38
PARTISAN REVIEW
publican forces; he has turned the rather shady Cassius into a shrewd
and jovial comedian whose heart is in the right place; he has made
Caesar, whose political stature gave the play dignity and significance,
into a mechanical, expressionlessrobot; he has transformed the showy,
romantic, buccaneering Antony into a repulsive and sinister dema-
gogue. If he could do all this and still come out with a play that was
consistent and uniformly forceful, the experiment might be forgivable.
There were some things, however, which could not be cut or distorted,
and these by their very incongruous presence, destroy the totality of
the play's effect. The most prominent of these un assimilated chunks
of Shakespeare is Antony's final speech ("This was the noblest Roman
of them all"-too famous, doubtless, to be cut), which in the mouth
of the unreliable monster of the Welles production seemed an un-
convincing and even tasteless tribute to the memory of Brutus.
The Mercury Theater
Caesar,
it goes without saying, had virtues
that are lacking in the ordinary Shakespearean revival. The simplicity
of the mounting, the calm, conversational tone of the players, an ex-
cellent'if wrongheaded performance by George Coulouris as Antony,
were all new and commendable. There were, on the other hand, cer-
tain vulgarities of playing that arose from the oversimplification of a
complex work. Orson Welles's Brutus was cloying and monotonous:
his performance seemed to be based on the single theory that if you
drop your voice two registers below the voices of the other actors you
will give an impression of innocent saintliness.
Yet whatever the technical virtues or faults of the Mercury
Theater company, its energies, like the energies of Mr. Gielgud, seem
to me to be misapplied. If the classics are to play any important role
in the American theater, their contents ought at least to be examined.
To encrust them either with traditional ornament or with modern
formulae for playwriting is to shut them off from the world and the
theater. Acting as an art cannot exist by itself; it must feed on the
material of plays. Both Mr. Welles and Mr. Gielgud, who in a peculiar
way are trying "to lead their own lives," to make themselves inde-
pendent of plays, are the potential victims of a sterile cleverness,
which can readily lead them to a very dead end.
Mr. Gielgud and Mr. Welles, unfortunately, represent the
dominant trends in the production of revivals. Only Maurice Evans,
who stands outside both the old school and the new, has given a
Shakespearean performance in which the actor was in harmonious
relation with the play. Yet Mr. Evans has so carefully eschewed ec-
centricities and mannerisms of style that he will not easily attract
imitators. Mr. Welles's forthcoming Falstaff will probably create a
greater stir; my money is on Mr. Evans.
