AT THE PLAY.
"JUDITH."
That Mr. ARNOLD BENNETT was actuated by the very highest motives when he set out to edit the Apocryphal Scriptures for stage purposes, nobody would dream of doubting. It is the more unfortunate that by making the rest of the play very dull he should have thrown into relief certain features in the story of Judith which the original author had preferred to treat with a commendable reticence.
It will be recalled that in the ancient version Holofernes made a feast for Judith "and drank much more wine than he had drunk at any time in one day since he was born;" that he then lay down on his bed in a state of stupor, and that Judith, taking advantage of his torpid condition, "approached" and cut off his head at her leisure with his own "fauchion." The decency of this arrangement is easily apparent; it obviated the necessity for wanton allurements on the part of Judith and amorous advances on the side of the Commander-in-Chief. Incidentally it is more reasonable to assume that so virile a warrior would yield to nothing short of intoxication than that he would be persuaded, while still remaining sober, to take a brief rest (on the ground of temporary indisposition) and so go like a lamb to the slaughter, as he does in the play.
Bagoas (MR. THESIGER). "CANST DO THIS WITH THY HANDS, WOMAN?"
Judith (MISS LILLAH MCCARTHY). "NAY, MIGHTINESS, THY SLAVE CAN DO NO BETTER THAN THIS POOR TRICK."
To do Miss LILLAH MCCARTHY justice, she went through a scene embarrassing alike to actors and audience with as much dignity and aloofness as the situation admitted. In a previous scene there had been one rather gratuitous posture which we might perhaps have been spared; but, for the rest, from the moment when she first entered, a noble figure in her robes of widowhood, veiling all but the oval of her face, pale and passionless, she played with a fine restraint, giving us confidence in her reserve of strength and never once allowing her high purpose to be forgotten.
It was not her fault if, in the night scene, amid a generous exposure of physical facts, we missed the less palpable atmosphere of impending doom. Certainly the Holofernes of Mr. CLAUDE KING never for a moment suggested it. I admit that I had not hitherto seen an Assyrian officer making love on the edge of his grave and so had no exact precedent to go by, but this officer, with his face far too well groomed for the conclusion of a heavy banquet, and those rather anaemic and perfunctory gestures of endearment, which had nothing to do with the sombre forces of elemental passion, gave no hint of the sinister workings of Fate.
This lack of atmosphere pervaded G.H.Q. Apart from Miss MCCARTHY, Mr. THESIGER, whose performance as Bagoas must have astonished those who only knew him on the stage as a frivolous flâneur, was the sole character who conveyed any sense of the general uncanniness of things.
Mr. ARNOLD BENNETT'S own novelties—the very rapid fraternization of Judith's little Cockney maid with the enemy; her own inexplicable love-at-first-sight for an Ammonite pervert; the laborious pretentiousness of Ozias, the Governor of Bethulia; the tedious garrulity of the oldest inhabitant, and the topical reference, in the manner of pantomime, to the War of 1914-1918 A.D.—these offered no great improvement on the original narrative. On the other hand his neglect to show us the head of Holofernes, which constitutes so dramatic a property in the Book of Judith, was a noticeable omission. But perhaps he was well-advised to leave it out, for I thought I detected the significant presence of Mr. BILLING in the stalls.
I ought perhaps to add that there was a Messenger whose refinement of speech greatly struck me. He said that he came from Jerusalem, but he sounded as if he came from Balliol.
O.S.
"A party of police have been stationed in and around the premises, and to-day their number were augmented by a party of Scottish Horse Marines."—Cork Paper.
We are glad to see this historic unit bobbing up again.