THEATER CHRONICLE
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to
be
destroyed and affirmed through the art of the theater, that is
in the matter of preaching, never the province of tragedy; they were
also, along with his general presentation of himself as a "natural born
mountebank," a protection of his own high earnestness, of which the
rational part could never undo the mystic. In any case, the attitude
does contribute a proper criticism of contemporary efforts to adapt
under present conditions of religious belief, at least in England and
America, a form of dramatic art in which originally there was no
question of basic argument: this aside from whether the old Moralities
and Mysteries were ever particularly good plays. In the present state
of things the subjective load, the burden of a lone proprietor of Faith,
as isolated as any ordinary poet, trying
to
dramatize at once the
rationale and the emotive force of a systematic religious belief, can
make for nothing but an embarrassing bore. Lest we are in for more
of same, as seems likely, a word of praise is in order for two recent
works of, in their very different ways, the deepest moral seriousness, that
are not boring at all, although being operas the problem might have
seemed even more insoluble. We are speaking only
of
librettos, of
which of course a full judgment can only be in their relation
to
the
music. They are Gian Carlo Menotti's Christmas opera for television,
Amahl and the Night Visitors,
which was genuinely moving because
its innocence in relation to one of the great themes of Christianity was
genuine--there is of course nothing to learn from this except
to
be
pure in heart and be born in the right place for it; and Auden's rapid,
boisterous, lyrical and altogether delightful parable of
The Rake's
Progress,
which for some reason has been shown allover Europe
be–
fore anyone would risk it in America.
As for
Saint Joan,
there were difficulties; there
are
difficulties, for
one's wish and will to
be
fully convinced, in the play itself, but on top
of that neither Margaret Webster's production nor Uta Hagen's Joan
were quite satisfactory. There is a certain stereotyped pageantry in
Miss Webster's touch, which especially in the court scenes here suggested
a good collegiate demonstration of how to do Shakespeare. What was
best, with one or two reservations, was the casting of minor roles, on
which Shaw once wrote: "You
must
have acting for comedy and
character, whereas the big serious sympathetic parts take care of them–
selves with a little coaching." And his writing
of
them remains an
unassailable point in his genius, to be seen in this case notably through
John Buckmaster as the eternally rewarding, hilarious Dauphin, and
Andrew Cruickshank as a properly large, fastidious-gestured Earl of
