AT THE PLAY.
"L'AIGLON."
In a note given away with the programme Mr. LOUIS N. PARKER, describes L'Aiglon as "the Hamlet of the nineteenth century." Certainly they had in common the habits of introspection, and indecision; but the egoism of Hamlet was at least tempered by a knowledge of the world; he was a student; he had travelled and seen men and things outside the bounds of Elsinore; and he was capable of throwing off some quotable generalities out of his stock of philosophy. On the other hand the Eaglet, mewed in his Austrian cage, knew nothing of life at large, and had small chance of learning anything beyond the bowdlerised history which his tutors and warders thought good to have him stuffed with.
Somehow he had contrived surreptitiously to pick up the dates and leading facts of his father's campaigns (making a speciality of the Battle of Wagram), but the vague ambitions which they inspired only helped his little mind to prey upon itself. It was not "the times" (as with Hamlet) but his own nose that he found to be "out of joint."
The appeal of Hamlet is to the intelligence; that of L'Aiglon, so obviously pathetic in his own eyes, is rather to the heart. Indeed the intelligence of the audience is here often in trouble; for a certain acquaintance with history is required and both actors and stage-management offer little aid to the average ignorance. While the more obvious and melodramatic situations—such as the death of L'Aiglon or the business of the sentry—are treated at great leisure, it is assumed that all historical allusions, however necessary to an understanding of the situation, will be as tedious to the audience as to the players, and they are rushed through—as in the mirror scene—-at a pace that baffles our halting pursuit.
If any male character lends itself to interpretation by a woman, it is such a character as L'Aiglon, who, for all his spasms of martial ardour, was half feminine. And to this side of him, and not this side alone, Miss MARIE LÖHR did justice in a performance of which her high spirit had not underrated the difficulties. But it is a long and exigent part, and there were times in the play when her physical strength was overtaxed. It would have taken the voice of a strongish basso to drown the roar of a whole battlefield of ghostly warriors, with a military band thrown in.
I am not sure that Miss LÖHR quite realised for us the Duke of Reichstadt's personality. I should not care to have the task myself, for a good many complicated elements were mixed in his nature. As Mr. Louis PARKER reminds you, a French father supplied him with ambition and love of action, an Austrian grandfather with hesitancy, and Spanish ancestors with fatalism, a very trying combination for even the original Eaglet to handle—a mere boy who had never so much as heard of President WILSON'S League of Nation's. So it was excusable if Miss LÖHR failed to make us completely realise a personality which was almost certainly too much for the comprehension of its actual owner.
But she was always ah intriguing figure. Perhaps, indeed—for the apparel does not always proclaim the man, and the Eaglet was no Hamlet in the matter of his clothes—her rather striking costumes were a source of too much distraction.
In a very large cast, whose identities were here and there a little shadowy, the interest was so distributed that nobody except Miss LÖHR had very much chance. But Mr. FISHER WHITE made a touching picture of the weak old Austrian Emperor, torn between love of his grandchild and fear of Metternich. Metternich himself, in the person of Mr. HENRY VIBART, seemed hardly sinister, enough for the part he had to play in keeping the Eaglet under the talons of the "two-headed fowl." But it is perhaps difficult to look really sinister in the full official uniform of a Chancellor.
Mr. LYN HARDING, as Flambeau, veteran of NAPOLEON'S Army, introduced a faint suggestion of badly-needed humour, and relieved the general atmosphere of Court artificiality by a touch of nature which almost reconciled us to the improbable burst of eloquence that ROSTAND, with his reckless prodigality, assigned to this rough soldier.
Miss LETTICE FAIRFAX gave a pleasant air of irresponsibility to the shallow Maria Louisa, and made her bear very lightly her cross of widowhood (with bar). The briefest possible vision of Miss BETTY FAIRE as Fanny Elssler made me want to see much more of her; but Mr. Louis PARKER had been Napoleonically ruthless with the text. His translation sounded well, though the delivery of it sometimes left me doubtful as to what was prose and what was verse. As for his production of the play, it showed the old skill of a Past-Master of Pageantry.
Altogether Miss MARIE LÖHR has been justified of her courage. In a happy little speech from which we learnt that every one of the voices (off) in the Wagram scene was a demobilised voice from the fighting fronts, she told us that her revival of L'Aiglon was intended as a tribute to Art after all these years of War. We were not, I think, meant to take this as a reflection upon the part played by the British Theatre in sustaining the nation's soul during the War. Anyhow, I for one shall read into her words just a brave promise—not, I hope, too sanguine—of what we may expect from the new birth of the Arts of Peace.
O.S.