THEATER CHRONICLE
103
Yet even this quiet passage, beginning to fancy itself, takes to capering
before the mirror:
Sad, sad my alacritous web of nerves,
Woefully, woefully sad my wondering brain,
To be shaped and sharpened into such tendrils
OJ anticipation, to feed the swamp of space.
I must add that the production, of which I expected much, turned out
to be, in my experience of it, rather uneven too. Pamela Brown was
beautiful in herself and in the delivery of her aria-like lines, where the
best of the verse is concentrated. But Gie1gud, greatly as he is said to
relish his part as the misanthrope, seemed to me cavernously unmerry.
To him, after all, are given all the more manic metaphors and relentless
puns and curses: "Don't they know / I sing solo bass in Hell's Madrigal
Club?"
When duly restrained, and writing prose, Fry appears to be an ad–
mirable stylist. In
Ring Round the Moon
he has made a lively adaptation
of Jean Anouilh's
L'Invitation au cha.teau,
to which he gives the sub–
title of "A Charade with Music." "Revue" wou ld have done as well,
for it is to that kind of show that Anouilh's engaging and quite unenig–
matic piece approximates.
It
is a succession of scenes, most of which
present some unmistakable-and delightful-stunt: a duet between two
fantastic old women, former school friends who have known better days;
an elaborate tango which is also an intimate conversation piece; a kind
of ballet
a
deux
where money is thrown around instead of the usual
balloons or petals. And while Fry in his own piece ventures to conjure
up the Elizabethans, Anouilh is content with the more practical tradition
of Cocteau. Even Cocteau, however, is grave beside the Anouilh of this
particular play, which is based on the Cinderella theme. Doubtless some
comment on the problem of identity is embodied in the young twins,
one tough, one tender, who make up its composite fairy prince-both
played with much grace and ingenuity by a single actor, Denholm
Elliot. But although it is the tender one who gets the tangible prize–
the Cinderella herself-his brilliant brother is the one we rather over–
whelmingly prefer. Nor has Anouilh hesitated to extract from his ma–
terial a tribute to the Realities: there is some embarrassed moralizing on
the subject of unearned riches. But the actual pull of the play is in the
opposite direction. The most persuasive character is the twins' dowager
aunt-another mocking matriarch-whose charm is obviously guaran–
teed by her wealth and position. "No one's altogether handsome who
isn't altogether human," she says; yet the reverse as clearly holds true
