometimes Tolstoy's homilies sound like a wild Sal vation Army confessional and at other times one feels one is listening to a Victorian handbook designed for gentlewomen embarking on matrimony. — thus Shulman tried to explain the effect. For Hope- Wallace it was "like reading the nonsense of some ancient medical textbook." The Times. however, said there were too few of "the odd but extraordinarily clear ideas [thatj walk about his later stories as freely and dramatically as though they were real people." The adaptation, said Levin, was "tolerable, if not especially inspired"; but Hope-Wallace, much more hostile to the eventual result, remarked upon the "many clever little strokes . . . which make up a passable dramatic scheme." Perhaps he summarized as well as any: "The idea may be good, but the execution is not." Although no one analyzed it quite so mechanically, they objected to the acting on the grounds that it was ill- advised and inexpert. Muller, for example, said at one point that the players were "under-equipped"; at another point, noting that there was no "shock value" left in the story he complained: The trouble with this production is that its two performers are clearly still scandalised by it all, and their huffy, unsubtle acting allows much of the story to slip away into the realms of banality and melodrama. Levin said there was "not enough blood in either of them to make Tolstoy's tormented figures live"; Shulman described them as follows: . . . [They] make reasonable exponents of Tolstoy's 374 perceptive comments on sex, but when they get involved in the final stages of the drama one is never sure whether they mean us to laugh or cry at them. Mr. Lovell, with outstretched trembling fingers and head thrown back in agony, comes close to parody when he has to handle lines like "Five children— and she's embracing a musician because he has red lips I" Miss Hannah Watt, with a ha-ha laugh meant to be un bearably bewitching, is better in the gay-abandon mood than she is when tragedy makes her slink out clutching her forehead. Three other reviews accused at least one of them of stilted or "token" gestures; three referred to a lack of delicacy or sensitivity. Although there was some difference of opinion as to who was the better actor— Miss Watt received fewer votes but came closer to actual praise— the critics agreed that the second and more dramatic half of the play was weaker than the first. In rough summary: only Darlington approved of Kreub- zer Sonata, and his was a rather paternal praise of the sur mounting of difficulties. The rest of the reviewers reacted with varying degrees of enthusiasm to the crankiness of Tol stoy's ideas, but none thought the performance adequate. Most of them thought the actors took the theme too seriously, and that the performance as a consequence either verged .on or dipped into burlesgue. They agreed too that at least one of the cast was stilted and stagey, but did not agree upon which. Miss Watt was nearly praised in two reviews. Although two reviewers saw similarities between this production and others, no one made any clear prediction for 375 the future of the form. Muller said the show was "not like ly to revive the present low fortunes of the Arts Theatre"y but whether he meant the genre or the quality of the perfor mance was not clear. The conclusion of the Times1 review was similarly oblique: The truth is, perhaps, that stage entertainments which are half plays and half readings need a rare quality of personality to bring them within an accept able convention. If the allusion is to a tradition or genre, the identity of the other members— -presumably reading-dramas whose success or failure depended in large part upon the personality of the performers— must remain a matter of conjecture. A more likely guess, perhaps, is that this was an elliptical gen eralization upon the difference between Kreutzer Sonata and the enormously successful The Hollow Crown, then playing in 39 repertory at the Aldwych. V. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS This chapter described the critical reaction to four productions which used storytelling or concert reading as an intrinsic part of their form and which in addition had a tightness of dramatic structure that might qualify them at least provisionally as plays. Except for a cryptic and for the most part irrelevant reference to "stage entertainments which are half plays and half readings," there was no 39 See below, Chapter IX. 3 7 6 evidence that such a category was detected by the London re viewers, nor was the chapter intended to demonstrate the existence of such a category. But the productions appear in retrospect to have had a number of points in common, and the fact that comparisons were made in only two of the thirty relevant reviews may be significant. The first production discussed was a sort of precur sor to the others? it was a concert reading of parts of the Shaw-Terry correspondence relating to the initial production of Shaw's The Man of Destiny, and was offered as a curtain- raiser to a revival of that play by Theatre Workshop, at the Theatre Royal in Stratford East, in April of 1958— barely a month before the Workshop began an almost unbroken series of critical and popular successes that transferred to the West End for long runs. This concert reading, Love and Lectures, was ignored by the majority of metropolitan papers, but it impressed four influential critics as being superior to the play it introduced. One reviewer was reminded of Emlyn Wil liams' readings from Dickens and Thomas— but not of the 1954 concert readings of Under Milk Wood, which almost certainly resembled it more closely. Kenneth Tynan suggested that Williams find two supporting actresses and stage a program of Shaw's correspondence with Ellen Terry and Mrs. Patrick Campbell; it would prove "as enthralling as any but the best of Shaw's plays." The sanguine prediction, from "the most 3 7 7 4 0 influential postwar critic," seems not to have persuaded anyone of the viability of the method. There was no refer ence to the prediction— nor indeed to Love and Lectures— in any of the fourteen reviews of Dear Liar, Jerome Kilty's dramatization of the Shaw-Campbell correspondence. Jerome Kilty and Cavada Humphrey played Dear Liar in Dublin and Bath before opening at the Criterion on June 14, 1960. Against strong competition and in a season that had had an unprecedented number of failures, they played for seven weeks, or a total of fifty-four London performances— about as long a run as that of the Cornell-Aherne version in New York, or of Gielgud's two seasons in The Ages of Man. Of the three Bath and ten Criterion reviews dis covered, eight were favorable or enthusiastic, two were favorable but restrained, two were mixed and one adverse. Eight revealed surprise— five conspicuously. There was con siderable discussion of the letters; except for one objec tion to the program's length, and another, stronger attack upon its "impoverishment of legend," the organization of those letters into a dramatic structure was either impli citly approved or explicitly praised. Although eight of the fourteen said the actors made no attempt to impersonate the characters, six praised them for evoking so vividly the per- 40 Laurence Kitchin, Mid-Century Drama (London: Faber and Faber, 1960), p. 35. Kitchin was one of the Times' re viewers . 378 sonalities of Shaw and Mrs. Campbell. The language of such praise was usually metaphoric— they "became" or "re-created" the correspondents; the process seems to have been what has ordinarily been called "suggestion" in American textbooks of oral interpretation. The adverse review, however, may have invoked the criterion of realism: it claimed that the ac tors 1 "personalities" intruded, but mentioned height, accent, and a stage presence like Martita Hunt's as its only exam ples. Two reviews said that Miss Humphrey lacked the magic of Mrs. Campbell, and two others said she was wholly inade quate to the part. Although Dear Liar was praised as having demonstrated the impossible, it was not considered as having implications for future entertainments. It was not compared with such productions as The Ages of Man, A Lovely Light, Mark Twain Tonight, The Importance of Being Oscar, Abelard and Heloise, the Apollo Society's anniversary reading of "Savonarola Brown"— all of which were playing within three months of it, and several of which did elicit comparison with each other. A. V. Cookman neglected it, although it was more germane to his case than one of the examples he cited, when he tried to demonstrate that Micheal Mac Liammoir was only one of a number of actors who had tried to re-create an author in his 41 full uniqueness. W. A. Darlington, who thought Dear Liar 41 See above, p. 332. 379 had the virtue of "complete novelty," did not mention it in either of two long discussions of the Shaw-Campbell corres pondence; but a year later he did compare it, unfavorably, with what he called "an almost exactly similar entertain ment, " Kreutzer Sonata, which he was alone in praising. Shulman may have been referring to Dear Liar when he cited "the Shaw-Terry correspondence" as evidence of "the vogue for dramatic readings." Abelard and Heloise, by Ronald Duncan, played at the Arts for a week, beginning October 24, 1960. It consisted of what purported to be free translations of twelve of the historical letters, read in turn by Iain Cuthbertson and Virginia Maskell costumed as monk and nun, from opposite sides of an almost bare stage. There was little physical movement, and no direct interplay. In form, then, the play was a sort of antiphonal declamation. Of the eight reviews consulted, one was favorable, two were neutral or slightly unfavorable, four were clearly unfavorable and one was hostile. The form was not praised even in the favorable review; but the attacks upon it were usually preliminaries to stronger attacks upon the quality of the writing. A substitute reviewer for the Guardian said the production allowed "the whole Third Programme way of life" to regain "a toe-hold in the West End." This was the only attempt to generalize beyond the immediate production, but the language was too vague and muddled to allow of 380 useful conjecture. The absence of such generalization may, indeed, be the most significant facet of these reviews. Shulman, at tacking Dorothy Stickney's A Lovely Light four months earli er, had managed to see in Ruth Draper, Cornelia Otis Skinner and Miss Stickney a "limitless flow" of American woman solo ists; assuming a similar antipathy to concert readings or poetry recitals or duologues or reading-di£amas, the critics might have used this particular sitting duck far better than as a decoy for the BBC. That Abelard and Heloise. which was generally conceded to have been competently acted, was not used to point the weaknesses of dramatic reading may suggest that those weaknesses, or the form itself, were not of over- . . 42 riding concern to the critics. Some slight contrary evidence might be inferred from the reception of Kreutzer Sonata, adapted and performed by Roderick Lovell and Hannah Watt. This played at the Dublin Festival in 1960 and opened in London at the Arts on July 10, 1961. The two characters, wearing period costume and using props and period furniture, took turns telling the story, interspersing the narrative sections with scenes of solo or duet acting. Hence the critics might have traced the 42 The theory cannot be pressed far. Neither Shul man, who of the London reviewers seemed the most conscious of "the vogue for dramatic readings," nor Hope-Wallace, who was perhaps the most suspicious of it, reviewed Abelard and Heloise. 381 production to the storytelling of Rosalinde Fuller, whose performances had similarly been praised for their ingenuity ✓ and criticized for insensitivity and loss of control; they might have traced it to the Victorian revues at the Players' Theatre, or even, indeed, to the Piscator version of War and Peace. Instead, one saw it as "almost exactly similar" to Dear Liar, one saw it as evidence of a "vogue for dramatic % readings," and a third drew a moral for "half plays and half readings." The success of The Hollow Crown may have streng thened such associations if indeed it did not inspire them; but the reference to Dear Liar was explicit, and implies at least a year's continuity of tradition. However, Kreutzer Sonata too received a poor press: of the eight reviews consulted, one was favorable but con descending, two were noncommittal, one was mixed and four unfavorable. Tolsoy's crankiness was held to exert a cer tain fascination, but the adaptation received a mixed reac tion. The acting was generally considered ill-advised or inexpert or both. And so here was an opportunity for resum ing the warning chorus that prefaced reviews of solo pro ductions in this same Arts Theatre three and four years be fore. One review did in fact say that such productions would not help the declining Arts Theatre, and another said that programs which were "half plays and half readings" needed a "rare quality of personality." Half of the reviews treated it as if in a vacuum. 382 Brief note may be taken of the date of the first announcement of a "vogue for dramatic readings" in London— 1961— for comparison with those of similar comments, not necessarily the first, made in New York: "a craze," 1952; or a "profusion" that had "just about run its short course," 43 1953. The subject must be discussed in Chapter X. Perhaps more immediately revealing is the fact that only four of the thirty-four reviews cited in the present chapter made specific reference to another production, al though the need of analogies in describing the new forms was clear. Only two commented on implications they saw for fu ture productions. Twelve of the first eighteen evinced sur prise; so many of the last sixteen were unfavorable that surprise could not be gauged. Not only did the reviewers trace little similarity among the productions here grouped as reading-dramas; they traced few similarities to any kind of reading. And if some similarity were traced, the chances were about three to one that the reference would be to Em- lyn Williams. In March, 1961, ten years after Williams offered his first readings from Dickens at the ". . . Merely Players" program, the London theatre finally received another touch stone for its oral interpretation: the Royal Shakespeare 43 Editorial, The New York Times, March 2, 1952, IV, p. 8; George Jean Nathan, The Theatre in the Fifties (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), pp. 36, 39. Company's The Hollow Crown. Chapter IX discusses this pro gram, which if it did not inspire very probably confirmed Shulman's claim that there was a vogue for dramatic read ings. CHAPTER IX THE HOLLOW CROWN, 1961, AND AFTER Writing a year after the event, R. B. Marriott claimed in 1962 that the Royal Shakespeare Company had "in troduced into the contemporary theatre" a new form of enter tainment with its production The Hollow Crown; he foresaw "all kinds of interesting developments" when the form became more fully exploited by repertory companies in town and in the provinces, and when it was used by small touring com- 1 panies for educational theatre. Within that year three other productions had claimed to derive from The Hollow Crown; it had played in repertory for an entire summer and had returned thereto for short runs at least three times after; and concurrent with Marriott1s article it began a series of international tours that took it to five countries or more. The present chapter describes The Hollow Crown and the three productions that advertised themselves as similar to it; and in an attempt to gauge Marriott's contention the chapter also discusses the activity in professional oral interpretation that could be discerned fairly readily in 1 "The New Entertainment," The Stage, June 21, 1962, p. 8. See below, p. 474. 384 385 London theatre circles in 1961 and the first half of 1962. The first section deals with The Hollow Crown. The second section discusses the first of the putative derivatives, Our Little Life, and then goes on to survey other fringe ac tivity in Readers Theatre during those eighteen months. Sec tion three treats of the Royal Shakespeare Company's own attempt to duplicate its previous success: its adaptation of Laclos' novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, which it re titled The Art of Seduction. As both the novel and its adaptation purported to be collections of letters, the pro duction might legitimately have been discussed in Chapter VIII above, but has been retained within the context of its immediate antecedents. The fourth section discusses poetry readings, especially those of the Apollo Society, and then proceeds to the third derivative of The Hollow Crown, an entertainment jointly sponsored by the Apollo Society and the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Vagaries of Love. Sec tion five offers a summary and some provisional conclusions. I. THE HOLLOW CROWN, 1961 "So much has been written in praise of John Barton's entertainment," said Gareth Lloyd Evans of The Hollow Crown at the end of the period covered in the present study, "that it Smacks of impertinence, almost, to write more. This vivid chronicle of kings and queens has become a kind of 386 2 theatrical holy writ. And rightly so." Evans was not exaggerating the amount of comment the production had eli cited in the fifteen months previous, but he was premature in treating the canon as closed. Two weeks later the show 3 began a tour of the Continent: the Festival of Holland; 4 the Zurich Festival; and the Sixth International Season of the Theatre of the Nations in Paris, where its leading lady won "the Best Actress of the Season award," and where "praises were heard on all sides for the whole company."5 It arrived at the Henry Miller's Theatre in New York in the twelfth week of the newspaper strike of 1962-63— a circum stance that cut sharply into the amount written in praise of 6 it, not only by the critics but by the advertisers — and yet it was one of the scant nine productions of that Broadway 2 The Guardian (in citations prior to August, 1959, The Manchester Guardian; cited hereafter as Guardian or Guard.), May 28. 1962, p. 7. 3 The Times (hereafter cited as Times), March 2, 1962, p. 13; The Stage, June 7, p. 15. 4 Times, March 23, p. 17. 5 Jean-Pierre Lenoir, The Stage, July 24, p. 15; Tunes, March 9, p. 15, said 22 nations would give 41 productions. 6 However, New York Theatre Critics1 Reviews, Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (March 4, 1963), pp. 386-87, contains five re views— all favorable or enthusiastic. 387 7 season to show a profit. Even if it had not gained an international reputation comparable to that of Dear Liar perhaps, The Hollow Crown would be unique among concert readings in having entered the repertory of a first-rate permanent company and in having been offered there on the same artistic basis as productions of As You Like It, The Duchess of Malfi, The Cherry Orchard and The Caucasian Chalk Circle. This "entertainment by and about the Kings and Queens of England," devised and directed by John Barton, was a con cert reading of letters, poems, speeches and extracts from 8 chronicles, interspersed with songs and instrumental music. It had a cast of nine: four readers— one woman and three men who, although they did not read together, were vocally a quartet; three male singers who could sing as a trio or as Milton Esterow, "Stage Investors Lost 5.5 Million in Disastrous Broadway Season," The New York Times, May 24, 1963, pp. 1, 17. His provisional "Tally Sheet" suggests that eighteen per cent of Broadway productions showed a profit. 8 Playbill (Henry Miller's Theatre, New York), Vol. I, no. 9 (Feb. 25, 1963), pp. 11-22, lists a program very sim ilar to that which went into repertory at the Aldwych; Pro grammes, Aldwych Theatre (Nov., 1961, Feb. and July, 1962), MSS in files of present investigator. The former subtitles it "A Royal Revue"; it transposes 'the order of two songs and omits three others; it omits a scene from the pseudo-Shake speare Edward III, and substitutes "Eulogy on George III' for Thackeray's character of George IV. Some of the early reviews imply that Victoria's des cription of her coronation did not appear in the first per formance; instead, apparently there was an account by Laur ence Housman of Victoria's discussion with the Dean of West minster about Jonah and the whale. 388 soloists; and two instrumentalists, one for piano and harp sichord and one for oboe. "Its method is simple," said J. C. Trewin, "Sometimes a reader comes forward to read, sometimes remains seated; now he will roam at will . . . or use his colleagues as an audience. All is done with a min- 9 imum of fuss." It was first offered in London on March 19, 1961, as a Sunday evening entertainment at the Aldwych, a large (1028-seat) theatre which had recently become the London headquarters of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company of Stratford-on-Avon. Whether because the division of reper tory between Stratford and London was still a novel experi ment, or because the entertainment was regarded as a social occasion to celebrate Her Majesty's granting the company permission to call itself henceforth the Royal Shakespeare Company, a considerable number of first-line reviewers were present. At least five later admitted they expected a bor ing evening. The Evening Standard ran the story as a social note, which said in part: The general idea of Sunday evening readings— costume performances are forbidden by law— seems to be spread ing. But Mr. John Goodwin, spokesman for the company, told me that their policy at the moment did not envisage anything more than occasional performances of this The Illustrated London News (hereafter cited in notes as I.L.N.), June 24, 1961, p. 1082. 389 10 nature. Eric Shorter, Who wrote it up as a review, operated from similar assumptions: Pompless and with no more ceremony than the dinner jacket and a glass of water: who would have supposed this was the way to summon up for the spectator "the falls and foibles of the kings and queens of England?" It isn't, of course, but Sunday regulations being what they are, it is all you may do in public? and "The Hollow Crown" . . . is so good that it seems almost to thrive by these limitations of costume and scenery. ^ At least four other reviewers, however, foresaw a repeat performance; Peter Roberts said he was sure it would be re- 12 vived, Muller said it should be in repertory, and Levin began his review thus: If the Stratford-on-Avon company thinks it can get away with only a single Sunday night performance of this intriguing, moving, funny, beautifully balanced, admir ably delivered, and altogether enchanting programme it is much mistaken. And I am prepared to demonstrate the error by Chain ing myself to the Aldwych box-office and howling impre cations at Mr. Peter Hall until he . . . puts it into the regular repertory of his company. He ended with three kinds of type-face: "We must, we must, ■^John Moynihan, "In London Last Night," Evening Standard (hereafter cited as Standard or Stand.), March 20, p. 19. "^Eric Shorter, "Beguiling Bits by 4 Readers," The Daily Telegraph (hereafter cited as Telegraph or Tele.), March 20, p. 16. 12 Peter Roberts, Plays and Players (hereafter cited in notes as P & P). May, 1961, pp. 12-13? Robert Muller, "'Twas My Delight on a Sunday Night," Daily Mail (hereafter cited as Mail), March 20, p. 3. 390 1 3 we MUST see this again. And again. And again." The program was given four trial performances, Mon day to Wednesday, May 8-10; and then, from June 12, it played in repertory with Ondine and The Devils throughout the sum mer. Dame Peggy Ashcroft replaced Dorothy Tutin as the fe male reader, but the male cast remained unchanged: Max Adrian, Richard Johnson and John Barton. On November 30 it returned to the repertory, and again in February and July of 1962; in these revivals, each for four or five performances, various combinations of players appeared: Geraldine McEwan, Vanessa Redgrave, Derek Godfrey, Tony Church and Ian Richard son, for example. Peggy Ashcroft led the original cast on the European tour, and Dorothy Tutin led it in New York. Sixteen reviews were consulted in the present study: six of the Sunday performance in March, two of the midweek run in May, seven of its entrance into the repertory in Juno, and one of its appearance at the Coventry Cathedral Festival 14 in 1962. Of the six early reviews, those in the Express, 13 Bernard Levin, "Here's One Enchanting Evening that Must Be Repeated," Daily Express (hereafter cited as Express or Exp.), March 20, p. 15. 14 Bernard Levin, Exp., loc. cit.; Robert Muller, Mail, loc. cit.; Peter Roberts, P & P, loc. cit.; Eric Shorter, Tele., loc. cit.; Philip Hope-Wallace, Guard., March 21, p. 9; Times, March 20, p. 3. Felix Barker, The Evening News (hereafter cited as News), May 9, p. 7; Milton Shulman, Stand., May 9, p. 20. Harold Hobson, "Pathos Behind the Polemics," The Sunday Times (hereafter cited in notes as Sun. T.), June 18, p. 35; J. C. Trewin, I. L. N., loc. cit.; Peter Roberts, 391 the Mail and Plays and Players were enthusiastic, and that in the Telegraph clearly favorable; the Guardian was favor able but restrained. The Times alone was unfavorable: "a rather cheap display of virtuosity." The News and Standard both were enthusiastic about the midweek revival; Shulman was alone in seeing it as part of a trend: "The Hollow Crown is a unique contribution to the growing popularity of reading— simple and unadorned— : in the theatre." When the show went into repertory Hobson called it "the most surpri sing evening in London. It is one of those leaden prospects that turn out gold." Trewin made the same point at least twice, and added that it ranked with The Duchess of Malfi as "the best of the Stratford-Aldwych offerings" to date. Peter Roberts was again enthusiastic about "this evening of delight"; in the Mail Cecil Lewis endorsed his colleague Muller's earlier and warmer review. The Times revised its earlier verdict, and praised this as a "chance to enjoy Dame Peggy Ashcroft's art at a subtle point of balance be tween acting and reading aloud." Coton's review in the Telegraph was almost entirely favorable: "the notion is a P & P. July, 1961, pp. 16-17; Peter Lewis, Mail, June 13, p. 3; "Whimsically Regal Entertainment," Times, June 13, p. 15; A. V. Coton, "Hollow Crown With Too Much Padding," Tele., June 13, p. 16; Philip Hope-Wallace, "Anthology for Insiders," Guard., June 14, p. 7. Gareth Lloyd Evans, Guard., loc cit. See also an nouncements: Times, March 9, p. 17; May 23, p. 5; Tele., May 25, p. 10. 392 splendid one," he said, and then devoted two paragraphs of the highest praise to its execution; but he interspersed "a churlish complaint" about the amount of padding needed to carry the evening beyond "a good 90 minutes." The complaint formed the headline; so the review has been classified con servatively as mixed. Hope-Wallace1s second review almost defies classification; it may have been jovial exception- taking, but inasmuch as it set out to deny what had never been alleged and it damned with faint praise the review has been here classified as unfavorable, even though none of its 15 terms were demonstrably so. The later Guardian review was 15 This was probably the most puzzling review encoun tered in the entire study. It began with what seemed, even after scrutiny, a cheerfully exaggerated account of his col leagues' enthusiasm; but it may have been over-sly and de liciously private satire. Eventually there followed a list of the program's excellences, each prefaced with "it is true that"; the reversal was, "But I can imagine some earnest theatregoers coming away still slightly hungry." In this context "earnest" was equivocal. And between the two sec tions was this: "It is a civilised and pleasant affair and I again enjoyed it (though rather less than before). Without wish ing to intrude a sour note I think people need to know what to expect, for this is far from being a play: it is a sober, dinner-jacketted reading party and though there are many laughs, . . . enjoyment depends in the main on a certain, very private, British sense of awed delight in touching frivolously on anything so sacred as the Monarchy, rather in the manner in which the very devout can afford to permit themselves little smiling impieties. This seems funnier to insiders than it does to outsiders such as the American tourists who come to see, as they hope, Dame Peggy Ashcroft in a play." Given the spate of critical comment— a description of which had been the burden of his previous paragraph— the warning was disingenuous. And inasmuch as any American tourist who knew enough about theatre to seek out Dame Peg- 393 enthusiastic. Hence, of the six earliest reviews three were enthusiastic, two were favorable and one unfavorable; both of the May reviews were enthusiastic; of the seven June re views three were enthusiastic, two were favorable, one was mixed and one unfavorable; the 1962 review was enthusiastic. Of the total sixteen, then, nine were enthusiastic, four favorable, one mixed and two unfavorable. Except for the Times' unfavorable review of the Sun day evening performance, few of the remaining fifteen con tained any adverse comments whatever. Hope-Wallace's first review objected to "a rather dull exchange from the trial of Charles the First" and "for me— an overdose of Malory." Lewis's June review praised the trial scene but said the show had a "too-stilted start"; Hope-Wallace's puzzling second review may have intended a similar complaint in the backhanded praise: "Even quite dull bits of Holinshed come alive." Coton's "churlish complaint" about padding has been mentioned above. Several of the later reviews noted that Peggy Ashcroft was not as effective in the Jane Austen gy Ashcroft was almost certainly more familiar with concert reading than was Hope-Wallace, the temptation is to see here only a towering ignorance of what had been going on in New York for a full ten years. There is evidence too of the kind of insularity that cannot comprehend curiosity in others. He may, of course, have been twitting the insiders— or reassuring them. But probably the clearest implication is that he did wish "to intrude a sour note." 394 selection as had been Dorothy Tutin; but such references— again excepting perhaps Hope-Wallace's— were always prelimi nary concessions, and implied high praise of Tutin rather than denigration of Ashcroft. The Times, in its review of the premiere, made the only direct attack upon The Hollow Crown and the only unfavorable comment upon its performers; paraphrasing the speech from Richard II that gave the pro duction its title, it accused Adrian, Tutin and Johnson of scoffing at the state and grinning at the pomp of kings and queens. . . . If they had spoken with greater reserve and formality, the actual words . . . would have brought home to us the human frailty of a long line of royal persons . . . more effectively than was done by a rather cheap display of virtuosity. Of John Barton, the fourth reader, it concluded: The example he set in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and in his presentation of the President of the Court at the trial of Charles I was on the whole a fine one. Hope-Wallace1s second review, though making no explicit com plaint, belittled nearly everthing, so that it probably im plied the material was esoteric and frivolous, that it was not worth the expenditure of talent, that the houselights were distracting, that the production had misleadingly posed as a play, and that in general the enthusiasm for it was 16 This may have sprung from the doctrine of "letting the words speak for themselves," or from some reservations about the taste displayed by this newly "Royal" company in celebrating thus the receipt of a privilege that— however anachronistic— promised to pay handsomely at the box-office. 395 misplaced. Hence there was adverse comment in only four re views; it alleged that the beginning was stilted, that the ending and the trial of Charles I were dull, .that there was too much padding and that the performance cheapened the sub ject. Perhaps enough has been quoted to indicate that most 17 of these were countered in other reviews. One of the strongest and most widespread reactions was that of surprise. Two of the six earliest reviews used "who would have thought" as an important structural device; and two others used variants of: "It sounded more earnest than exciting, and I took my seat with a heavy heart." One of the May reviews was surprised and the other described the earlier surprise. Hobson's June review has been cited as calling it the most surprising show in London; Trewin began his review thus: If anyone had told me that I would sit, enraptured, in a London theatre, listening to a report of Henry the Seventh's ambassadors on a visit to the Queen of Naples and to a male trio's rendering of "The Vicar of Bray," I might have laughed uneasily and edged out of earshot. 17 The first Times review, for example, praised the beginning and the trial scene; Trewin concurred in the for mer judgment, and Levin, Lewis and Hobson in the latter. Hobson was impressed by the Malory quotation. No one else called the performance cheap, and the 1962 Guardian review said it "humanises royalty while never allowing its innate symbolism, and hence its tragedy, to dissipate." Trewin, Hobson and Lewis devoted considerable space to examples of the delicacy and humanity of the program. No one explicitly denied there was padding, unless some enthusiastic metaphors are to be taken literally; but no one else endorsed Coton's charge. 396 He was surprised by the fact that the program needed no 18 Shakespeare and by the "enchantment" woven by Peggy Ash croft, as well as by the vividness of the others' character izations. Roberts called the earlier response "spectacu larly enthusiastic"; and Hope-Wallace said, perhaps satiri cally: The hollow groan with which we initially approached this whimsical entertainment was changed all in one frosty night into a yell of triumph. Adjectives such as "enthralling" were bandied about and Levin and Muller clasped hands and rejoiced hugely. In all, eight of the sixteen showed clear signs of surprise, and another four carried such full descriptions of the others' earlier surprise as to imply their own endorsement of it. At least six offered considerable comment about the simplicity of the staging; Shulman's is representative: Four elegant, empty chairs greet the audience at the Aldwych when they file in to see The Hollow Crown. But by evening's end those chairs have been convert ed into the thrones, the prisons, the state rooms, the bedrooms and the death-beds of most of the Kings and Queens of England. But besides Trewin's, part of which was quoted above, there was only one reasonable detailed analysis: in Roberts' first review he used Prince Albert's "Ballad to an Absent Friend" as a major example of the ingenuity displayed. . . . (jrhisj was most brilliantly staged. Instead 18 In point of fact, it began with a speech from Richard II. 3 9 7 of the singer's coming down to the footlights to bawl the song across at the audience, he leant over a chair occupied by Miss Dorothy Tutin, who went into the kind of ecstasy Victoria would have reserved for her Prince Consort, while the other readers . . . posed in formal appreciation, very much in the manner of a print of the period. This was delicate satire at its best. Perhaps inevitably, in view of the flexibility of the stag ing, analysis was likely to concern the individual actors and particularly vivid characterizations; these must be dis cussed presently. A great deal of space was devoted to the description — and, as has been indicated, usually to the commendation— of the selection and arrangement of material. Shorter's is a conservative sample of the early reviews: John Barton has here devised an adroit, resourceful and funny skimming (even dredging?) of our monarchic history .... There were letters, poems, speeches, play excerpts, and little dramatisations-— with enough variation of mood and matter to keep us more than decently attentive [for nearly three hoursj and often in thrall .... Such descriptions grew longer as the probability of future performance increased. Shulman gave about five paragraphs thereto; when the show went into repertory Hobson, Lewis and Trewin organized their reviews around the idea that the * material was fascinating. The two last, indeed, made a basic assumption directly counter to Hope-Wallace's in his review, "Anthology for Insiders"; Trewin claimed that "it must always beguile to make a progress through the English monarchy since the Conquest," and Lewis said that "the one 398 time that history cannot fail to fascinate is when it gives you glimpses of the high and mighty taken unawares." In all, nine reviews could be said to have devoted a conspicuous part of their total length to a discussion of the material itself; and as was noted earlier, almost all of the adverse criticism was directed at individual items of material. Four reviews indicated that the chief result of the program was to make history delightful. Except for the Times1 early censure of three members of the troupe for scoffing at their subjects, and perhaps Hope-Wallace's faint praise in his second review, there was unanimous approval of the playing. Dorothy Tutin was praised in five of the eight pre-repertory reviews for her characterization of Victoria; and her "gently mischievous, darting-kitten approach" to the fifteen-year-old Jane Aus ten's history of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries earned her high praise not only in four of the six March re views but also in three of the June ones, where it was ranked higher than the Ashcroft version. Dame Peggy was "an enchantment" as Victoria, as Fanny Burney and as Elizabeth, said Trewin; Coton said her "earlier golden huskiness of voice [was] now transmuted to the tones of seraphs and arch angels," and Lewis, less reverent but more favorable, agreed: But the wonder of the evening is Peggy Ashcroft, who plays successively a venomous 15-year-old Jane Austen, Queen Mary making a captain-of-hockey speech, Fanny 399 Burney taking off George III, and the gauche Victoria touchingly recalling her coronation. The Times gave its entire second review to the analysis of her characterization of Jane, Fanny Burney and Victoria, and concluded: Although we have been hearing the same voice with minimal changes of facial expression, very different ladies are brought to life. Queen Victoria's objective account of her own Coronation is here made a small mas terpiece of naturalistic acting. It is about a young girl, grown to regal stature in the time it takes at the end for the reader to sit down, harden her features, and not move again. Evans' 1962 review also noticed the economy of facial ex pression. Five of the eight "repertory" reviews praised hers as the best performance of the evening. Max Adrian was very highly praised in five of the early reviews for his "wickedly funny" performance as Henry VII's ambassador; in later reviews his delivery of Walpole's description of George II's funeral loomed larger— becoming for Roberts a "chief delight in an evening of delights." Trewin noted that Adrian was "slightly more restrained" in later performances; if so, his "wicked step-fairy act" as \ Walpole at the premiere may have become more subtle. He was praised too in later reviews for his delivery of James I's "Counterblaste Against Tobacco." For Evans in 1962 Adrian's was a "complete brilliance": "He climbs out of his script into characterisation every time he opens the most expres sive mouth on the English stage." The performance most often praised was that of 400 Richard Johnson as Henry VIII— "marvellously exact one feels," said Coton, "in vocal thickness and acute winking 19 eye." Ten of a possible fifteen praised this characteri zation, and two of them acclaimed it the best of the even ing. John Barton was cited as a model of restraint in the Times' first review, but Roberts, covering the same perfor mance, thought him "not quite on a par" with the others. Hobson called Barton's a "voice of pained and patient beau ty." He was praised twice for his Bradshaw and twice for his Thackeray. Each of the players, then, was claimed by at least one critic to have given the best performance of the even ing. Except in the Times' first review, and perhaps in Hope-Wallace's second, they received no adverse criticism. The most successful performances, apparently, were those of Richard Johnson as Henry VIII, Max Adrian as an ambassador to Henry VII and as Horace Walpole, Dorothy Tutin as Jane Austen and Victoria, and Peggy Ashcroft as Victoria, Fanny Burney, Jane Austen, Mary and Elizabeth. At least five re viewers attempted fairly detailed analyses of at least one of these performances. 20 Considering the flexibility of presentation, there 19 When Evans reviewed in 1962 Anthony Nicolls read the part, "relying largely" on "a magnificent voice." 20 Adrian's part offers a convenient example of the variety of method— in three performances witnessed by the 401 might be expected a considerable variety in the terms ap plied to The Hollow Crown, which was subtitled an "enter tainment" in London and a "royal revue" in New York. The words"evening(" "anthology," "entertainment," and "chroni cle" figured prominetly in six reviews; "impersonation" and "recital" were used in two each; one review carefully used "speakers." However, "readings," "dramatic readings" and "read aloud" were used prominently in a total of nine. No one denied that "reading" was an appropriate term; no one put it in quotes; the Times, however, said that the Ash croft performance was "at a subtle point of balance between acting and reading a*loud." The consensus was that this was a reading. present investigator. He recited, full-front and dramatic ally spotlighted, the speech from Richard II. Holding his book against his chest he recited a ballad about Henry II, giving it perhaps broader characterization than its struc ture could support. He read the replies of the ambassador, but offered a good deal of comic byplay throughout, writhing about in an agony of embarrassment. He delivered, from the lectern, James I's counterblaste as a thundering Scots ser mon. While listening to an oboe solo, presumably as part of the audience, he began "unconsciously" to tap his feet, in creasing the movement— on two evenings— to an intricate toe- and-heel dance performed while seated; then he caught him self and ceased, abashed. At the other extreme to this ir relevant clowning he was almost insistently the reader in parts of the Malory selection, providing little more than the "said Arthur"s and "quoth Bedevere"s while his col leagues did the dialogue. As Horace Walpole, he began by gossiping directly to his colleagues, jumped up and paced about, acted out an elaborate and effeminate parody of al most everything he was describing, and at one point peered into the grand piano as if into the funeral vault. 402 There was no reference to any other specific pro duction. The Standard was alone in its allusions to "the growing popularity of reading— simple and unadorned— in the theatre." Shulman had referred to such trend in his reviews of The Ages of Man in 1959, and was to do so again in his review of Kreutzer Sonata two months hence; perhaps his in fluence is the simplest explanation of his colleague Moyni- han's statement that the idea of Sunday readings seemed to be spreading— although the claim, otherwise unsupported, will be examined further in section two below. Certainly Eric Shorter appeared unaware of this growing popularity: he attributed the simplicity of method entirely to the Sunday blue laws, and then remarked that the production "seems al most to thrive by these limitations." Roberts, Hope-Wallace twice, Trewin and Hobson hastened to allay forebodings that this was another (as Hope-Wallace put it) of those "dramatic readings with hey-nonny-nonny and the twangling of harpsi chords." Their confessions of relief are reminiscent of those offered by three critics of Williams' "Mixed Bill" ten years before. Hope-Wallace later professed alarm that his colleagues' enthusiasm might dupe visitors into expecting a real play. But his assumption, and Shorter’s, that a read ing was a poor substitute for a play does not seem to have been shared— or challenged— by the others. Hobson, however, implied that a reading could surpass a play: . . . [The readers] bring out of the shadowy past 403 into the brief light of today images of loveliness, pathos, terror and alarm which gleam and menace with the grace and fragility Of an antique statue. Like such a statue they give, beyond the capacity of a play concerned with a single action, an extraordinary sense of duration .... In summary, more than half of the reviews of The Hollow Crown here examined were enthusiastic; at a conserva tive assessment, two of the sixteen were unfavorable and one was mixed. Only four of them contained any adverse comment, and most of this concerned single items of material. One re view attacked the performances; otherwise they were unani mously approved and each of the five players was praised by at least one reviewer as having given the best performance of the evening. The simplicity of the method was tacitly approved if not explicitly praised in six reviews; but two others assumed that a reading was necessarily inferior to a play, and one of these professed alarm lest the public be misled. Four reviewers in five reviews indicated that they had attended with strong misgivings; eight of the sixteen showed clear signs of surprise, and four others described the surprise at previous performances so fully as to imply their own endorsement of it. Three-quarters of the reviews, then, indicated that the success of such a program was un expected. This was nine and one-half years after Don Juan in Hell had given New York a similar surprise. The Hollow Crown promised to have a seminal influ ence like that of Don Juan in Hell. Three productions 404 advertised themselves as similar to it; one critic said it had become "a kind of theatrical holy writ," and another hailed it as the leader in "the new entertainment." Almost reminiscent of Nathan's "profusion df copycats" ten years before, Milton Shulman blamed Kreutzer Sonata on "the vogue for dramatic readings," and shortly after was claiming that the theatre resembled radio. The following sections attempt i to assess the influence of The Hollow Crown in the fifteen months after its premiere. II. OUR LITTLE LIFE. 1961, AND OCCASIONAL READINGS, 1961-62 Our Little Life, subtitled "a study of the rela tionships between men and women," was, according to an an nouncement in the Times, "partly inspired by The Hollow Crown" and partly by the desire of its devisor-director, Basil Ashmore, to display Margaret Rutherford1s full artis tic talent— one that had "never been given full rein in the 21 British theatre or films." It consisted of six mono logues, duologues and plays for small casts; Margaret Ruth erford and Margaret Whiting played the major roles and had a 22 supporting company of five. On October 16, 1961, it ^Times, August 31, 1961, p. 12. 22 The programme, MS in the Gabrielle Enthoven Thea tre Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum (hence forth cited as Enthoven), listed the following: Molnar, 405 opened for a two-week run at the Pembroke, a 440-seat arena theatre in.Croydon, a suburb about a half-hour away from the West End. Apparently the show did not play in London at all. None of the seven reviews encountered was clearly 23 favorable. Norman Shrapnel, of the Guardian, was enthus iastic about the Strindberg piece, "because Margaret Whi ting, who speaks the whole of it without ever moving from her chair, seems to me to give us the essence of what act ing in the round ought to be"; but the rest of his review was cool. Similarly, Eric Shorter conceded that "the two Margarets" brought a "considerable if not overwhelming dis tinction" to a "curious and strikingly variegated sequence of sketches and playlets"; and the Times said that the best thing about the "somewhat insubstantial pageant of sketches and short plays" was that it showed Miss Rutherford in a wider range than usual and gave Miss Whiting "opportunities Talking of Husbands; Chekov, The Harmfulness of Tobacco; Henry James, The American Wife; Strindberg, My Darling Mil dred [i.e.. The Stronger!; Musset, Indian Summer; and, as "Part II" of the program, Margaret Turner's six-character play, Come Home My Children. 23 Arranged roughly in order of increasing hostility: Norman Shrapnel, Guard., Oct. 17, p. 8? Eric Shorter, Tele., Oct. 17, p. 14; "An Insubstantial Pageant," Times, Oct. 17, p. 16; H.G.M., Theatre World, Dec., 1961, p. 8; Sun. T., Oct. 22, p. 34; Milton Shulman, "Miss Rutherford Gets In Too Deep," Stand., Oct. 17, p. 20; Robert Muller, Mail, Oct. 17, p. 3. for some impressive playing." Theatre World said that "none of the offerings were very suitable for production in the round," and added that both actresses played well enough at their best to "raise expectations not realised in the rest of the programme." Specifically, Miss Whiting failed in the Strindberg, and Miss Rutherford's touch was unsure when "she addressed invisible interlocutors and was involved with unseen props." The Sunday Times was perfunctory, noting that Miss Rutherford "appears in various disguises" in an "odd programme of bits and pieces." Shulman called it "an evening of trivia by important writers ineptly done": the plays' "chief merit is that they are mercifully short" and as for the acting, "it is sad to see {^Miss RutherfordJ floundering in dramatic waters too deep for her talents." Muller called the program "a series of undistinguished cur tain-raisers, " including a whimsical revue sketch and at least one "mildewed chestnut." He said that the material was ill-suited to theatre in the round, and noted that one sketch, "intended to amuse," was "received with one Of the grimmest silences I have heard in the theatre for some time." Three reviews were unfavorable but so clearly sym pathetic as perhaps to qualify better as "mixed." Two more were unfavorable but almost noncommittal. And two were clearly unfavorable. The looseness of construction was noted in all of the reviews, as was the general inadequacy . . . s 407 of the material. The Times praised Miss Rutherford's per formance in the James sketch; four others censured it. Miss Whiting's version of the Strindberg monologue was praised highly in one and condemned in another. The other performers were barely mentioned; and in general, the act ing received only slightly more approval than did the ma terial. The influence of The Hollow Crown was not detected by any of the reviewers; and indeed, judging from the pro gramme and from the consensus of reviews, the resemblance did not reach beyond the press-agent's office. There was ho reading in Our Little Life; its material was mainly thea trical— and familiarly so— where Barton had chosen his ma terial almost exclusively from non-theatrical literature; the loose theme implied in the subtitle did not figure in the reviews, which called the program at best "a curious and strikingly variegated sequence." Inferentially, Our Little Life belonged to the tradition of A Programme of Predicaments and Passions and Glove, Necklace and Gun, fringe productions in which the chief soloists assisted 24 each other in the occasional duet. The influence of The Hollow Crown is nowhere apparent. The present section must now turn to other fringe activities such as occasional readings, the popularity of See above, Chapters IV and VII. 408 which was supposed to have been increasing at the time The Hollow Crown opened in March. On that occasion one review er assumed that The Hollow Crown's structure had been im posed by the Sunday regulations; but five had referred un favorably to programs of dramatic readings— with the clear implication that such programs were frequent. And one col umnist said that "the general idea of Sunday evening read ings" seemed to be "spreading." The evidence for such a generalization, omitted from the column, must now be dis cussed. At the Royal Court the English Stage Company does seem to have gained more press coverage of its "productions without decor," the script-in-hand run-throughs by which it tested new works by unknown writers: between May and Decem ber, 1961, five of them were reviewed in at least two news papers each. It may have been this heightened interest in the Royal Court's tryouts that prompted Moynihan's generali zation, for in the article he continued as follows: Several members of the [Royal Shakespeare^ company took a busman's holiday in the audience. I met Patrick Wymark, who was enthusiastic about the idea of Sunday night readings in general. He said: "An excellent idea. These performances give us the chance of hearing work which otherwise might not be produced." ^ But the total number of productions without decor, as 25 John Moynihan, "In London Last Night," Stand., March 20, p. 19. 409 reported by the English Stage Company, did not increase; and so, if these were what Moynihan had in mind, he was reflecting an increased awareness in the press rather than an increase in the number of productions. At the Royal Court there were two solo readings, each of which formed part of a program devoted chiefly to contemporary music played by The New Music Ensemble. On January 15, 1961, Sir Michael Redgrave read unpublished poems of Samuel Beckett and on March 26 John Neville read a short story by one of the directors of the English Stage Company; neither was mentioned in reviews in the Times or Telegraph, all of which concentrated upon the new music. As part of the centenary of the birth of Rabindra nath Tagore there was a "dramatised reading with music" from his play Sacrifice at the Old Vic on May 7, 1961. It was arranged by John Carroll, directed by Sir Lewis Casson, and included such players as Dame Sybil Thorndike, Barbara Jef- . 27 ford, Judi Dench, Robert Harris, John Neville and Casson. The second part of the program included the reading of two groups of Tagore's poems. Although the Telegraph and Guard ian covered other celebrations, no reviews of this program 26 George Devine, "Court Account," Guard., April 2, 1962, p. 7. 27 Programme, MS Enthoven. See also J. C. Trewin, John Neville; An Illustrated Study . . . , No. 1 of Theatre World Monographs, New Series (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1961), p. 127. 410 were found. On July 16 at the Royal Court was a program called Brecht in Rehearsal, it consisted of comment and discussion by Carl Weber and Ronald Hayman, films of scenes from Ber liner Ensemble productions, and Hayman's and Joanna Rigby's readings of some of Brecht's production notes. Eric Shor ter said in the Telegraph; . . . The readings give us a notion of his general aims .... This was often instructive as well as pro vocative .... But as the evening wore on we seemed to get bogged down in notes from the platform . . . . The result was a British alienation effect; yawns, fidget ing, and an almost continual clatter of late arrivals and early departures. The Times called in "a red-letter event," but discussed the 29 theories propounded. Out at the Lyric in Hammersmith, where Emlyn Wil liams had opened in his "Mixed Bill," a group of recent graduates from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art— and hence possibly still amateurs— transferred a R.A.D.A. production of Under Milk Wood, which, according to the Times, was "much nearer a concert performance than a play proper; the narra tor is split in two, sitting on high stools at either side of the stage, while in between the actors are ranged in a pyramid on plain wooden chairs. 28 July 17, p. 12. ^July 17, p. 14. "^August 9, p. 11. 411 A new group called Tomorrow's Audience, which toured schools in the provinces, offered The prisoners for one- night stands at the Criterion in November and at the Royal Court in February of 1962. According to the Times' reviews of both performances, the production was a popular anthology of scenes and speeches and readings upon the theme of capi tal punishment, linked by comment from a man in the role of the jailer throughout the ages. It may be gathered . . . that the tone of the enter tainment, in which the burden in Pilgrim's Progress be comes a rucksack, is anything but stodgy. But it does not exclude vigorous drama. Clarence1smurder can sel dom have been more effectively staged and the use of dialogue from The Quare Fellow in counter point to ex tracts from The Ballad of Reading Jail is an unqualified success . . . .Mr. Michael Kilgariff brings off a lengthy Dickens recital . . . .^1 The performance at the Court, however, "was sometimes slap dash": "Perhaps the prestige of this particular theatre or else the overfriendliness of their own supporters in the 32 audience had put them off." Although the foregoing discussion has generally neg lected poetry readings, which will be treated in section four, perhaps the pattern of Readers Theatre in London in 1961 is already discernible in rough. Sacrifice, Brecht in Rehearsal, Under Milk Wood. The Prisoners— four productions with elements of Readers Theatre is a higher total than that November 14, p. 13. 32 February 26, 1962, p. 14. 412 of any year since 1954. And if to these be added The Hollow Crown, Kreutzer Sonata,^ For Better for Worse,^ maybe the Hovenden revival of The Widow in the Bye Street in December 35 of the previous year, and perhaps Our Little Life, the figure becomes impressive. But even this inflated figure, for a city with a larger population and more theatres than New York, is only a little larger than that of an average year's offerings at Kaufmann Hall alone. III. THE ART OF SEDUCTION. 1962 The most direct attempt to duplicate the success of The Hollow Crown was the Royal Shakespeare Company's The Art of Seduction, which opened at the Aldwych a year later. It was an adaptation by the devisor and director of the earlier entertainment, John Barton, of Choderlos de Laclos' classic eighteenth-century novel, Les Liaisons Danqereuses. The novel is written as a collection of letters; Barton's adap tation consisted chiefly of editing and arranging them for reading by a narrator and the five characters who purported to have written them. All the players were in period cos tume, a fact that was mentioned in the press announcements as the chief difference between The Art of Seduction and The 33 See above, pp. 369-75. 34 See above, p. 241. 35 See above, pp. 192-94. 413 36 Hollow Crown. A number of extrinsic factors might be mentioned that probably affected, if not the verdict, the way that verdict was expressed. First, there was the novel's repu tation: it had been suppressed in France for most of the nineteenth century, and a film version was currently pro hibited from being shown outside France. At least eight of the London reviewers clearly considered the novel shocking, a story "that should make the scalp creep." Second, there was the Royal Shakespeare Company's own reputation: its first year in London had been wildly successful; and now, in addition to its April-November season of Shakespeare at the Memorial Theatre in Stratford, and its year-round repertory of classics at the Aldwych in London, it had leased the 339-seat Arts Theatre for six months, there to present "new plays and rare classics" at the rate of one play per month. It was in effect challenging the Royal Court as well as the Old Vic. The expansion had spread the Company's artistic 37 resources wide; it left as the stars of The Art of 36 Times, February 5, 1962, p. 14; February 28, p. 5; Guard., February 5, p. 5. 37 For example, Peggy Ashcroft, John Gielgud, Dorothy Tutin and a large and gifted cast were just closing The Cherry Orchard; Vanessa Redgrave was playing As You Like It at the Aldwych and the Taming of the Shrew at Stratford; Derek Godfrey and Geraldine McEwan were cast for the first play at the Arts, Godfrey meanwhile playing Petruccio at Stratford; Hugh Griffith, Michael Flanders and Patsy Byrne were about to lead an enormous cast in The Caucasian Chalk 414 Seduction Irene Worth, very nearly a first-line performer, and Keith Michell, a competent and handsome young actor who seems to have inspired no widespread predictions of a glow- 38 ing future. The expansion was widely regarded as economi cally risky; and this may have tempted partisans of the "angry theatre" to see any concert reading as, in point of O Q fact, Tynan did see this one: "got up on the cheap." Last, an old controversy had suddenly been revived. The Company's expansion, at a time when the State-subsidized Old Vic had "touched the lowest point in their postwar his- 40 tory," made it the candidate for the lion's share of a greatly increased subsidy to a provisional "National Thea tre"; at that point, plans for a permanent National Theatre were suddenly revived. Rather than merge, the Company with drew from the project, admitting however that the new plan had placed its very existence in jeopardy.. Discussion was lively and might soon become acrimonious. For these reason^ Circle at the Aldwych; Wilfrid Lawson and a large cast were to do The Lower Depths at the Arts in August. 38 "One of the main strengths of the Royal Shake speare productions of this type is the fact that stars and leading players take part." R. B. Marriott, "The New En tertainment," The Stage, June 21, 1962, p. 8; see Appen dix, p. 471 below. 390bs., March 25, 1962, p. 24. 40 J. W. Lambert, "Plays in Performance," Drama: The Quarterly Theatre Review (hereafter cited as Drama), Summer, 1962, p. 24. . / 415 the fate of The Art of Seduction was a matter of unusual importance. The Art of Seduction opened at the Aldwych on March 19, 1962, exactly a year after The Hollow Crown— al though the anniversary appears to have gone unremarked. It was scheduled to play for a week and then was to return in May, after The Caucasian Chalk Circle and As You Like It had 41 been well launched. But it was quietly withdrawn during the interim; its total run was a week, or eight perfor mances . Of the fourteen reviews consulted, only one— Hob son's rambling and inconclusive essay— was probably intended as favorable; four were regretful but unfavorable; the rest 42 were less regretful, and five were hostile. The Daily Mirror reviewed it in one word: "artless." Much more 41 Aldwych Theatre schedule, February 19 to May 26, MS in files of present investigator. 42 Arranged roughly m order of increasing hostility; Harold Hobson, "A Choice of Saints and Sinners," Sun. T., Mar. 25, 1962, p. 41; Eric Keown, Punch, Mar. 28, p. 510; "Attempt Worth Making Fails to Succeed," Times, Mar. 20, p. 15; J. C. Trewin, I.L.N., Mar. 31, p. 512; Philip Hope- Wallace, Guard., Mar. 20, p. 7; J. W. Lambert, Drama, Sum mer, 1962, pp. 23-24; Daily Mirror, Mar. 20, p. 9; "Fergus Cashin's First Night," Daily Sketch. Mar. 20, p. 19; Eric Shorter, "Tortuous but Unshocking 'Les Liaisons': Losses as Play," Tele., Mar. 20, p. 14; Alan Brien, "Formulas for Failure," The Sunday Telegraph. Mar. 25, p. 10; Robert Mul ler, "A Single Prop Knocked Over Twice in One Act," Mail, Mar. 20, p. 3; Bernard Levin, "This Makes Seduction Such a Bore," Exp., Mar. 20, p. 4; Milton Shulman, "Just Like Ra dio," Stand., Mar. 20, p. 4; Kenneth Tynan, loc. cit. » / 416 frequent were the words "dull" and "bore." Muller said three hours of letters "cannot help being a galumphing bore." Shulman called it "a boring way of absorbing a very good novel"; Cashin of the Daily Sketch said: "It was dull. The most animated thing on the stage was a table that twice took a tumble in the first act." Levin said: "There is no dramatic life to it; no movement, except the rattling of the bare bones of the story; no depth or growth in the people." Five reviews called into question the effectiveness of read ing as a theatrical form. The theme of the reviews in both Punch and the Times was stated thus by Eric Keown: "The experiment was obvious ly worth making, and it is difficult to See why it failed." Five reviews traced a large part of the fault to the adap tation. Muller said: "Mr. Barton has compressed the 175 % letters . . . to make them seem like seventeen hundred." Levin said that "the tragic irony of the book becomes petty and slight"; one of the symptoms of this was "the silly title." Said Eric Shorter: No shocks, no sense of evil, and no more than a hint of the icy amoral force that characterises the intrigues of the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil in their relentless pursuit of innocence. Instead, we are presented with a tortuous, busy tale of a gay and handsome Vicomte, callously conducting two amorous campaigns at once and letting one of them get the better of him. The Times, far more sympathetic, agreed in the main; it was too close to the "familiar theatrical amorist intrigue": 417 We are never really held by Laclos's presentiment of the tragedy of Rational Man who has been carefully con ditioned through the removal of all moral scruples and the sense of guilt to treat seduction as a military art. Hobson thought the weakness— and, it seems, the strength— lay in Barton's taking too gentle a view of Laclos, ignoring the gusto with which the lecherous details had been pre sented. This has two consequences. The first is that any theatregoer who rushes to the Aldwych heated by the novel's questionable reputation will soon be cooled down; the second is that whereas only the logic of "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" is tragic, the mood of "The Art of Seduction" is tragic too. Pour reviewers suspected that the trouble lay with the book itself. Shulman implied that Lolita and Lady Chatterley's Lover had made it dated. Tynan passed it off as a sopho- 43 more shocker which one had of course outgrown. Trewin referred to "the inherent monotony of the theme"; and Lam bert suggested that the "almost obsessional" tale was "real ly rather nasty." Opinions of the general performance were evenly divided, with five favorable and five adverse. Lambert said that even "such sophisticated" English players "don't easily come to terms with these cool erotic manoeuvres." Tynan said that Michell was "purely roguish" and that Miss Worth 43 . . He did not abandon the high line there. Having somewhat elaborately dropped the names of Heine and Justine, he went on irrelevantly and— apparently— completely solemn: "(Sade and Laclos certainly influenced each other, and very likely met. During the summer of 1794 they were held in the same prison by the Revolutionary Tribunal}" 418 did "little more than bleat voluptuously." Shulman thought them both inadequate? Muller thought them both stylish, but commented, like Cashin, upon their knocking over a table twice in one act. The Times said they were both good but unsuccessful; Trewin thought Miss Worth good, and Keown con sidered her very good. Hobson called hers a splendid per formance, and offered some detail to support his claim that Michell was uneasy at first but powerful in later scenes. Shorter dismissed Irene Worth thus: The Marquise is played by Irene Worth: or is that the word on these occasions, when "playing" is restric ted to an occasional animation or gesture towards the neighboring chair? Levin, naming no names, lashed out like this: And the playing is not only dull, but silly and coarse. Such forced laughter, such gross self-con sciousness, such heavily-assumed light smiles, such brandishing of quill pens and deepening of voices is not the sort of thing we expect from the National Theatre that Mr. Peter Hall now runs, in his three homes, in all but name. When the players were mentioned by name the reference was likely to be favorable, by odds of about two to one; but when general comments are considered, especially those in which the acting was blamed for the production method, the judgments were evenly divided. Comment upon the production method, if it went beyond brief description, was usually unfavorable. The Times said the attempt was worthwhile: "There was always the chance that the reading of some of the letters . . . might work." 419 Like Punch, it could assign no cause for the failure. The Daily Sketch could and did; after pursuing a pun about First French Readers for awhile, it summed up: Typically French— ALL TALK AND NO ACTION. Typically English— ALL READING AND NO ACTION. Tynan was no less derisive: Laclos's original being epistolary in form, the act ors gamely scratch away with quills at the scripts from which they are reciting. This naturally makes reading difficult, and Esme Church is not wholly to blame if at times she appears illiterate. Alan Brien of The Sunday Telegraph attacked reading as in appropriate to this particular work: It might have been more exciting if they had been invisible .... But to see a girl sit prim and poker- faced by while her seducer read out an inch-by-inch description of the event verged on Goon-show comic bad- taste. Hope-Wallace seems to have been making the same point, at much greater length; but he may also have implied that read- 44 ing is ineffective as a form of theatre. His conclusion "... Mere reading on a stage is one thing: and in itself a slight disappointment. But even were these lines learnt by heart and so delivered with the full absorb- tion £ sic J of an actor acting, the method would be dubious. "Is it effective? Since the only criticism nowadays which is in black or white is absolved from the charge of sitting on the fence, let me say emphatically that I do not think it is. This is not to deny much cleverness in the manner in which one character reads and another character to whom he is supposed to be writing listens with animation and even comment, while the other characters "freeze" or look away (or even absent themselves). The mere fact that inti mate secrets are being read aloud in the presence of the victims being discussed somehow destroys these people as characters and makes them nothing but mouthpieces. Ingen uity is employed, but the effect of the terrible letter in 420 may carry a similar implication: But it is all only half acting— a play-reading soci ety in rather good form; that is all. Tynan's attack was specific to this performance, but his conclusion implied a broader target: "In every sense of the word except Ionesco's, . . . £it3 is anti-theatre." And Muller offered as the second of his two "final words of ad vice" : . . . . The Royal Shakespeare Company should hesitate before lumbering its repertoire with any more readings from the classics. Shulman, who had foreseen the popularity of "Victorian re- i citals" three years before, objected to "actions we are only told about instead of being able to watch" £l] and general ized thus: The Art of Seduction at the Aldwych, like so many recent soirees of this kind, is rapidly bringing the theatre closer to radio. If one could brew some tea in the aisles or better still, if one were provided with switches for turning it off, the illusion would be complete. Whether Hobson's conclusion was meant to imply an endorse ment of the method is an open question: This is a production by the Royal Shakespeare Com pany, whose director is Peter Hall. It is an example of the kind of work Mr Hall does which has converted me to the idea of a National Theatre. which Valmont tells Mme de Merteuil how he conquered the re sistance of the virtuous Mme de Tourvel is not enhanced, rather weakened, when it is to the stricken victim that he reads it; she herself chiming in with her own abject declar ation." [[italics in originalj 421 To a National Theatre this company and this direc tor are essential .... If this be praise of the method, then it was the only exam ple of such. Two reviews clearly condoned the method; most of them belittled it somewhat in passing, but six attacked it as being, at very least, inappropriate to the material. Two of these, and perhaps three, attacked concert reading in general. The Art of Seduction, then, was rejected by thirteen of the fourteen reviews encountered. The major criticisms were that it was dull; that it lacked action— physical 'and, perhaps, psychological; and that the relentless, cold and monstrously logical evil that pervades the novel had been diluted into the usual emotions of the "theatrical amorist intrigue"— wherein the destruction of innocence is pathetic or faintly absurd. Five reviewers blamed much of this on Barton's adaptation; no one praised the adaptation, but four said a chief difficulty arose from the book itself. Opinion about the quality of the performance was evenly divided, al though individual players were more likely to be praised than censured. The method of presentation was praised in none of the reviews; it was condoned or approved in two, be littled in most, and attacked in six. At least two broad ened their attack to include readings in general. 422 IV. POETRY READINGS, 1961-1962, AND THE VAGARIES OF LOVE. 1962 One of the contributions to the festival that accom panied the dedication of the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral, was The Vagaries of Love, an "entertainment" devised by John Barton of the Royal Shakespeare Company and sponsored by the Apollo Society; early comments implied that it was a candi date for inclusion in the Aldwych repertory as a successor to The Hollow Crown. The present section continues the dis cussion of poetry reading, traced in Chapter VI down to the end of 1960, and then deals briefly with The Vagaries of Love, a result of collaboration between perhaps the chief creators of the convention of Sunday poetry readings and the creators of The Hollow Crown. The importance of the Apollo Society as a link be tween poetry and the theatre was acknowledged in an editorial in the Times late in 1960. This said that "although the poet has apparently lost his precarious foothold in our theatre" with the failure of the postwar renaissance of the verse play, nevertheless "considerable audiences gather to hear his works." And it proceeded to its thesis: Though poetry readings by professional actors are by no means rare— -as witness the steady response to the activities of the Apollo Society— it is the poet's own presence which now means most to the listener. Perhaps it is strange that, while the poet of the past [Thomas, Auden, SpencerJ was as concerned as any actor to pro ject a poem at his audience in such a way as to make the maximum effect, the poet today seems merely to permit an 423 audience to be present while he reads to himself. Pos sibly the audience's appetite is in one sense more pure ly poetical, for it likes it poetry unbeglamoured by these other, fortuitous attractions.^5 The thesis itself might deserve at least cursory inspection within the present study, for if, as was claimed in Chapter VI above, the Apollo Society concerts were becoming less purely poetic and relying increasingly on drama and prose, then the clearest witness to the popularity of poetry read ings by professional actors, according to the editorial, might become increasingly irrelevant, and the gap between poetry and the theatre would become predictably wider. Two unusual public performances the following summer may serve to test the thesis. On June 11, 1961, a group of contemporary poets who had held a successful public recital in Hampstead six months before, announced an evening of "Poetry and Jazz" at the huge, 3000-seat Royal Festival Hall. "To the organisers' apparent surprise," said the Guardian, the hall was 46 filled. The Mail referred to "an audience of 3000 with a smattering of beards and leather jackets," and continued: Ex-Goon Spike Milligan, in green pullover, red choker, grey slacks, and with two wristwatches, read from two ink-blotched pages . . . . Later the seven- piece band seated behind the poets joined in. Poet and author Jeremy Robson, 22, could just make himself heard 45 "Poetry in Public," leader, Times, December 3, 1960, p. 7. 46 June 15, 1961, p. 9. 424 above the drums and saxophones. ^ Although the announcements listed readings by eight poets, including Laurie Lee and Lydia Pasternak Slater— sister of the Russian poet— current and subsequent references sugges- 48 ted that the main attractions were Robson and Milligan. Although The New Statesman, attacking the "deep, dazed glow of self-satisfaction" among the cultists of contemp orary verse, assumed that such cultists formed a major parr 49 of the audience, a guess might be hazarded that Spike Mil ligan— wno, with Peter Sellars and Michael Bentine had formed the enormously popular comedy program, The Goon Show, on BBC radio some years before, and who was still turning out wildly funny movie shorts and television sketches— would be almost enough to draw three thousand alone. A month later there was a week-long poetry festival at the 508-seat Mermaid Theatre;^ apparently there were about twenty-two programs, only one of which featured pro fessional readers but several of which had jazz combinations or ballad-singing or poetic films. The Mail reported that 47 June 12, p. 5. 48 Guard., and Mail, loc. cit.; Mail, July 18, p. 6; Guard., November 23, p. 12. 49 John Coleman, "Centres and Ceremonies," New States man (hereafter cited in notes as New States.), July 28, 1961, p. 129. 50 Seating data from Mander and Michenson, op. cit.; Coleman, op. cit., placed capacity at 499. 425 on opening night "they actually turned people away," and estimated the audience at one lunchtime concert at 250; the New Statesman reported that on an average week-night the 51 house was three-quarters full. Although the Mail was breezy enough, the Guardian, covering the same concert, said it was "a curiously depressing affair. The atmosphere . . . 52 resembled that.of a service at a crematorium." And Cole man, objecting to the insistence upon the high quality of this new generation of poets, attacked thus: . . .No, one wanted to shout, no, they're not, and it's getting awfully late, and they read abominably, anyway. Why haven't we got a broadsheet so that we can see what they're saying? Neither the Guardian nor the Mail thought the quality of the reading high enough to warrant more than a passing word of derision— "announced darkly," "a mourning quality," "pro voked knowing laughter"— but the New Statesman article took as one of its themes "the absurdity of letting most poets 53 read their own works." The festival seems not to have been covered in the Times, News, Standard or Express. In 1961 the Apollo Society did not attract even that limited attention in the press. The Times carried a brief _ — Peter Lewis, "Rhyme with Reason," Mail, July 18, p. 6; John Coleman, op. cit. ^"London Letter," Guard., July 18, p. 8. 53 Cf. reactions in the New Statesman to early Apollo Society concerts, Chapter IV above. 426 announcement but no review of the concert of February 12, which consisted entirely of a reading by Jill Balcon and C. Day Lewis of The Rape of the Lock with harpsichord selec- 54 tions between cantos. Programmes in the Society's files and in the Enthoven Collection indicated there were two more concerts that year. On March 12 Dame Peggy Ashcroft and Marius Goring offered a program that included the speech of Elizabeth I at Tilbury, Churchill's speech after Dunkirk, Overbury's "Character of a Courtier," and scenes from Twelfth Night and Private Lives. Quite clearly this program was far more dramatic and rhetorical than the usual London recital, although it might be noted that the Society spon sored Barbara Jefford's recital, in costume, of Shakespearete Heroines at the King's Lynn Festival that summer. James Robertson Justice gave a solo recital at Festival Hall on April 9; the very scanty data did not mention even a musical accompaniment. In July the recital room of Festival Hall was closed and its replacement was not to be completed be- 55 fore December, 1963; the Apollo Society, like the smaller agencies mentioned in Chapter VI, had no home for its con certs. Apparently the Society gave no London concerts in 54 Times, February 7, p. 14. ^5Times, January 6, 1961, p. 10; leader, January 7, p. 7; March 24, p. 4. 427 the fall of 1961, but in the spring of the following year it offered three at the large, 1028-seat Aldwych Theatre. Two of these drew about a two-thirds house, according to esti mates by the present investigator. On February 18 Vanessa Redgrave— substituting for Peggy Ashcroft— Tony Church and Ossian Ellis, harpist, gave a concert devised by John Bar ton. This not only contained dramatic scenes, like Jack's proposal from The Importance of Being Earnest and even the strangulation scene from The Duchess, of Malfi; many of the poems were grouped as a sort of dramatic dialogue. As the Times explained it: . . . [The three] all joined in Sir Walter Raleigh's "Now, what is love" which opened and closed the second of the recital's parts, but the three participants seemed on the whole to have sharply different functions. Those of the readers were to insist on the two sides . . . [of] experience: . . . "pleasure" and "repent ance." Mr. Church and Miss Redgrave took turns at this. As soon as he, sitting on his Chinese Chippendale chair, had read a grave extract from Francis Bacon's The Life of Man, she sprang up to counter it with the anony mous "Hey Nonny No." Donne's "Sermon on Death" in Mr. Church's reading was answered by Dylan Thomas's "Rage, rage against the dying of the light" in Miss Red- gravefs.56 Hope-Wallace's pun upon "harping" implies that he thought the program insistent; he elaborated thus: The three artists began by dividing up, too artfully, 55 Times, January 6, 1961, p. 10; leader, January 7, p. 7; March 24, p. 4. 5 6 "Poetry— With a Dash of Prose: Harp Serves as In termediary," Times, February 19, 1962, p. i4. 4 2 8 Blake's "When the voices of children . . . went on to contrast Bacon in dire mood (Church) with an emphatic yes saying "Hey nonny No"— (with undertones of'"Defi nitely defibely, no!" r sicl from Miss Redgrave, on her feet, in black, and gazing like Monitress Madge through splendid tortoise-shell rimmed spectacles.57 He thought the first half "a really clever salad," but de rided the scene from The Duchess of Malfi, which "did not 'come off.'" Both reviews contained somewhat puzzling introduc tions to the work of the Society in general. That in the Times, distorting the programme notes, said that this con cert was made up, "as their programmes have been from-the co beginning, of poetry and music, with a dash of prose."30 Hope-Wallace began thus: The Apollo Society's recitals of poetry and music often yield pleasure, not always the maddest pleasure afforded by opera or poetic drama, but something mild, worthwhile and decorous or more decorous than yawning by the fireside on a Sunday. One or two readers, a harpist or two and skilful juxtapositions: it is all well, c^f you know what to expect and do not expect too much. 57 Philip Hope-Wallace, "Apollo Society Recital," Guard.. February 19, p. 5. 58 The programme, MS in files of present investiga tor, contained three paragraphs tracing the history of the Society from its beginning; towards the end came the sen tence, "The programmes are not confined too rigidly to po etry, and sometimes include prose." 59 . The last clause recalls his supererogatory warning about The Hollow Crown, p. 3 92 above, but the reference to two harpists is mistaken. He distorted the order of the program in order to get this conclusion for his review, which is here punctuated as in the original: There followed part of Donne's Sermon on Death and 429 Perhaps both explanations were prompted by the Society's long absence from the West End, .but they do not entirely al lay misgivings about the critics' own familiarity with the Society's work. Hence the concert and the reviews thereof may be significant for a number of reasons. It was the first Apol lo concert devised by John Bartdn, who arranged The Hollow Crown and The Art of Seduction. It arranged lyric poetry into a dialectic if not dramatic structure, and was in gen eral more theatrical than the usual Society concert of the time. It may have been the germ of The Vagaries of Love; its second half, indeed, was called by that name. Finally, the reviewers revealed some uncertainty about the structure of the usual Apollo Society concert. The other two concerts that season, of which no re views were found, were almost as far from the Society's traditional London format. On March 4 Dame Edith Evans and Christopher Hassall offered a program similar to the one they gave at the 1958 Edinburgh Festival; it contained scenes from The Dark is Light Enough, As You Like It, The Importance of Being Earnest and The Way of the World. On May 20 Geraldine McEwan and Max Adrian read, besides poems, Dylan Thomas's "'Go not . . . '" After which my irreverent eye fell on the programme's single advertisement which said; "ALL EXITS should be kept clear at the interval to enable the audience to get its Guinness." But it wasn't that kind of evening, or audience; though pleasant enough, I'm. sure. 430 prose selections from Daisy Ashford, Joyce, Swift, Sterne, Richardson and Laclos. Both concerts contained as much drama and prose as lyric poetry. The closeness of the association between the Apollo Society and the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1962 could not be ascertained within the limits of the present study; it may have been no more than the sum of the obvious points of conjunction: the Company let the Society use its theatre; Dame Peggy Ashcroft, founder of the Society, John Barton, who devised two of the three programs, and four of the six readers— all were "under long-term contract" to the Company; for years the Society had provided the final concert for the Stratford Poetry Festival at the Memorial Theatre; both or ganizations were professionally concerned with verse-speak ing, and both were experimenting with the reading of other kinds of literature. However impermanent this union, it produced John Barton's "entertainment in poems," The Vagar ies of Love, a program which was billed as the Company's contribution to the Coventry Cathedral Festival and which, with a slightly different cast, was announced as an Apollo 60 Society concert at the King's Lynn Festival a month later. The Vagaries of Love had its first performance on May 29, 1962, at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry; thereafter it alternated with The Hollow Crown for the rest of the ^Times, May 8, 1962, p. 15. 431 Royal Shakespeare Company's run at the three-week festival celebrating the dedication of the cathedral that replaced the one destroyed during the Battle of Britain. The three readers were Peggy Ashcroft, Max Adrian and John Barton. Partly because of a flaw in the investigation only 61 four reviews were found. Trewin used the title as the heading and framework for his bimonthly review? he repeated this idea, "Assuredly we must meet 'The Vagaries' in Lon don." The Stage called it a "measurable triumph" and a "de lightful contribution." The Guardian thought the first half "a pale shade," but said that the rest approached "the dy namic variety" of The Hollow Crown. The Observer called it "the chill epitome of English bourgeois sex, roguish, pas sionless, and discreetly swathed in evening dress." So the opinion was divided: two enthusiastic, one mixed and one hostile. The selection was described by Evans as "ten vari ations on the theme of Love— the pattern is formal and styl istic, relying a grest deal on 'pure* poetry, and to a less er extent on dramatic and prose pieces." J. C. Trewin was 61 It opened out of town two days before the end of the period, and rumor was that it would come to London? by the time the early reviews were seen to be relevant, most of the newspapers were unavailable at Colindale. Reviews were found as follows: J. C. Trewin, I.L.N., June 9, p. 944? The Stage. May 31# p. 17? Gareth Lloyd Evans, Guard.. May 30, p. 7? Obs., June 3, p. 27. The following were also con sulted and no reviews found: Drama, New States., P & P, Punch. Sun. T., Times. 432 more authoritative: The full description is "an entertainment, consis ting mainly of poems, but including prose writings. It traces the course of love in its various phases from youth to age, from innocence to disillusionment, and from happy to fatal love." That is comprehensive enough .... He concurred that the pattern was formal, not chronological: "a plan alertly formed. At the end of the night one is con scious that the programme has been a unity of diversity." The Stage thought it "expertly gathered" and cited "the ex quisite lines of such poets and writers as Byron, W. B. Yates f sic~ l , Charles Lamb, John Dryden," and so forth. The Observer called it a "pseudo-erotic" program, "a safe com pilation of names like Marvell, Keats, Byron, Hardy," et cetera; it deplored the absence of such— presumably danger ous-— alternatives as Donne, Troilus and Criseyde and Hero and Leander; and implied twice its displeasure over the ab sence of even "the faintest suggestion of bed." The Observer was not so conspicuously in the minor ity in its assessment of the performance. The Stage praised the readers' sincerity and variety; Trewin said the quality was so high that the only question was to pick one's favor ites. The Observer referred to Adrian's "syllables gleaming like the scales of a fish," and Barton's turning Jack Wor thing into "a costive major-domo." "Peggy Ashcroft's voice," however, "sang out prettily now and then." It was "an under-rehearsed trio." The Guardian noted a discrepancy be- 433 tween "the frequent uncertainty of this company with poetry, and its impeccable assurance with anything remotely drama tic"? and added: Bad phrasing, curious (and on this first night) nervous misreadings, suggest that they have fallen prey to the fear of poetry. Certain exceptional readings remain in the ear .... But Marvell's "To his coy mistress" . . . is turned into a Patience Strong appeal for affection. Adrian was praised for leading "the rescue act" by bringing "an unexpected and acceptable drama to Charles Lamb and Dickens," and emboldening his colleagues with his "subtle drive towards vigour and life." R. B. Marriott later re ported that the troupe had been criticized for "keeping 62 their noses in their books." The data were too scanty to support any firm con clusion; indeed, an inference might almost be drawn from the reviews' being so true to their journals' predictable form: The Stage and The Illustrated News enthusiastic, the Guar dian equivocal, and the Observer impatient with what was not Brecht, Royal Court nor manifestly superb. Apparently the show was successful enough to be alternated with The Hollow Crown during the Coventry run, and to be compared with that production, not unfavorably, in two reviews. But it seems to have lacked the variety of material and of presentation that contributed greatly to the success of The Hollow Crown, 62 "The New Entertainment," The Stage; Appendix p. 472 below. 434 and in a way it might represent the concert toward which the Apollo Society had been moving for the past two or three years. There was no evidence of its reaching London within a year of the end of the period under study. V. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS The present chapter has attempted to describe the "new entertainment" which R. B. Marriott claimed was intro duced by the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of The Hollow Crown in 1961. The data came from official pro grammes, press announcements, a couple of editorials and gossip columns, and fifty-two reviews of nine productions— including seven reviews of three poetry readings. The Hollow Crown, a concert reading of historical and literary documents by and about English monarchs, began as a Sunday evening performance to celebrate the granting of roy al patronage to the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company— now renamed the Royal Shakespeare Company— on March 19, 1961. Critical reaction was so favorable that the program was given four "midweek" performances in May and then installed in the Company's repertory at the Aldwych in June. Even if its other achievements were contested, The Hollow Crown would be unique in having remained in the repertory of a first-rate classical company. Of the sixteen reviews consulted in the present study nine were enthusiastic, four were clearly favorable, 435 another which might legitimately have been called favorable was conservatively classified here as mixed, and one was clearly unfavorable. A sixteenth was superficially favor able, but offered such weak defense against bogeys of its own devising, and was so conspicuously measured in its praise, that it was considered here to be unfavorable— if indeed it was not the only hostile review the production elicited. Four reviews contained adverse comment such as this: the beginning was stilted; the trial of Charles I and the ending were dull; there was too much padding; and the performances cheapened the material. Most of these criti cisms concerned details that were praised in other reviews. Probably the strongest and most widespread reaction was that of surprise: it was clear in half of the sixteen, and another four carried such full descriptions of the surprise at previous performances as to imply their endorsement of it. The simplicity of the staging was praised in six, but analyzed in only two. Nine reviews offered fairly lengthy discussions of the material; most of the scant ad verse comment referred to the material. The only censure of any of the players came in the Times1 first review, which held that all but John Barton had mocked their subjects with "a rather cheap display of virtuosity." All the other re views praised the performances, and each member of the cast was chosen by at least one reviewer as having given the strongest performance. 436 Two critics implied that concert reading was an art form artistically inferior to a conventional play, and one of these professed alarm lest the public be duped. Five re views admitted to prior forebodings about the form. Only one critic pointed to any advantage that The Hollow Crown enjoyed over conventional productions? and so the tone of surprise in half of the reviews should not be taken to mean that The Hollow Crown was'a revelation of the possibilities of the form. No one offered suggestions for future produc tions. At least three productions subsequently claimed kin ship with The Hollow Crown. The first, Our Little Life, starring Margaret Rutherford, was really a series of mono logues, duologues and playlets— most of which had been used before in fringe productions like A Programme of Predica ments and Passions. Our Little Life played for two weeks in an arena theatre in Croydon in October, 1961? there was no evidence of its having been transferred or revived. The seven reviews consulted were unfavorable, al though three were so clearly sympathetic as to be conserva tively classified here as mixed. The material was censured as shopworn and slight. Opinion about the performances was divided? although there was disagreement as to which roles were taken best, the consensus was that the leading players had done so well in their best roles that the remainder of their performance was disappointing. 437 The Art of Seduction. John Barton1s adaptation of Laclos1 Les Liaisons Danqereuses, was presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company a year after the premiere of The Hollow Crown. Although it had been scheduled to go into the reper tory at the Aldwych, it was withdrawn after eight perfor mances. Extraneous factors, such as the reputation of the novel and the prominence of the company in theatre politics, may have affected the intensity of the critics* verdicts, although probably not their direction. Only one of four teen reviews appeared favorable; four of the remainder were very sympathetic (and hence might have been classified as mixed) and five were hostile. The most frequent charge was that it was dull. Also, it failed to convey the novel's sense of relentlessly logical and motiveless evil; five blamed this alleged failure on Barton's adaptation, and four said the novel was unsuited to the temper of this age. There was too little action, physical or psychological. Last, the playing was censured as often as it was praised, although individual players— if mentioned by name— were more likely to be praised than blamed. Although four reviews mentioned The Hollow Crown, there was no attempt to compare the two, even on such a simple level as the amount of physi cal movement. None of the reviews clearly praised the method of staging, but two condoned it; six attacked it as being at best inappropriate to the plot, and two or three of these attacked reading in general. 438 The third derivative of The Hollow Crown was The Vagaries of Love, an entertainment devised by John Barton under the joint sponsorship of the Royal Shakespeare Com pany and the Apollo Society. It resembled an Apollo Soci ety concert that Barton devised a few months earlier; how ever, it used three readers, no music, and rather more prose than did even the latest Society concerts. It alternated with The Hollow Crown at the Coventry Cathedral Festival in May and June of 1962, and was scheduled for the King's Lynn Festival a month later; there was no evidence of its having appeared in London within the next year. Four reviews were discovered, two enthusiastic and one mixed and one hostile. Barton's selection and adap tation were highly praised in three, and dismissed as tame in the fourth. Two praised the readers and the fourth dis missed them. The third, mixed review contrasted the read ers' "frequent uncertainty" in poetry with their "impeccable assurance" in dramatic literature; like the hostile review, it said they were under-rehearsed. Two reviews referred to The Hollow Crown in their comparisons; none referred to The Art of Seduction. Thus of the three productions that claimed to derive from The Hollow Crown, two were failures and one a limited provincial success. Their claims of kinship seem not to have affected the outcome directly: the prototype was men tioned in none of the reviews of Our Little Life, in only 439 four of the fourteen reviews of The Art of Seduction, and in two of the four of The Vagaries of Love; in none of these was a detailed comparison attempted. Our Little Life, in- . 4 deed, bore almost no resemblance to The Hollow Crown, and belonged rather to the tradition of the solo productions in the club theatres of the previous decade. The Art of Seduc tion was an epistolary drama, and thus was partly in the tradition of Dear Liar and Abelard and Heloise; but if such comparison were to be attempted, its most promising form would be a pairing of The Art with Abelard and The Crown with Dear Liar— not only in the imaginative variety intro duced into the presentation as concert reading, but in the changes of mood possible within an episodic structure as compared to that of a narrative concerned with a single theme and a preordained conclusion. Perhaps this remote ness of connection between The Art of Sedudtion and its im mediate predecessor was what allowed the critics to attack concert reading without automatically incurring the respon sibility of explaining the success of The Hollow Crown. The Vagaries of Love was of course much closer in structure to The Hollow Crown, and that closeness was reflected in its reviews. Beyond these productions there was only scattered evidence of the "new entertainment" and the "vogue for dramatic readings." The productions without decor at the Royal Court were no more frequent, and no more concerned 440 with reading per se than before; but they were reviewed somewhat oftener in the press. Concert readings of Tagore's Sacrifice and Thomas's Under Milk Wood were scantily re viewed; the Royal Court offered a Sunday evening program called Brecht in Rehearsal which seems to have been much more of a lecture-panel than something resembling the off- Broadway Brecht on Brecht. A miscellany of scenes, sketches, and readings about capital punishment, The Prisoners, was offered twice in London by a group that toured schools in the north. And although this represented more activity than at any time since 1954, Readers Theatre could hardly be con sidered a flood tide. In poetry reading there were two unusual develop ments, either of which might prove important in the years after the period under study: the Apollo Society, having lost its hall when the recital room at Festival Hall was closed, formed an association with the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych; and elsewhere two conspicuously suc cessful poetry festivals were held, with poets instead of actors for readers. The first of these poets' offerings, a program of "Poetry and Jazz" by a group of modern poets led by Spike Milligan, a very talented comedian, filled the 3000-seat Festival Hall; the second was a week-long series of programs at the Mermaid Theatre. Three reviews were found of each; none implied that the reading was to be praised even in jest; and generally, the more serious the review the 441 stronger was the expression of dissatisfaction with the whole proceedings. Nevertheless, the existence of a popular audience for such affairs had been clearly demonstrated. j■ Meanwhile the Apollo Society continued in what seems to be the opposite direction: its six concerts in 1961 and 1962 used high proportions of prose and drama compared even to the concerts of three years before; and one— arranged by John Barton, perhaps as an early version of The Vagaries of Love— arranged its lyric poems into a semi-dramatic dialec tic. If The Hollow Crown had succeeded The Vagaries of Love instead of preceding it by more than a year, the evolution ary pattern of the Apollo Society would have been impeccably neat. The existence of a "new entertainment" distinct from the inspired solos of Williams, Gielgud and Mac Liammoir can best be demonstrated by a simple listing of the major, minor and one-night productions in, loosely, Readers Theatre dur ing the two seasons, 1960-61 and 1961-62: Dear Liar, The Hollow Crown, The Art of Seduction; Abelard and Heloise, The Widow in the Bye Street. Kreutzer Sonata, The Prisoners, The Vagaries of Love; "Savonarola Brown," Dominion of Danger, My Brother1s Keeper, Sacrifice, Brecht in Rehearsal, Under Milk Wood, For Better For Worse. But the prominence of the move ment is a matter of far greater doubt: only two critics re ferred to the movement per se; only a small proportion of the reviews of any of these productions alluded to other 442 examples of the genre; and a rough computation of the per formances given these productions would yield an approximate total of 150— barely more than the number of conventional productions. major and minor but excluding one-night stands, that were mounted in London during either of these two sea sons. CHAPTER X SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS In search of evidence of the status of oral inter pretation as a form of professional London theatre during the period 1951-62 the present study consulted the follow ing works: forty issues of theatre annuals, a dozen his tories of contemporary British theatre, twenty stage bio graphies, eight collections of reviews and twelve annual reports of various institutions. The files of the Apollo Society and of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, of twenty theatre playbills, press clippings, housed in the Gabrielle Enthoven Theatre Collection at the Victoria and Albert Mu seum were investigated. Record was found of approximately 180 relevant productions during the period under survey. Reviews of those productions were sought in the files of the Enthoven Collection, in the Central Reference Library of the Westminster Public Library, and in the back issues of various newspapers and magazines filed in the National Newspaper Library at the Colindale Branch of the British Museum. 325 reviews of approximately eighty produc tions were found. Further data were obtained from commer cial recordings and published playscripts. 443 444 I. SUMMARY Detailed summaries were given at the end of each chapter of the main body of the study, and often at the end of major sections within those chapters; hence the following has been severely compressed. In the early summer of 1951 Charles Laughton's First Drama Quartette toured five large British cities with the concert reading of Don Juan in Hell in which they had barn stormed the United States; they did not play in London. Al though they were reviewed enthusiastically in the local papers along their route, they were almost completely ig nored in the national (i.e., London) press. No reason was found for this silence. When one of Britain's foremost playwrights claimed a year later to have found the basis of a new dramatic form in the Quartette's production, only two out of fifteen London critics here consulted were able to identify the work to which he explicitly referred. The evidence suggested that the Quartette had no influence in Britain beyond the 1952 production, Dragon's Mouth. The program that the London critics used most often as a touchstone was Emlyn Williams' performance as Charles Dickens reading a "Mixed Bill" of Dickens' stories. This production opened at the Lyric, Hammersmith, in October of 1951 and subsequently moved to the West End for a total of seventy London performances. The reviews were enthusiastic, r 445 and half of them revealed surprise; they praised the variety of his material, his virtuosity and characterization, his restraint and his fidelity to Dickens. Williams was gener ally assumed to have given an accurate reproduction of Dick ens' own readings. His adaptation of Bleak House dominated the 1952 Edinburgh. Festival and then moved to the Ambassadors Theatre for a run of sixty-nine London performances. Reviews were favorable, but claimed that the novel's plot was intrusive. Although the early reviews and Williams' program notes objected to the term "reading," no satisfactory sub stitute was found. The majority view of both programs was that Williams was acting or impersonating Dickens, who in turn was re-creating the characters in his fiction by some process less explicit than acting or impersonation but more vivid than reciting or declamation. Generally it was as sumed that Williams had found a new career, inasmuch as his was "the right way" to bring Dickens to the stage; but no where were implications found for other productions. Williams had no discernible influence in the club theatres, drama societies, lecture-halls and similar insti tutions that made up London's theatrical fringe. There a number of diseuses appeared sporadically in character sketches after the manner of Ruth Draper, but somewhat more frequent were monologues and duets derived from Cocteau or Schnitzler or the Grand Guignol. As record could be found 4 4 6 of only nine such productions in the period 1951-54, none of them widely reviewed, there seemed no reason to suppose they were influential. Activity in concert reading was al most as desultory. The sources consulted here showed nine teen "rehearsed readings"— two of which were reviewed— dur ing the four years; of that total the Institute of Contem porary Arts sponsored more than half. Early in 1954 three outstanding recitals were given in memory of Dylan Thomas. In each of them there was a con cert reading of at least part of Under Milk Wood and in each Emlyn Williams figured prominently. The first two consisted largely of readings of poems and stories of Thomas'; the third production, a concert reading of the whole of Under Milk Wood, was given two.performances at the Old Vic, with Sybil Thorndike, Richard Burton and Williams augmenting the original BBC Third Programme cast. Reviews of this reading were particularly enthusiastic; none implied that the pro duction would be improved by full staging, and four indica ted that the run should be extended. The popular and critical success of these recitals seems not to have affected concert reading, however. Only two further experiments in the genre received any attention within the next five years. In April, 1958, Theatre Work shop arranged a concert reading of parts of the Shaw-Terry correspondence, Love and Lectures, for use as a curtain- raiser; four influential critics were enthusiastic, and Ken- 447 neth Tynan said Emlyn Williams could assemble a similar pro gram that would match all but the best of Shaw; but the show was not recalled in the reviews of Dear Liar two years later. Possibly a second such production was the Hovenden (club) Theatre's staging of Masefield's narrative poem, The Widow in the Bye Street, in June, 1959. The Thomas Memorial concerts inspired Williams' so lo, Dylan Thomas Growing Up, which opened at the Globe in May, 1955, for eighty-seven London performances. Reviews were highly favorable, praising especially the restraint of the performance and the vividness of the characterization. Two-thirds of them mentioned the Dickens readings, and only one referred to Thomas' own career as a reader. Where Dick ens and his works were central to the reviews in 1951 and 1952, Thomas and his works were peripheral to these; but no one except Williams suggested that this more general method could be extended to the works of other writers. Nor was the method exploited on the fringe. Record was found of thirteen solo productions there during 1955-60: monologues and solo playlets taken from European drama, mis cellanies of mime and recitation, and character sketches re motely in the Draper tradition. Rosalinde Fuller's short story recital, Hearts and Faces, played at the Arts for a month in the fall of 1956 and received cordial reviews; in the following spring David Kossoff's collection of Jewish folk talkes, With One Eyebrow Slightly Up, was not as long- 448 lived nor as well reviewed. The number of club theatres de clined sharply from twelve to two in 1955-61, but the re views did not suggest that creative energy was denied out let. No production of oral interpretation transferred from the fringe to the West End during the period of the study, although many fullstage productions did so. One fringe activity that seemed likely to reach the West End eventually was professional poetry reading, es pecially that of the Apollo Society. This society offered approximately six major concerts per year in London; most were given by an actor, actress and pianist. In the first half of the decade the programs aimed at a unification of instrumental music and lyric poetry; but after 1956 the structure became more fragmentary and flexible, and long narrative poems, Shakespearean speeches and scenes from ppe- tic drama were introduced. About this time there was a not able increase in professional poetry reading under other auspices. One such program was praised in "The Stage" Year Book as one of the outstanding theatre events of 1957. By 1959 these readings— including those of the Apollo Society— took their material from prose narrative and drama as- well as from lyric poetry. They persisted as a minor form of semitheatrical entertainment at least until the rennovation of Festival Hall. Sir John Gielgud's The Ages of Man was reviewed in London as something between a poetry recital and a montage 449 of his Shakespearean career. It played a limited season in the summer of 1959 as a way of dedicating a new theatre; the reviews may have been further distracted by its having previously toured the United States. Critical reception was favorable but reserved, and concerned chiefly the beauty of the delivery. The production was taken as another of Sir John's classical experiments, sufficient unto itself, and with little implication for other actors or for Gielgud him self. Dame Peggy Ashcroft's poetry recital, Portraits of Women, appeared at the Arts Council and then at the Edin burgh Festival, like The Ages of Man a year before, but did not continue to the West End, In 1960 Dorothy Stickney's New York success, A Lovely Light, encountered an unfavorable press and closed after ten days. Hal Holbrook's Mark Twain Tonight was favorably reviewed at the 1960 Edinburgh Festi val but did not transfer to London. Miche'al Mac Liammoir began a limited run with his "spoken biography" of Wilde, The Importance of Being Oscar, at the Apollo in October, 1960, and revived it for another limited run at the Royal Court in January, 1961; hence it had about forty-eight London performances. Reviews were en thusiastic. Half clearly showed surprise; one called it a new art and another wondered why it had not been thought of before. No one compared it to Dylan Thomas Growing Up, nor, until the very end of its second run, to any other produc- 450 tion— though there had been six roughly comparable programs in 1960 alone. About five months earlier an evocation of Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Dear Liar, had been, brought to the Criterion by the American couple, Jerome Kilty and Cavada Humphrey; it played for fifty-four London performances. Reviews were favorable, and most showed strong surprise. It was not compared to any but a conventional production of Candida at the time, but was mentioned in reviews of Kreut- zer Sonata a year later. Of some relevance was a sort of antiphonal declama tion, Abelard and Heloise. a verse play consisting of twelve letters spoken by two stationary characters; it played at the Arts for a week in October, 1960. Reviews were unfav orable; but the hostility was not generalized beyond the immediate production. Readers Theatre was not yet popular enough, apparently, to merit a broad attack. Besides Williams' first Dickens reading, only one other production during the period was recognized by the critics as a forerunner: the Royal Shakespeare Company's The Hollow Crown, a concert reading of documents by and a- bout the English monarchs, devised by John Barton and pre sented in a variety of reading styles by a cast of four. After five trial performances it entered the company's re pertory in June, 1961, and was later notably successful in Paris and New York. London'reviews were very favorable, 451 and three-quarters of them revealed surprise. At least three other programs claimed kinship with The Hollow Crown, and a fourth was attributed to "the vogue for dramatic read ings" for which it was held in large part responsible. The earliest, Kreutzer Sonata, which opened at the Arts in July, 1961, was a storytelling duet interspersed with scenes of solo and duet acting? it claimed only to be telling Tolstoy's story, but was variously traced to the "vogue" and to the influence of Dear Liar. Our Little Life, starring Margaret Rutherford, claimed to derive from The Hollow Crown, but was instead a collection of monologues and playlets such as had been offered in fringe theatres for a decade; reviews were unfavorable, and the production did not get beyond a two-week run in Croydon. A year after the open ing of The Hollow Crown the Royal Shakespeare Company pres ented The Art of Seduction, a Readers Theatre version of Laclos' Les Liaisons Danqereuses; although scheduled to en ter the repertory it was withdrawn after eight performances. Reviews were unfavorable; six of them attacked the method as being inappropriate to the plot, and two attacked readings per se. Barton's third Readers Theatre production, The Vag aries of Love, was a sort of poetry reading prepared for joint sponsorship by the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Apollo Society; it alternated with The Hollow Crown at the Coventry Cathedral Festival in May, 1962, but did not reach the West End within the next year. Hence none of the four 452 productions modeled upon The Hollow Crown was a popular or critical success. The Vagaries of Love, however, did seem the appropriate next step in the evolution of Apollo Society concerts as it was traced in the present study, and predict ably a transition between those concerts and the commercial theatre. Finally, although the study defined oral interpre tation very broadly, it found record of only about 180 such productions, of which 68 were one-night poetry recitals by the Apollo Society and others, and 45 were "rehearsed read ings" and "productions without decor" which were probably tryouts of unfamiliar plays. If those were excluded, the remaining 67 would comprise about four per cent of the total number of nunmusical productions offered in London during the period. Counting Don Juan in Hell, Ruth Draper's five seasons, Paris '90 and all other West End attempts, the total of major productions of oral interpretation might be eked out to twenty; and there were perhaps thirty minor pro ductions— other shows that played outside the West End for more than a single performance and received some critical attention. Major and minor productions of oral interpre tation, so defined, would make up three per cent of the total number of nonmusical productions in London during the period. More realistically computed, an average of one major production of oral interpretation reached London each year, and two minor ones did not reach the West End but were 453 clearly notable. II. CONCLUSIONS Within the limitations of the present study of the status of oral interpretation as a form of the professional theatre in London during the seasons 1951-52 to 1961-62, the following conclusions appeared tenable. 1. Productions of oral interpretation were not nu merically significant in the professional London theatre during the greater part of the period studied. 2. Most of the oral interpretation programs in the West End were critical successes; although they did not achieve long runs they were reviewed as enthusiastically as the best of the fullstage productions. Programs on the fringe often were not reviewed at all. 3. Little connection could be traced between one of these successes and another; nor did the West End successes of this period inspire imitations on the fringe. 4. Little American influence was discernible in the productions of oral interpretation in the London theatre. The First Drama Quartette's production of Don Juan in Hell was almost unknown in London, and its influence probably ceased with Dragon's Mouth in 1952. Ruth Draper, however, probably influenced some soloists in fringe theatres; and Dear Liar was one of the first of a cluster of Readers Theatre productions. Until 1960 most oral interpretation programs were solo productions, both in the West End and on the fringe; there was only scattered activity in Readers Theatre. In 1960 and thereafter the number of Readers Theatre productions greatly increased. The poetry readings of the Apollo Society seem to have evolved steadily in the direction of drama and Readers Theatre, but had not by the end of the period clearly established a connec tion with the commercial theatre. Theatre reviewers did not discern in the oral interpretation productions a common tradition, nor until very late, a limited number of related traditions. They rarely compared one relevant production with another, and even then they were apt to find rather tenuous similarities; they offered little specialized criticism; they adop ted no common terminology— although by 1960 the term "reading," which was mistrusted at the be ginning of the period, was used without elabora tion. 455 8. Throughout the period the theatre reviewers were surprised by each new success. Although spora dic generalizations about the solo performances appeared from 1957 onwards, most reviewers at the end of the period were as surprised by the success of a reading as they had been in 1951. 9. One critic, Milton Shulman of the Evening Stand ard, claimed to detect a growing public interest in dramatic readings. 10. Emlyn Williams' first Dickens program, the "Mixed Bill" of 1951, was probably cited by re viewers more often than any other production in the present study; less frequent were references to Ruth Draper and to The Hollow Crown. III. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY The most obvious problem arising out of the present study is to account for the differences in the way oral in terpretation developed as a form of professional theatre in London and that in New York. Some areas of investigation suggest themselves. Among the obvious differences between the theatres of London and New York during this period were circumstances that may have influenced oral interpretation. The Bath and Edinburgh Festivals and the Arts Theatre in Cambridge, for example, probably did not serve as an adequate British 456 equivalent of the pre-Broadway national tour, especially the tour of college campuses. The greater number of classical revivals in London may not only have provided literary dra ma such as was furnished in part by off-Broadway Readers Theatre, but may also have given actors the challenge and the opportunities for artistic growth such as were sought in the United States through the national tour: either hypo thesis might furnish the basis of a valuable study. The contention, advanced in the United States by Eric Bentley and in Great Britain by Kenneth Tynan, that reading is ba sically an evasion of theatre might be tested with an analy sis of the careers of the actors most notably successful as readers. One large area of investigation excluded from the present study was the BBC. Its radio broadcasts alone may have greatly influenced the standards of public reading in Great Britain. The poetry-reading in the Third Programme is almost an international stereotype of hyper intellectual broadcasting, but such reading, even at its most ineffec tual, was estimated in the Guardian in 1962 to attract an audience of thirty thousand— or somewhere near the total number of people who saw Bleak House or Dear Liar in London. An article in The Times in January, 1962, estimated that 2,250,000 women listened to Dame Sybil Thorndike read Tagore on the Light Programme— or one hundred times as many as . could have attended all the poetry-readings recorded here 457 for the recital room at Festival Hall. Moreover, reading excerpts from books is a standard form of radio program in Britain: in a superficial sampling of three consecutive is sues of Radio Times in November, 1961, the present investi gator calculated, that the middlebrow Home Services offered an average of 222 minutes per week of such reading, and the Light Programme an average of 175. Such readings, and the autobiographical offerings in the Talks Department, may have supplanted in London the off-Broadway readings from O'Casey. Lastly, British television, both BBC and ITA, presented ex cerpts from Williams' Dickens readings, The Hollow Crown, et cetera; a television excerpt has been generally credited with drawing public attention to Look Back in Anger and thus indirectly with starting London's most recent theatre revol ution; obviously an even remotely comparable influence upon oral interpretation would be worth investigating. Another influence whose strength and direction could only be suspected in the present study was that of a Euro pean tradition of solo declamatory acting. The question was most insistent in the chapters dealing with solos in the theatre clubs, but it impinged upon other parts of the pre sent study: in Harold Hobson's second review of Dragon's Mouth and his first of The Art of Seduction; in Michael Red grave's vast successes as a reader in Denmark and Holland and his neglect of the art at home; in the reviews of Elsa Verghis and Nel Oosthout; in the British Council's choice 458 of soloists to tour under its auspices; and in the ground less alarm expressed over Britain's being represented abroad by "the unexportable programme par excellence," The Hollow Crown. Whether this tradition limited the experiment sit ion of solo performers, or colored their reception, or influenced them at all could not be assessed in the present study. Finally, studies might be devised to test the gener al proposition that there are identifiable factors which make for professional success in programs of oral interpre tation. One hypothesis, advanced by the Manchester critic Fred Isaacs in 1951, by Kenneth Tynan in 1952 and by R. B. Marriott in 1962, is that such readings need stars: it would receive general support from the data in the present study but would not account for the success of Dear Liar and Mark Twain Tonight. Another hypothesis was implied in The Times and Tatler— that such readings are best cast in some form that evokes an author's personality. A variant, im plied in several reviews, is that successful programs convey a vivid sense of history. W. A. Darlington suggested in 1960 that the material should be familiar to a considerable part of the audience. Elsewhere he implied— although the data do not seem to bear him out— that a program with a tight narrative structure is more satisfying than a miscel lany. BIBLIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHY A. PRIMARY SOURCES 1. Manuscripts in Repositories Apollo Society. Programmes and announcements, 1951, 1953- 62. Manuscripts in the files of the Apollo Society, 8, St. George's Terrace, London N.W. 1. > Institute of Contemporary Arts. Programmes and bulletins, 1953-1961. Manuscripts in the files of the I. C. A., 17-18, Dover Street, London W. 1. Enthoven Collection. First-night programmes, announcements and press clippings, 1950-1962. Manuscripts filed chronologically according to name of theatre in the Gabrielle Enthoven Theatre Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London S.W. 7. 2. Theatre Annuals and Lists of Playbills Andrews, John, and Ossia Trilling (eds.). Dobson1s Theatre Year-Book, 1948-49. London: Dennis Dobson Limited, 1949. ________(eds.). International Theatre. London: Sampson Low, 1949. The Arts Council of Great Britain. Festival of Great Brit ain, 1951: London Season of the Arts, May-June, 1951. London: Lund Humphries, 1951. Blum, Daniel. Theatre World (1950-51) to (1959-60). Vols. VII-XV. New York: Greenburg, Publisher, 1951-57; Chil ton Company, Book Division, 1958-61. Brown, Ivor. Theatre 1954-5. London: Max Reinhardt, 1955. Hobson, Harold (ed.). International Theatre, No. 5. Lon don: John Calder, 1961. Gaye, Freda (ed.). Who's Who in the Theatre: A Biographical Record of the Contemporary Stage. Thirteenth edition. London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, Ltd., 1961. 460 461 MacAdam, Ivison, et. al. (eds.). The Annual Register: A Review of Public Events at Home and Abroad for the Year. 1946-1961. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1947-62. Parker, John, et al., (eds.). Who's Who in the Theatre: A Biographical Record of the Contemporary Stage. Eleventh and Twelfth editions. London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, Ltd., 1952, 1957. "The Stage" Year Book, 1949 to 1961. (Prior to 1953: "The Stage" Year Book Incorporating "The Stage Guide,") Lon don: Carson and Comerford, Ltd., 1950-62. The Times Index, 1946-63. Trewin, J. C. (ed.). The Year's Work in the Theatre, 1948- 1949, 1949-50. Published for the British Council by Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1949-50. 3. Newspapers and Magazines The Birmingham Mail, June-July, 1951. The Birmingham Post. June-July, 1951. Daily Dispatch (Manchester), June-July, 1951. Daily Express, February, 1951-May, 1962. Daily Graphic. September 4, 1952. Daily Mail (After October 18, 1960), Incorporating The News Chronicle, February, 1951^-May, 1962. Daily Mail (Manchester), June-July, 1951. Daily Mirror, October., 1950; March 20, 1962. Daily Sketch, March 20, 1962. The Daily Telegraph and Morning Post. January, 1950-May, 1962. Drama: The Quarterly Theatre Review. Winter, 1961-Autumn, 1962. London: The British Drama League. Evening Chronicle (Manchester), June-July, 1951. Evening Citizen (Glasgow), June-July, 1951. 462 Evening Despatch (Birmingham), June-July, 1951. Evening Dispatch (Edinburgh), June-July, 1951. Evening News (Glasgow), June-July, 1951. The Evening News and The Star, October, 1951-May, 1962. Evening Standard and St. James's Gazette, February, 1951- May, 1962. Everybody1s, 1952. The Glasgow Herald, June-July, 1951. The Guardian, August, 1959-May, 1962. Previously The Man- che s ter Guar di an. The Illustrated London News. February 1951-June, 1962. Liverpool Daily Post, June-July, 1951. Liverpool Echo, June-July, 1951. Liverpool Evening Express. June-July, 1951. Manchester Evening News. June-July, 1951. The Manchester Guardian. January, 1950-August, 1959. There after The Guardian. The New Statesman and Nation: The Weekend Review. January, 1951-June, 1962. The New York Times, March 2, 1952; January 4, 1959; May 24, 1963. New York Theatre Critics' Reviews, April, 1959-February, 1963. New York World-Telegram, February 9, 1960. The New Yorker, December 22, 1951; January 10, 1959. The Observer, February, 1951-June, 1962. Punch, January, 1950-June, 1963. Queen, November, 1951-December, 1952; June 15, 1955. Radio Times, November 9-23, 1961. 463 The Sketch. October, 1951-December, 1952. The Stage, January, 1950-June, 1962. The Star. May 14, 1952. Sunday Dispatch, July 12, 1959. The Sunday Mercury (Birmingham), June-July, 1951. The Sunday Telegraph, March 25, 1962. The Sunday Times. November, 1951-June, 1962. The Tatler and Bystander. February 1, 1961. Theatre Newsletter, November 24, 1951. Theatre World, December, 1951. The Times, April, 1940; March, 1946-June, 1962. 4. institutional Reports The Arts Theatre Club Annual. 1956-1957. London; The Arts Theatre Club, 1957-58. The British Council. Annual Report on the Work of the Brit ish Council for the Year Ended 31st March 19— . 1950 to 1959. Bulletin of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, January, 1953- December, 1961. London: The Institute of Contemp orary Arts, 1953-61. The British Council. Twenty-First Anniversary Report, 1934- 1955. Compiled for The British Council by Sir Harold Nicholson. London: The British Council, 1955. Royal Festival Hall. Diary. February, 1958-May, 1962. Vic-Wells Association. Bulletin. January, 1952-December, 1955. 464 B. SECONDARY SOURCES 1. Theatre Histories and Collected Reviews Bentley, Eric. The Dramatic Event;An American Chronicle. New York: Horizon Press, 1954. Boyd, Alice K. The Interchange of Plays Between London and New York, 1910-1939: A Study in Relative Audience Re sponse . New York: King's Crown Press, 1948. Brown, John Mason. As They Appear. London: Hamish Hamil ton, 1953. Darlington, W. A. Six Thousand and One Nights: Forty Years a Critic. London: George G. Harrap and Co., Ltd., 1960. Deai) Basil. The Theatre at War. London: George G. Harrap and Co., Ltd., 1956. Donoghue, Denis. The Third Voice: Modern British and Ameri can Verse Dramal London: Oxford University Press, 1959. Gassner, John., Theatre at the Crossroads: Plays and Play wrights of the Mid-Century American Stage. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960. _______. The Theatre in Our Times: A Survey of the Men, Materials and Movements in the Modern Theatre. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1954. Gielgud, Val. British Radio Drama, 1922-1956: A Survey. London: George G. Harrap and Co., Ltd., 1957. Hobson, Harold. Theatre. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1948. _______. The Theatre Now. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1953. . Theatre Two. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1950. _______ . Verdict at Midnight: Sixty Years of Dramatic Criti cism. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1952. Kerr, Walter. Pieces at Eight. New York: Simon and Schus ter, 1957. Kitchin, Laurence. Mid-Century Drama. London: Faber and Faber, 1960. 465. Landstone, Charles. Off-Stage: A Personal Record of the First Twelve Years of State Sponsored Drama in Great Britain. London: Elek, 1953. Marshall, Norman. The Other Theatre. London: John Lehmann, 1947. Nathan, George Jean. The Theatre in the Fifties. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953. Paulu, Burton. British Broadcasting in Transition. Minne apolis: University of Minnesota Pressy London: Macmillan, 1961. Sivier, Evelyn McCurdy. "A Study of Interpretative Speech in England, 1860-1940." Unpublished doctoral disserta tion, Wayne State University, Detroit, 1961. Taylor, John Russell. Anger and After: A Guide to the New British Theatre. London: Methuen, 1962. Published in U. S. A. as The Angry Theatre: New British Drama. New York: Hill and‘ Wang, 1962. Trewin, J. C. A Play Tonight. London: Elek Books, 1952. _______. (ed.). Theatre Programme. London: Muller, 1954. _______. The Theatre Since 1900. Twentieth Century His tories series. London: Andrew Dakers Limited, 1951. Tynan, Kenneth. Curtains: Selections from the Drama Criti cism and Related Writings. London: Longmans, Green and Co., Ltd., 1961. _______. He That Plays the King: A View of the Theatre. London: Longmans, Green and Co., Ltd., 1950. Williamson, Audrey. Contemporary Theatre, 1953-1956. Lon don: Rockliff, 1956. ________ and Charles Landstone. The Bristol Old Vic: The First Ten Years. London: J. Garnet Miller Limited, 1957. 2. Stage Biographies Barker, Felix. The Oliviers: A Biography. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1953. 466 Findlater, Richard. Emlyn Williams: An Illustrated Study of his Work, with a List of his Appearances on Stage and Screen. No. VIII [VI?J of Theatre World Monographs, ed. Frances Stephens. London: Rockliff Publishing Cor poration, 1956. _______. Michael Redgrave. Actor. London: William Heine- mann Ltd., 1956. Fordham, Ha11am (comp.). John Gielgud: An Actor 1s Biogra phy in Pictures with personal narrative by John Giel gud. London: John Lehmann, [l952j. Gielgud, John. Early Stages. A New and Revised Edition with a preface by Ivor Brown. London: The Falcon Press, 1953. Guthrie, Tyrone. A Life in the Theatre. New York: McGraw- Hill Book Company, Inc., 1959. Handley-Taylor, Geoffrey. John Masefield, P.M., the Queen's Poet Laureate: A Bibliography and Eighty-first Birthday Tribute! London: Cranbrook Tower Press, [1960}. Hobson, Harold. Ralph Richardson: An Illustrated Study of his Work, with a list of his Appearances on Stage and Screen. No: X of Theatre World Monographs, ed. Frances Stephens. London: Rockliff, 1958. Hughes, David. J. B. Priestley: An Informal Study of his Work. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1958. Keown, Eric. Peggy Ashcroft: An Illustrated Study of her Work, with a List of Her Appearances on Stage and Screen. No. Ill of Theatre World Monographs, ed. Frances Steph ens. London: Rockliff, 1955. Loganbill, G. Bruce. "Cornelia Otis Skinner and her Art- Form of the Monologue-Drama." Unpublished doctoral dis sertation, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, 1961. Singer, Kurt. The Charles Laughton Story. London: Robert Hale, Ltd., 1954. Stephens, Frances (general ed.). Theatre World Monographs. 13 nos. London: Rockliff, 1954-61. 467 Trewin, J. C. Alec Clunes: An Illustrated Study of his Work, with a List of his Appearances on Stage and Screen. No. XII of Theatre World Monographs, ed. Fran ces Stephens. London: Rockliff, 1958. _______ . Dame Edith Evans: An Illustrated Study . . . No. II of Theatre World Monographs, ed. Frances Stephens London: Rockliff, 1954. _______ . John Neville: An Illustrated Study . . . No. I of Theatre World Monographs, New Series. London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1961. _______. Sybil Thorndike: An Illustrated Study . . . No. IV of Theatre World Monographs, ed. Frances Stephens. London: Rockliff, 1955. Tynan, Kenneth. Alec Guinness: An Illustrated Study . . . Revised edition. No. I of Theatre World Monographs, ed. Frances Stephens. London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1961. Wolfit, Donald. First Interval: The Autobiography. London: Odhams Press Limited, 1954. Zabel, Morton Dauwen. The Art of Ruth Draper: Her Dramas and Characters, with a Memoir. London: Oxford Universi ty Press, 1960. 3. Playscripts and Recordings Duncan, Ronald. Abelard and Heloise: A Correspondence for the Stage in Two Acts. London: Faber and Faber, 1961. Hawkes, Jacquetta, and J. B. Priestley. Dragon's Mouth: A Dramatic Quartet in Two Parts. London: William Heine- mann Ltd., 1952. Kilty, Jerome. Dear Liar: A Comedy of Letters Adapted from the Correspondence of Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell. London: Max Reinhardt, 1960. Rylands, George. An Introduction to The Ages of Man: Shake speare's Image of Man and Nature. New York: Doubleday, Doran and Co., Inc., 1940. Selwyn, Lucy, and Laurier Lister (comps.). Apollo Antholo gy. London: John Murray, 1954. Thomas, Dylan. Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices, with a preface by Daniel Jones. New York: New Directions, 1954 468 Draper, Ruth. The Art of Ruth Draper. Vols. I-IV. Spoken Arts recordings (4-12"), SA 779-800. The First Drama Quartette. Don Juan in Hell. Columbia Re cording (2-12"), SL-166. Gielgud, Sir John. Ages of Man. Columbia Masterworks re cording (1-12"), OL-5390. Holbrook, Hal. Mark Twain Tonight. Columbia recording (1-12"), OL-5440. Homage to Dylan Thomas. Argo recording (1-12"), RG-29. The Jupiter Book of Ballads. Jupiter recording (1-12"), JUR-00A3. Mac Liammdir, Micheal. The Importance of Being Oscar. Columbia recording (1-12"), OL-5690. Skinner, Cornelia Otis, The Loves of Charles II. Spoken Arts recording (1-12"), SA-813. ' _____. Paris *90. Columbia recording (1-12"), ML-4619. Williams, Emlyn. Emlyn Williams as Charles Dickens ("Mixed Bill"J. London recording (1-12"), A-4221. 4. Miscellaneous Directories and Bibliographies British Drama League. The Player's Library; The Catalogue of the Library of the British Drama League. Second edition, with three supplements. London: Faber and Faber.. Ltd., 1950-56. Federation of Theatre Unions. Theatre Ownership in Britain. A Report Prepared for the Federation of Theatre Unions, London, 1953. Halsbury's Laws of England: being A Complete Statement of the Whole Law of England, ed. Viscount Simonds, XXXVII, 11-30. London: Butterworth and Co. (Publishers) Ltd., 1962. Literary, Debating and Dialect Societies of Great Britain, Ireland £and France!• London: various publishers, 1951- 1954. 469 Lytton's Theatre and Concert Hall Seating Plans, 1960-61: Plans of the Theatres and Main Concert Halls, with His torical Notes, London: The Dancing Times Limited, [n.d.J . Mander, Raymond, and Joe Mitchenson. The Theatres of Lon don. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1961. Nash, George. "Centres for Theatre Research," Who1s Who in the Theatre (13th Ed.), pp. 1538-48. Whitrow, Magda (ed.). Index to Theses Accepted for Higher Degrees in the Universities of Great Britain and Ire land. Vols. I-X (1950-51 to 1959-60). London: Aslib, 1952-61. * - ■ -V •• A A a p p e n d i x APPENDIX "THE NEW ENTERTAINMENT"1 Among their many stimulating activities, the Royal Shakespeare Company have introduced into the contemporary theatre the form of entertainment typified in "The Hollow Crown" and "The Art of Seduction": dramatic "readings" with a small group of players, produced without decor and aiming to be "different" while intended for a popular audi ence. The theatregoer generally has not taken well to one-man and small group "recital" productions. In the re cent past, only Ruth Draper was able to fill a West End theatre for several weeks with a solo performance. And as a rule entertainments in any way resembling "The Hollow Crown" in technique and intention, failed. This has changed. One of the main strengths of the Royal Shakespeare productions of this type is the fact that stars and lead ing players tiSke part. "The Hollow Crown", [sic] the still popular collection of authentic speeches and letters and so forth that tell a story of kings and queens of England, was invented, devised and directed by John Barton. He has car ried on his excellent work with "The Art of Seduction" and • * - R . B. Marriott, The Stage, June 21, 1962, p. 8. 471 472 with "The Vagaries of Love", recently introduced at the Coventry Cathedral Festival. A criticism of "The Vagaries of Love" has been that the artists keep their noses in their books, whether or not they are actually reading. In "The Hollow Crown" and "The Art of Seduction", although various properties, including books, are used, there is still a sense of complete freedom of movement, feeling and thought. The property devices serve in the creation of atmosphere and to make links and breaks dramatically telling as well as natural. There is room in the theatre, we have always been told, for anything that is good and— or— popular. Which is about the only maxim about the theatre that has a ring of truth, no matter how obvious it may be. It has been proved that there is an audience for productions such as "The Hol low Crown" yet a few years ago this would have been extreme ly difficult to believe. Apart from their intrinsic merit, perhaps they have found an audience because there is now a new crowd of theatregoers. Many young newcomers to the theatre are ready to see and test anything; they are more free of prejudice than their fathers and grandfathers. They support Shakespeare, Chekhov and other classics as much as they support Osborne and Wesker. In their keenness and with their wide outlook they are prepared to enjoy anything they consider worthwhile. At the same time, I do not think it should be over- 473 looked that pioneer work in the direction of these enter tainments was done by Ernlyn Williams, with his Dickens and Dylan Thomas shows, and by those who came after him— for instance, John Gielgud with his Shakespeare recital, Joyce Grenfell with her practically one-woman revues, Michael MacLiammoir [sicj with his tour de force from Wilde, and Joan Miller with her "Looking at Life", which has not yet been seen in the West End. Mr. Williams took an enormous chance when he opened with his original Dickens evening at the Lyric, Hammersmith, in 1951. An actor made-up to look like Dickens, with a Dickens desk and a heap of extracts from Dickens works! Impossible. Yet Mr. Williams's triumph has a niche in thea tre history. It is an exciting tale of an obcsure [sic] beginning at an off-beat theatre; of welcome into the West End for a long run; of success in New York; of further suc cess at the Edinburgh International Festival; and of a sec ond evening composed completely of extracts from "Bleak House." The story of Mr. Williams's Dylan Thomas triumph is hardly less exciting, except that by then we knew the man could do it. And it was about as difficult, in the first place, to imagine a one-man Shakespeare evening in the con temporary theatre until Sir John came on the Haymarket [.the Queen's] stage in dinner jacket. Mr. Barton and the "recitalists" cannot of course go on for ever. I do not suppose they want to, anyway. 474 But one can see all kinds of interesting developments, es pecially as it now seems reasonable to try out hovel produc tions without having to expect disaster. Organisations such as the Royal Shakespeare and the English Stage Company— which has contributed a rich share to the occasional or "re cital" form of entertainment with jazz and poetry and other evenings— are ideally situated to handle this sort of work. Their repertoire can usually support the occasional experi ment, and the sort of entertainment that could not run night after night for months is able to survive if presented as part of a policy of repertory. Though valuable work is being done in the provinces, for schools and other communal organisations, more much more should be done, and this entertainment lends itself very well for the purpose. Once the initial work has been done, it can be relatively easily put on, it makes modest cast and property demands, and can be presented in more or less any type of theatre or hall.

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Creator Linn, James Reive Lindsay (author)

Core Title A Historical Study Of Oral Interpretation In London, 1951-1962 As A Form Of Professional Theatre

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Speech - Drama

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag OAI-PMH Harvest,Theater

Language English

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Advisor Dickens, Milton (committee chair), Bolton, Janet H. (committee member), Butler, James H. (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c18-160012

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