Reviews

Drama club play creditable

The Revenger's TragEdy opened hopefully. The colours were exciting: the deep blue of the cyclorama, the brilliant scarlet of the Duke's cloak, the stark black of the curtains.

The set was simple, but dominated by a quite beautiful rectangular arch. The costumes were splendid.

Cathie Gordon demonstrated immediately that she knows how to arrange a stage. She handled the awkward opening remarkably well: as the characters marched across the stage, somehow, miraculously, they avoided looking ridiculous.

The same skill appeared in the ordering of the large scenes, and in such fine dramatic moments as the revelations of the skull and the murder of the Duke.

The acting was fairly consistent in quality—though not consistently excellent, it was by no means intolerable. Alistair Gordon's Vindice had the virtue of confidence, if also the vice of gestures oppressively frequent and frequently oppressive. He was certainly sufficiently righteous and nasty.

* *

Richard Cathie as Lussurieso was quite adequate, except in a few (admittedly crucial) places; and Josephine Knight as Adrians was, without qualification, much more than adequate: her scenes were strong and dignified; her moral dilemma, unconvincing enough, was presented so sympathetically as to be almost believable.

Caroline Harding's Castiza was appealing and nicely virtuous.

Vivien Flack and Michael Hirsch-charming embraces. Jack Richards, though his voice was rather weak, was still competent: and David feld, playing a thoroughly disagreeable pair, were effective in some

Rutherford's surly performance was nearly so.

With all this, it is difficult to explain why the play was bad.

In fact, it fell down in several respects, of which the acting was not the most serious. We could have forgiven Alistair Gordon's flourishes and Richard Cathie's limitations; even the woodenness of Chris Hector (in stance though not in voice) was but a venial sin.

For that matter we could have almost overlooked Robert Lord's monochrome characterisation, and the jerks and wriggles of Peter Robb. All these people had their moments. Only Peter Jenkin's Antonio, whimpering his way through the play, put us quite out of patience.

* *

The acting was inadequate to the point at which moral and dramatic issues were stated crudely, but not to the point at which the whole production was jeopardised.

The most serious failings were rather that the play was too slow and too static.

The slowness was crippling—and was partly due to lack of pace within scenes, partly to protracted scene-changes. The lack of animation was disastrous. The production slopped at the arrangement of attractive tableaux. It so neglected movement that at the critical moment, when movement was imperative, the scene disintegrated.

* *

The idea of polite music and graceful dance exploding into violence was one of the best touches in the play—but the dancing was so unconvincing and the violence so ill conceived, that the dramatic impact was lost.

But for this inattention to pace and movement, the finale would not have been farce and the play would have been more than a creditable failure.—P.G.R.