LITTLE THEATRE SOCIETY'S "ANTHONY & ANNA"

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 55, 27 November 1937, Page 10

LITTLE THEATRE SOCIETY'S "ANTHONY & ANNA"

Is it possible to arrive at a correet critieal appreciatioa of a play and then express ..that appreciatiqn in terms acceptable to all? The answer -would appear to be "No"; and in that answer lies the reason for the sueeess of the Little Theatre Society's production of Mr, St. John Ervine's "Anthony and Anna." ■ By this I mean that the greater part of the audience must have realfeed the weakness in the play, but, being bent on enjoyment, they rnade the inost of its strength, What I am about to say may meet disapproval in some quarters. That does not matter. What does matter is that I should be dubbed an irate babbler. Aecordingly I ask those who disagree with me to reason, not against ,me because I have salu something they dislike, but with a view to finding proof for their own contentions. They ■will find that I am correet. " Anthony and Anna" then, is a weak play. It begins well and through its second and third acts it becomes less interesting. . I thought that this was the case some years ago when I first read it, ; and its weaknesses become more apparent on the stage. In a way this lack of dramatic material at the end is admitted by the author, who uses Lady Gynthia and Jago for no other purpose than to fill his allotted time, the cheating epistle being the thinnest of justifications. . Where the author, and aecordingly the play, score is in the freshness and humour of the whole, and its lack of sentimentality. This is good, but the fare is disappointing and I cannot help regretting the hard work put to so light a purpose. The production was sound all through and at times good. The worst fault was an almost complete lack of light and shade, but as these are not in the original.the producer was set a difficult task in supplyihg them. The second and third acts had a sense of unpreparedness; the effect was not decisive as.in the first act.. None the less, Mr. Fail must be congratulated on his effectiveness with a bad play. The selection' of such a- play as that was not good for an amateur society because it • depends for • its continuity and niood on two people — Anthony and Anna.« There are - star, parts which it .would be unfair to expect any actor or actress ' without considerable stage exporience to fill satisfactorily. That ' Miss Williams and Mr. Neilson managed as well,' as. they did is all to their credit. In the first act Miss Williams was good. She sueceeded well in eonveying the sense of a'mazement at her elash with- Anthony, and her- first exit was notably effective. Towards the end of the third act, however/wiien'the play's loose structure o.ecame so apparent, she seemed to'loose touch, and'neither her natural ability-nor charm . could cover its weakness". , Mr.- Neilson's performance « has improved greatly, but 'he still flips his hands about in aimless- and irritating gentures. He would do well .to take a lessoh from Miss Williams, whose gesture arises ' so spontaneously, from her thought and action. The.value of restrained movemeht was revealed in the short- scene on' the sofa, in which his arms wqre enviably engaged around Miss Williams;' here his performance lost nervousness . and became sincere'. Apart from his nervousness in "gesture — a technical fault which can be remedied— his Anthony was rather colouxless. This ycung man who should have been the essence of suave impertinence was a quiet, obedient f ellow uttering someone's -bright words. I should' say that his Anthony, as a husbandj would fall into the class of those who always put eut the cat. Mr ,Le Comte's proprietor of the Inn of St. Peter vs Finger was a bit ragged. He had not planned the part along any particular. line, and aecordingly assumed too readily the mood of the moment. The result was a figure that ran, at times, perilously close to burlesque. His business also was ill planned; the unnecessary shifting of articles on the tablfes in the first act became irritating. He has a distinct flair f or' getting laughs and keeping the audience laughing after the joks has

ceased to amuse. But this is a faculty of more use in burlesque than in comedy. Mr, Hardenberg's Penn was entirely satisfactory. I thought at first that he looked neither as old nor as ill as he thought he was, but his rapid cure at the hands of Anthony proved that this was so. I liked the way he planned and got his laughs. Miss Averill and Mr. Rivers as the author's stopgas managed two difficult parts satisfactorily. Miss Averill, wisely, did not attempt to make Lady Cynthia sympatlietic, so that her cynieal attitude to Jago . was well in tune with the character. Her performance was marred by a tendency to slouch; she must look • to this. Mr. Rivers's Jago was, properly, entirely unlovable, yet at the same time likeable. In fact, they left me with the feeling that this marriage of eonvenience might work — and that, presumably, was the author's intention. Mr. Watson, as the second angler for the hand of Anna, . dropped exquisitely. He must time the lighting of cigarettes properly; on two oceasions he distracted by doing this when he was supposed to be in the background. The outstanding performance of the evening, . however, came from Mr. McCormick as Fred, the young waiter at the Inn. • He was the- only member of the. cast with a natural fiair for theatrical timing. Now timing of a sort can be;. learned at rehearsal and can never be anything else than that — a more or less haphazard response tq a preconceived idea. But true timing depends on the intuitive response of the actor to the necessity of his part and the mood of the audience. Thereforo the correet timing of a line changes with eaeh audience and aecordingly cannot be learned at rehearsal. In the case of Mr. McCormick, not j once, but three times in his short part, he timed a point perfectly. It is almost -unthinkable that even one line can be timed perfectly by accident; three times makes it a moral certainty. I am not saying that Mr. McCormick is.a good aetor; on his showing as Pred he probably is; but I do say that with lceeaness and sincerity he should go far. . For me this was the high spot of an- enjoyable evening. JEREMEY COLLIER, JUNIOR.