A Last Look Round the English Theatre

Abstract

It is with regret that I stop looking round for Drama Survey; and my regret is all the greater because in the last year our theatre has shown a heartening capacity for self-renewal. Its life outside London has become more vigorous; while the fate of the big old theatres that supplied mass entertainment before the mass media is being considered at government level, the new medium-sized civic theatres are mostly flourishing and producing much new work. The subsidized theatres are doing this too: and while one may not always feel that they achieve a sound balance of judgment between what has immediate entertainment value (and should be the commercial theatre's business) and what has more lasting significance, the mixture keeps their work full of life which flows also into their revivals. All these companies are also going outside their own buildings, to serve young people or to tour the rest of Britain. London has its proper share of small experimental houses, and so have some of the other cities, notably Edinburgh with the Traverse which has sparked off a number of other ventures. And as we shall see, experiment has not been entirely confined to them. It is several months since my last look, so many indeed that the program of the coming summer's Chichester Festival is already announced. It contains some outstandingly attractive items, most notably Margaret Leigh ton and John Clements (who has established a superlative standard as Director) as Antony and Cleopatra. There is also Maggie Smith in Pinero's The Magistrate and The Country Wife (bewitching casting!) and Topol in The Caucasian Chalk Circle. But it is not my business to detail coming delights to aspiring visitors, but to look back at last summer. This too was a program of distinction. Peter Ustinov appeared in a new play The Unknown Soldier and His Wife, which I found sadly repetitive and got bored with, though many did not share my disappointment. Thornton Wilder's The Skin of our Teeth was translated from Atlantic City to the nearby seaside resort of Brighton: it sounds a good idea, but fantasy must be based on the particular details of real life if it is to make a successful jump off the ground, and the Englishing of Wilder's dialogue robbed it of the necessary verisimilitude. It was a colorful romp, but Wilder's point got lost; and the device of presenting the play as if it were being made into a television film introduced a second set of interjections from actors and director which cut across Wilder's origi-