April 1933

Page 10

319

Entertainments. "CAPTAIN BRASSBOUND'S CONVERSION." We have a suspicion that G.B.S., writing this play in 1899, deliberately played it low down on his bete noire, the Actor Manager. The nineties and the early nineteen-hundreds were the heyday of the Actor Manager. Parts were cut to fit him by the dramatic tailors then practising, and the limelight followed him all over the stage. And we imagine G.B.S. saying to himself : " I will kill this offence to the drama by making it ridiculous. I will make a play in which the ' hero ' shall be wronged, and, mysterious, and picturesque, the strong, silent man (but not too silent) : the action shall centre on him : the other characters shall be his satellites, and he the great star. And then I will show him feeble, and dull, and ineffective. His pathetic revelations and his thrilling exits shall dissolve in the laughter of anti-climax. I will set the scene for a dominating personality, and then I will show him signally failing to dominate anybody or anything. And the Actor Manager who seizes greedily on the part will find himself reduced to a stiff and ineffective walking gentleman. And I hope he will like it." In a word, Brassbound is a poor acting part, and it is our belief that the author deliberately made it so. We need not say that Mr. S. M. Toyne made all that could be made of it. But those who know his versatility and wide experience could have wished him more scope fur his talent. Miss Toyne, as Lady Cicely, gave a vivid rendering of the masterful and unconventional Englishwoman abroad, and had a wide range of emotion under good control. Mr. K. H. Rhodes sketched in firm lines the pomposity and subsequent deflation of the judge on holiday. Rankin, the Scots missionary, gave D. Lupton a great opportunity, and he made the most of it. In Drinkwater, Mr. R. E. Greenway gave us the essential guttersnipe with energy and high spirits. Cunning, voluble, and unashamedly mean, Drinkwater is the comic high light of the play, and the actor who is to put him across must sink himself utterly in the character of this despicable little tout. The laughter which greeted him continuously was evidence of how thoroughly this was done. A. V. Mackintosh, as Marzo, looked appropriately sinister, and T. W. Jenkins, as Redbrook, appropriately debonair and inane. All the other parts were picturesquely played, and H. J. Ainsworth, as the American naval officer, spoke his lines with effortless clearness. The management of the crowds on a tiny stage testified to skilful production and diligent rehearsing. The scenes, designed on broad and dignified lines, made an admirable setting, and the backcloth for Acts I and III was very striking. F.H.B.


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