World Theatre Next Week

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 551, 13 January 1950, Page 6

World Theatre Next Week

F Cleopatra’s nose had been shorter, said Pascal, the whole face of the earth might have been different. The heroine of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, the first in the new series of World Theatre productions to be broadcast next week, was not, by all accounts, surpassingly beautiful. There are no authentic portraits of her, but the evidence suggests that she was small, slender, and gipsy-like, with a nose just too long for perfection. She was not as attractive, for instance, as the chaste and beautiful Octavia whom Antony so shamelessly neglected for her sake, but she lived a life dedicated to love, and like many far plainer women she had weapons stronger and more dangerous than beauty. She had intelligence, erudition, and a personal magnetism that was irresistible. If it was Helen’s face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium, it was Cleopatra’s personality that shook the kings of the earth and changed the destiny of nations. Antony and Cleopatra will be heard first from 4YA_ at 7.30 p.m. on Monday, January 16. ‘The production lasts for two and a-half hours and the strong cast is headed by Fay Compton as Cleopatra and Clifford Evans as Antony. The part of Enobarbus, the trusted lieutenant who deserted Antony at the eleventh hour, is played by Bernard Miles, and Val Gielgud is the producer. The play comes towards the end of the Shakespeare canon, and was probably written about 1606-7, marking the close, with Coriolanus and Timon of Athens, of the great tragic period which produced Othello, Macbeth, and Lear. It was first printed in the folio of 1623, and the story closely follows that of North’s Plutarch. Stylistically it is one of the most spacious of his plays, written in the full assurance and ease of his maturity and with less of the horror and tension of the earlier tragedies. The twin themes of imperialism and infatuated love are skilfully intertwined by a dramatist at the top of his powers, and he does it moreover with passages of remarkable poetry, in which the passion of the two lovers, who have "kissed away kingdoms and provinces," is made to transcend human limits. The lay opens at Alexandria about 30 B.C., where Mark Antony, the Roman

Empire’s first soldier and noble prince, brave, generous, and impetuous, worshipped alike by men and women and claiming descent from Hercules, sits enthralled by the Egyptian queen, a woman as vain and wilful as she is intelligent, capricious, extravagant, and an insatiable ‘sensualist, created to make men

mad and "set a bud betwixt the lips of death." Antony is recalled to Rome by the death of his wife Fulvia and political developments, and terminates his estrangement with Caesar by marrying his sister Octavia, an event which provokes Cleopatra’s intense jealousy. But the reconciliation is short-lived, and Antony returns to Egypt and his lover.

At the battle of Actium he is defeated by Caesar after the Egyptian squadron, led by Cleopatra, flees from the engagement, and on the false report of Cleopatra’s death he falls on his sword. He is borne to the monument where Cleopatra has taken refuge and dies in her arms. Cleopatra, fallen into Caesar’s power, but determined not to grace his triumph, takes her own life with the bite of an asp. With her death ended the dynasty of the Ptolemies, and Egypt became a Roman province. "This was another kind of love," Stephen Williams wrote recently in the Radio Times, "from the rose-scented morning that dawned for Romeo and Juliet. It was the love of a man in his fifties for a woman in her thirties, both scarred by life and experience; a jealous, remorseless, all-devouring love, as cruel as the grave; a love that would ‘let Rome in Tiber melt and the wide arch of the ranged empire fall’ that drove Cleopatra to turn back her ships in battle and Antony to post after her ‘like a doting mallard.’ And never was this kind of love caught and mirrored with such overpowering insight." * * * The Tragedy of Coriolanus is Shakespeare’s last complete tragedy. It is a difficult play, one more respected than loved, more honoured in the breach than

the observance, and one that demands abnormal physical attributes in the leading player. A. C. Bradley, ineabout the best book on the subject ever written, laid it down that in Shakesperian tragedy the hero must be a man of high estate. "His fate affects the welfare of a whole nation or empire," he says, "and

J when he falls suddenly from the height of earthly greatness to the dust, his fall produces a sense of contrast, of the powerlessness of man, and of the omnipotence — perhaps the, caprice-of Fortune or Fate, which no tale of private life can possibly rival." So with Coriolanus, whose pride is so great that he "disdains the shadow

which he treads on at noon," and calls the rabble curs and dissentious rogues that "rubbing the poor itch of your opinion make yourselves scabs." Yet because of the difficulty of depicting this towering pride of his, the play makes hard demands on both actors and audience. For this reason it should be most effective in the more intimate medium of radio, which will allow listeners to concentrate more closely on its

subtleties of characterisation and the rugged, sinewy strength of its verse. Written about 1608, the play was, like Antony and Cleopatra, based on the story in North’s Plutarch and _ first printed in the folio of 1623. Caius Marcius, a proud Roman general, performs wonders of valour in a war against the Volscians, and captures the town Corioli, receiving in consequence the surname Coriolanus. On his return it is proposed to make him consul, but his arrogant and outspoken contempt of the Roman rabble makes him unpopular with the fickle crowd, and the tribunes of the people have no difficulty\in securing his banishment. (The two consuls who ruled the Roman republic, replacing the king of the ancient monarchy, were nominated each year by their predecessors but had also to secure the people’s vote.) Coriolanus betakes himself to the house of Aufidius, the Volscian general and his enemy of long standing, is received there with delight, and leads the Volscians against Rome to effect his revenge. He reaches the walls of the city, and the Romans, to save it from destruction, send emissaries (who are also old friends of Coriolanus) to propose terms, but in vain. Finally the mother, son and wife of Coriolanus come and beseech him to spare the city. He yields to their prayers, makes a treaty favourable to the Volscians, and returns with them to Antium, a Volscian town. Here, however, the Volscian general turns against

him, accuses him of betraying the Volscian interests and, with the assistance of conspirators, slays Coriolanus in a public place, The famous guest producer of this BEC version of Coriolanus is Sir Lewis Casson, and his equally famous wife, Dame Sybil Whorndike, plays the part of Volumnia, the hero’s mother. Coriolanus is played by Bruce Belfrage. The production is in two parts, lasting in all for two and a-half hours, and will be first broadcast from 3YA at 7.25 p.m. on Wednesday, January 18. " * z Oliver. Goldsmith was that curious phenomenon, an Irishman who could not hold his own in conversation. Garrick said that he wrote like an angel and talked like poor Poll. Walpole described him as an inspired idiot. Boswell seldom missed an opportunity of ridiculing him in his Life, while Johnson declared that "no man was ever so foolish when he had not a pen in his hand or more wise when he had." Yet from behind the facade of inspired blundering that was his outward life he produced some enduring works of art. She Stoops to Conquer is the second play by the man best known for his poem The Deserted Village, and is one of the most popular comedies in English. Why? It is not particularly witty, but Goldsmith’s humour has a kind of coltish, kick-heels exuberance that often approaches farce, but neyer becomes so. And out of his dialogue spring those magnificent comic characters-the testy, crotchety Mr. Hardcastle, who loves "everything that’s old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine"; his fat, foolish, simpering wife; Marlow, "one of the most bashful and reserved young characters in the world" (except with barmaids and servant girls) whose tongue can raise the roof of a tavern but cleaves to his own in a boudoir; and above all Tony Lumpkin, the doltish country bumpkin whose very words reek with the fumes of the ale-house and the horse-pond. Lumpkin is Mrs: Hardcastle’s son by a former marriage. A frequenter of the Three Jolly Pigeons, he is idle and ignorant but cunning and mischievous, and is doted on by his mother. The play was first produced at Drury Lane in 1773. This BBC production of it lasts for two hours, and will be broadcast first from 2YA at 8.0 p.m. on Thursday, January 19. Tony Lumpkin is played by ‘Reginald Beckwith, Mrs. Hardcastle by the late Dame Ir Vanbrugh (who died last month), Mr, Hardcastle by Frederick Lloyd, Marlow by Hubert Gregg, and Kate Hardcastle by Margaretta Scott. ' Young Marlow’s father, Sir ‘Charles Marlow, has proposed a match between his .son and Miss Hardcastle, and the young man and his friend Hastings travel down to pay the Hardcastles a visit. Losing their way they arrive’ at night at the Three Jolly Pigeons, where Tony Lumpkin directs them to a neighbouring inn, which is in reality the Hardcastles’ house. The fun of the play arises largely from the resulting misunderstanding, Marlow treating Hardcastle as the landlord of the supposed inn, and making violent love to Hardcastle, whom he takes for one of the servants. This contrasts with his bashful attitude when presented to her in her real character. The arrival of Sir Charles clears

up the misconception and all ends’ well, including a _ subsidiary love-affair between Hastings and Miss Hardcastle’s cousin Miss Neville, whom Mrs. Hardcastle has destined for the irrepressible Tony. uk a Eo John Gielgud and Gladys Young take the principal roles in The Family Reunion, 7. S. Eliot’s haunting, compelling story, written in verse, of the Piper family and the conflict between their | austere, autocratic mother and the eldest son, Harry, who believes himself accursed. It will be broadcast | first from 1YA at 8.0 p.m. on Friday, January 20, and lasts fortwo hours. T. .S. Eliot was born in St. Louis in 1888, but became a British subject in 1927, because of his interest in the English Church and state. His most famous poem is The Waste Land, a work whose theme is the sterility and chaos of the contemporary world. A later poem,. Ash Wedmesday, made clear his allegiance to the Church of England. This was followed by The Rock, a pageant representing the past and present difficulties of the Church and its ultimate triumph, and Murder in the Cathedral, a latter-day morality play (about the ass- assination of Thomas & Becket) which clearly affirms the value of the Church as a medium for social action. The Family Reunion was first produced in 1939. Harry, 'Lord-» Monchensey, returns to his English country home, Wishwood, after eight years abroad, following the death of his young wife.

The occasion is the birthday of his mother, Amy, the imperious matriarch of a family which also includes his sisters, Ivy, Violet and Agatha, her brothers-in-law, Gerald and Charles Piper, and the penniless cousin, Mary. Harry does not conceal his con-. tempt for the others and shows his neurotic, guilt-ridden condition by a blurted confession that he murdered his wife. He has returned in search of inner peace,

but the avenging spirits (Eumenides) now become visible even to Agatha and Mary, although not to the others. Anxious for her son’s sanity, Amy summons Dr. Warburton, and the doctor warns Harry that any sudden emotion may kill his mother. Harry and Agatha have a talk and he discovers the hasis of their sympathy when she reveals that his father had loved her, not Amy, who

had used him merely to have the children and home she desired. The father’s frustrated desire to murder his wife seems to have been inherited from the son, whose sense of guilt is part of the fated atonement. Harry departs to complete his "pilgrimage of expiation," and the shock kills Amy, after which the family unity that she has sustained is destroyed,