Evil Good Fun

"The White Devil"

With the team-spirit and vigour that are characteristic of their productions, Unity Theatre have tackled the problem of reviving an Elizabethan revenge tragedy, Webster's "The White Devil." To attempt this was, in itself, worthwhile and Meritorious, and that It was not a complete success la possibly due more to the play and its conditions than to faults of representation. To write or act a [unclear: a] and thunder" tragedy in Elizabethan times was to work within an accepted scheme accepted because the audience, through as immediacy which the theatre now lacks, could easily become caught up in that scheme of things. What is left for the audience of such a play now?

There is the dramatic and human impact, which in "The White Devil" is not often felt apart from the Trial scene (whereas in "The Duchess of Malfi" the downfall and death of the heroine can carry the audience along); then, there are some extraordinary poetic lines, which in this play give a swift movement to the first act, but which, in their dramatic context, must now seem almost accidental. Finally, the more literary critics have seen in the play a searching treatment of the workings of evil. This, however, I fail to see; for Webster, evil was primarily very good fun. It has elements of that "terribly serious farce," as Eliot calls Marlowe's "Jew of Malta." which has since been destroyed by those who sentimentalise or simplify or explain away, and which can hardly be recaptured now, or communicated in its complexity.

It was inevitable, therefore, that the first half of the play, the interplay of intrigues, should come off better than the ragged fourth act or the orgies of the final one. Michael Cotterill gave a fine performance as the Duke of Brachiano, Bruce Mason as his pandar Flamineo and June Struthers as Victoria, played smoothly and competently, but they were never so intensely in character. Victoria lacked the passion and force which should have dominated the play and made a climax of her speech at the trial. She is the only one for whom a rounded character is, as it were, ready-made in the play—she is not painted black or white, we are left not knowing whether to admire or condemn her. The characters of Brachiano and Flamlneo make greater demands on the actor; they have to be lilted in and give dramatic and poetic validity despite the dead wood in their lines and their situations. For Webster does not make adequate use either of a dramatic build-up or of poetry to sustain his play, and in these' respects he seems to me inferior to his contemporaries—Middleton and Tourneur.

The production was effective in setting and grouping. The in-set was used to its best effect in Brachi-ano's death-scene, which was the only convincing one of the eight deaths in the play. Another high point of the play, Cornelia's famous dirge, could have been made more of. I am not sure, however, that much could have been done to prevent the massacre at the end from being ludicrous. The deaths at the end of "Hamlet" may still be acceptable on the stage, but "Hamlet" transcends the convention of the revenge tragedy, and its greatness is partly due to that. "The White Devil" belongs too much to a convention, one which is no longer vital or even existent for us, and though we may still look on at times fascinated, we cannot, as in great tragedy or poetic drama, feel involved.

P. Dronke.