THE BEGGAR'S OPERA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 802, 3 December 1954, Page 22

THE BEGGAR'S OPERA

(British Lion-Herbert Wilcox) T was (they say) Dean Swift who first suggested to the poet John Gay that a "Newgate pastoral. .. might make an odd pretty sort of thing." Gay took the hint, wrote The Beggar's Opera, and made substantial profit. But Swift never saw it staged, and I wondered, the other evening, how he would have stood up to the impact of film techniques, Technicolor, the selfconscious baritone of Sir Laurence Olivier, and other modern production. devices. Would he have thought that his original prognosis contained a slight derangement of epithets? He might have found the doxies of Newgate (and the text) a trifle prim, but I imagine that, with a little prior acclimatisation he would have enjoyed the show. On the screen, The Beggar’s Opera is still an odd pretty sort of thing-with the adjectives in their original order. Indeed, I would be pressed to find a phrase which could summarise more succinctly what I felt about it, It is odd in the sense that it is not the kind of thing one normally encounters "at the pictures," and it has there-

fore a piquancy which should please the jaged palate. The dashing highwayman Captain Macheath, who has a fine seat on a horse but who ‘tends to get off balance whenever he comes within arm’s length of a pretty shoulder, is not the usual kind of hero, but his weakness for women produces a type of comedy which is universally comprehensible. His particular sweethearts, Polly Peachum and Lucy Lockit, and the other amorous doxies of Newgate are, you might say, universally comprehensible, too, but the settings-the squalor of Newgate ‘prison, the low life, the beggars and cutpurses, the cheerfully corrupt jailers and turn-keys-give the piece a flavour of its own. And it is, on the whole, a pretty piece of work. Colour, costumes and action frequently enchant the eye, the camera is often artfully manipulated, and the frolics and dances of the players are as a tule rhythmic, gay and excellently staged. The piece has style. But (and here I find myself tagging along after one or two overseas reviewers) the quality of Peter, Brook’s direction is not evenly maintained. This is his first real test as a director. and he has turned his stage experience to good advantage in many sequences, but these serve, too, to underline occasional banalities (Polly’s first entry isn’t particularly bright, and Sir Laurence is once or twice rather too obviously mounted on the studio rock--ing-horse). Of the players, only Sir L. and Stanley Holloway (Lockit) attempt to sing. Olivier’s voice you might call adequate; Holloway I thought much the more enjoyable of the two. The other songs are dubbed in by six offstage singers (Joan Cross is one), not al] of whom give sufficient attention to diction. The words (as in Gilbert and Sullivan) are no less important than the tunes. But even with these reservations, which are for the most part matters of detail, anyway, The Beggar's Opera is good entertainment. You need not necessarily be interested in film style, or the work of a new director, or the determined versatility of Sir Laurence Olivier to enjoy it.

BAROMETER -, TO FINE: "The Beggar's ra.’’ f FAIR TO FINE: "Four in a Jeep." ~