THE BEST ACTORS in the world are starved of good plays because one big name stays absont too long from the list which begins Torence Rattigan, Peter Ustinov, Noël Coward
Come out from
behind that beard
BEGIN
to
wish
Emlyn Williams had never learned to read.
"His fabulous success as a reciter of Dickens is rob- bing the theatre of a pre- cious creative talent.
Our actors are the best im the world. But who is writ ing for them? Bernard Shaw and James Bridle aro
gone. Somerset Maugham und Sean O'Casey are heard
no more.
J. B. Priestley has turned sour on the theatre. Of the two poet-dramatists who emerged since the war, T. B. Eltat, has done nothing since The Cocktail Party," and Christopher Fry hangs fire.
So the burden rests on the only four writers who
have provóri staying power. Noel Coward. the exuberant politician -Peter
Ustimov, Terence JOHN BARBER
Rattigan
and
"Then there is the Ides that I am a complete Dickens expert -I'm not. I don't ape him of
Emlyn Willams. calls Emlyn Williams slage. I won't lecture on him,
Consider Wil- back to his right job
Ilams, the Welsh
greengrocer's
son who won seven, Oxford- scholarships and became a nervetaut actor and dramtist both prolific and powerful.
He wrote plays you watched. through tears ("The Corn Is Green"). He could touch your shoulder withora finger of horror ("Night Must Fall"), His people had, roots in the earth. His stories tingled and sped.
But here is what made him Blessed among playwrights: ho was an educated man proud of his humble beginnings. He un derstood the poor and degraded (whoan Rattigan ignores, Ustinov burlesques, Coward mocks or patronises). No one sise painted servents and villagers with love, His Intelligence did not shrivel his heart.
This man has abdicated,
All because one wet summer. afternoon five years ago he started reading "Bleak House" to his sons, and had the idea of im- personating Dickens in public. It turned out the biggest money- spinning gimmick of the age.
Williams la completing a trium- phant tour
to
our of England. He goes Switzerland next, then Ger many. In Janucan cities,
he starts a round of 50 Americon
Already he is preparing a third programme of Dickens for South Africa next autumn,
London paid £1,000 a week to
Ae Williams told me:
making a lot of money,"
PLAYWRIGHT WILLIAMS, -face behind the beard
Once I worried about his health, Dickens strained his heart to death with his famous public readings. A new book reports
or propose his toast,
"I definitely do not model every inflexion and gesture on
THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, DECEMBER
Private Angelo on the way out
Naples.
TELL, I am very glad
W
now that I did not SEFTON DELMER
go rushing straight homo from Cairo but broke my journey first in Greeco and then in Italy.
For what I have found as a result is all very on- couraging. Yes, things are.. looking up in this part of the world. They are looking vastly better than I had ex- pected to find them. ----
Everything is moving briskly towards the catablishment of a common · strategic plan Yugoslavia, Greece,
between
and
Turkey-vital if we are to
"Reporting on-d tour of the Eastern Mediterrannanj one of Euròpé's fijláh Ppintá
* ::: Italy's present: smaller army is well equipped with almost a kalk | complement of modern weapons. It is fully mechanised and highly mobile.
the In vain I looked for private Angelon of the pla Italian Army could seo none of them. And I hellovp the assurance of the officer who told me there was no place for them.
A loser
establish a firm defensive Is there any feature of the
front in the Balkans...
sttuntion In Share parts which I do not find satisfactory? Oh yes. The muddió over Albania.
Here in Naples, Admiral Robert B. Carney, Amèri- If ever there was a symbol of can Commander for the how for this Western world of Southern Mediterranean ours is from being unlled in its towards the Soviet policy sector, shows that he has threat it is this small mountain at last come to realise the country of Albania. strategic importance of the Middle East.
What is more, he is now beginning to appreciate there is something in the British argument thut de fence of the Middle East is without the impossible present British base in the Suez Canal Zone.
A winner
C. D. He was a writer, breaking NOW that is remarkable progress, For Admiral
now ground as an actor, Thiéro-
It
on
There it lies on the edge of the
Adriatic an island of Sovietism
otherwise Western
anti-Soviet word.
be an easy matter Would to provoke an internal rising by and the Albanian
patriots overthrow the wonk Communist Government of satellite Promler Hoda, The Russians would be oble to do nothing about it.
to
Politically it would be a tonic all the Soviet-oppressed peoples of Europe. Strategically would be valuable too. For it. would eliminate the Soviet sub- tearino base in
the Albanian Bay of Valora.
Why then do we hesitate to
encourage such a coup?
Because
afraid of
everyone concerned fore, he was interested in dis-Carney, partly because of playing himself as the actor he his Irish-American upbring- Greeks do not want to see the auspects everyone else. The had always hunkered to be,
ing, partly because his ex: Yugoslavs active in Albania, "I, being the opposite, an actor porience of naval warfare the Yugoslavs are breaking new ground ina has come chiefly from the Greek ambitions in Albania, Both . Yugoslavs and Greeks his suspect Italians wide Pacific Ocean,
of pretensions been prejudiced in Albania hitherto against this British view.
narrative stage medium, am more fascinated to interpret bis' won- dorful descriptive powers.”
TEAR the haunted man fight- HE
ing to be himself? 1 wrench him back to the vital question: Where are his plays, his playst
4
But of all the things I'
have seen and heard what
So Albania reinains as it is.
#2ivate" "Angels, was a clown.
Linklater
has 'cheered—and amazed like character in a book by Eric ~me most is the new Italian Army.
I am not at all sure that "I'm afraid I have no writing this army is not the most plans, and don't feel any rest-paradoxical development of that his pulse jumped during a less creative urge." I don't think all the paradoxical develop performance from 00 to 124 beats of plots for pinys easily. So it is a minute.
"But he wasn't a trained actor," says Williams happily "We Walsh make singing mine Our voices are strong."
He is only $7. Ola. plays of his are revived, televised, filmed.. Now he writes no more,
TN his wealth, is Williams I bankrupt? Is he losing his identity? Going Dickens mad?
Uneasily, Williams answers; "I am determined not to become Identified with Dickens the MAN.
a very good thing to have a ments of this paradoxical holiday from writing. I hope it postwar period. will make me go back, all the
frester..........I've stopped writing R
Can you think of any
play just because I feel it's time thing more man-bites-dog to do some works-Cogging my- than this?. A quiet mousy self into it,
Ettle university professor
"I may do some adaptations called Alcide de Gasperi, from the French or Italian (he whose entire life has been speaks five Innguages); "Tam devoted to peace, has in reading plays now. No, I haya nothnig on the stocks."
five years succeeded in building up a new Italian They Army superior in striking God-power, morale, and general fighting ability to Musso- Hni's army.
Foor, object words. betray irresponsibility to a given talent,
I
A winner
first place to the smaller numbers of the now army.
bear him. New York, 26,776. Of course, I have done everything
"I am to give the impression I am he inATELY Williams gave six weeks' takings to the Actors the performance. But outside the theatro I I instinctively shy from Orphanage because one-man
Ideatification.
shows could put actors out of what is the amazing: change due? In the By don't warm to fan letters work. This show has put one beginning Dear Mr Dickens, I of the best living dramatists PACKED into the back of his have had letters to the house out of work.
It has only 200,000 men. ("I go round like a addressed to Charles Dickens
His loss is a national amputaThat is a size which is not travelling salesman"), are eight Esq.; c/o Mrs Emlyn Williams,
tion. His plays ave England beards, two Victorian sulis,
"There are endless suggestions enjoyment, prestige; they heart beyond the strength of with especially case of books, and a £25 collar that I will want to buy old ened us with his courage. Sald Italy sible desk which, as pianist prints, paintings of Mr Micas Godfrey Tearls on the first! night American aid to eke out Ita Rubinstein printed out, does hot ber, ragged reprints of the novels, of his "Light of Heart": "Cherish own resources. even have to be tuned.
Estate agents even tried to sell him. He is valuable to OLLI me 'Bleak House' at Broadstairs. theatre.
lus spell la hypnotic. In two hours he recites 30,000 words from memory. It is a dazzling display-brilliant, absorðlnur.
But enough is enough. Where ute Williams's plays?...
"The assumption of these kind- ly correspondents is that I am rabldly collecting anything to do with him-I'm not.
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