"JOURNEY'S END"

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 137, 8 December 1930, Page 18

"JOURNEY'S END"

ITALIANS PUZZLED

PLAY TOO DIFFICULT

"Journey's End" has arrived in Rome at last, after many rumours of Fascist censorship, and at its first performance it met with considerable applause and much incomprehension, says the "Manchester Guardian." Audience and criticß were left cold by the first part of the play. The school ~ties binding a small group of officers and Ealcigh's heroworship for Stanhope were altogether too foreign to raise anything but patient attention. In the last act the audience became really enthusiastic and it all began by their seeing Trotter's jokes and liking Mason's cooking. One wondered, of course, why Stanhope wore a black tie, why all the boots were bright yellow, why all the men had spotted white handkerchiefs, which were used very frequently; above all, why all the drinking scenes were so Bacchic that a British captain in that permanent condition would long ago have been dismissed the service and his fellow"officers been quite incapable of the big attack after the great orgy in the last act. The audience was amazed by all this, and I sympathised with a man behind me who murmured, "Whisky wins the day." Much of this overacting was due to Signor Lambert Picasso, who produced the play and took the part of Stanhope. He is known on the London stage as a very able interpreter of Pirandello. He was in excellent Pirandellian form, battling with his two or three selves while the English public schoolboy faded into the background. He chose his fellow-actors well. Signor Olivieri as Osborne gave a very fine piece of acting. The parts of Raleigh, Hibbert, and Trotter were also extremely well done. It is a pity that, by a too-extravagant representation a general impression is given of cowardice—rather than of fear —overcome. In general the play was welcomed for the breath of fresh air that it brings into the steel-laden atmosphere of modern Italy. "It is defeatist, which is one reason more, for liking it," writes tho "Messagero'," but; "the truth- is," says the "Tevere," "it is English, and the Italian actor finds it difficult to clothe himself in the psychology and manner of the Englishman." It is too .difficult, and if "The Great Voyage," as it is called here, was successful, it was for other reasons. Tho theatre Mas crowded and promises to be so for,the next fortnight, which is the limit that a successful play may hope to reach in Kome. Signor Picasso will then tour Italy with the play. One hopes that he will get tho sound pro-' duction machine improved. There was whistling of .shells without explosions, and explosions without warning, and the dug-out fell in before tho shell exploded near it.