BUTTERFLY INVIOLATE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 791, 17 September 1954, Page 12

BUTTERFLY INVIOLATE

THE DARK IS LIGHT ENOUGH, by Christopher Fry; Oxtord University Press, English price 8/6. OR his latest play, Christopher Fry has chosen the setting of a country house involved in the Hungarian rebel-

lion of 1848-9; the effect is to make the events pleasantly remote in time and place, the characters fashionably charming in dress, manners and accent, and the poetry natural if rather less lyrical than usual. Dominating the play is the Countess Rosmarin Ostenburg. In faith, hope and charity she holds her course with devastating and irresponsible purpose. An anarchist at heart, she inexorably demolishes the arguments of convention and expediency before they are uttered. "Lives make and unmake themselves in her neighbourhood as nowhere else." She has, therefore, allowed her daughter to marry the prodigal Richard Gettner, and with equal lack of dismay, to divorce him in favour of the impeccable Count Peter. She shatters her friends by harbouring Gettner, now a deserter, from the Hungarians, and by acquiescing in the detention of Count Peter in his place. When fortune fails the Hungarians, she harbours them in their turn. Inviolate, she dies with whimsy on her lips, and Gettner, until now a rationaliser in favour of personal comfort, takes His stand beside her to repel the intruders. Such is the translation of Fabre’s butterfly, finding its way through a dense wood in storm and darkness "in a state of perfect freshness, its great wings intact. The darkness is light enough." In so far as it gives purpose, the comparison is good; more often one is reminded of Mr. Fry’s analogy of comedy as a dance in which, "groaning as we may be, we trace the outline of the mystery." Certainly not tragedy, the . play moves significantly to point its moral, but not always with complete economy: minor characters have a habit of getting in, the way, situations are unresolved, the attention is distracted. This is not’ to say that the play is not effective theatre-a duel, a shooting, a straying of affection add interest: but concentration is achieved by a rather summary dismissal of minor characters, not necessarily arising from the action. And one wonders in what sense’ the love for Gettner into which the Countess hopes to be "elected" differs from the universal charity she has exercised. These things admitted, The Dark is Light Enough is most moving. The poetry has the charm one has come to. expect. Summer would end, surely, but the year fell For my sake, dying the golden death As though it were the game to put Hands over my eyes and part them suddenly : When primroses and violets lay Like raindrops on a leaf In the beginning of Spring, and Since no words will set us free... Music will unground us best As a tide in the dark comes to boats at anchor And they begin to dance,

adorn this "Winter Comedy," along with much else. And above all, the Countess will go down in history as one of the great female characters.

J. R.

Tye