ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT DRAMA
607
sohoolboys, not the enormously talented playwrights they in fact are. Of
course, the theater is a peculiarly specialized art, technical beyond any
other literary form. As such it has attracted a special kind of intelligence
and has its own specialized satisfactions. But there is no reason in the
world why anyone or any art should be specialized to the point of
inanity, or conventionalized to the point where it is cut off from the
ordinary processes of the intelligence.
I have made so much of this rather obvious point because the con–
ventions of the London theater have altered a great deal in the last
few years. There is a healthy sign of decreasing specialization; there are
stirrings of significance and life. Early in the 'fifties nothing seemed
deader than the British stage. The standard of acting, of course, was
very high and notable justice was done to the routine classics. But every
new play went according to a fixed plan. "The scene," the program
would say, "is the drawing-room of Mr. and Mrs. Murgatroyd-Winter–
botham's house overlooking Regent's Park. The time is the present. One
morning in May." The curtain would duly rise on the usual sham but
tasteful Regency. The phone would ring. The usual maid would enter.
Maid:
The Murgatroyd-Winterbotham residence. No, I'm afraid Ma-
dam is not at home. Oh yes, of course, Mrs. Manningham-Gil–
lingham. No, I don't know when she'll be back.
(Confidentially
and rather excited)
She went out last night after dinner and
hasn't returned. The master seems very worried. He scarcely
touched his kidneys at breakfast. (A noise off) Yes Mrs. Mann–
ingham-Gillingham, I'll tell her (replaces receiver). Oh
Madam!
(Enter Mrs. M.W. a smart little blonde in her mid-thirties. She
looks tired and upset. Her mink coat is awry.)
Not even
T.
S. Eliot, when he turned popular playwright, had the energy
or imagination to break the mode. Hence those disastrous Happy Families
of his, with their gin-and-water omniscience and martyrdom.
Yet somehow, in the last three or four years, the miracle has hap–
pened, the conventions have changed. To be sure, conventions of a
kind still abound but at least they are new. The theater is still very
much a middle-class entertainment; the 'booking, the treck to the West
End remove all spontaneity from play-going; it becomes a major family
event. Hence the success of Frederick Lonsdale, Noel Coward, Terence
Rattigan and the rest depends on the manner in which they all, in their
slightly different ways, cater to
the
spacious suburban dream; while
Christopher Fry is to poetry what Stockbrokers' Tudor is to architec–
ture. Now in the late 'fifties, the audience is much the same but the
middle-class image of itself, its known facts and willed fantasies, have
changed. After all, during the last few years the genteel have taken a
