The Theatre: Actor to Elsinore

The appearance of a new Hamlet on the boards of an English-speaking theatre is traditionally the signal for drama critics to begin behaving like racehorse handicappers. For when an actor goes as Prince to Elsinore he invites comparison with the past performances of flashy favorites. Last week able John Gielgud appeared on Broadway in Guthrie McClintic’s Hamlet. True to tradition, play-reviewers threw down their programs, rushed to their form books to weigh Mr. Gielgud’s worth against every Hamlet from Barrymore, Forbes-Robertson and Irving to Booth and Burbadge. Consensus seemed to be that next month, when the reviewers sit in judgment on Leslie Howard’s portrayal of the gloomy Dane, the name of Gielgud will be added to the list of notable comparative Hamlets.

John Gielgud, a sensitive and intelligent Englishman of 32 with a nose the size of a hockey puck, was seen in the U. S. last spring as the hero of a not very exciting British film melodrama called Secret Agent. Long before that, however, London had grown accustomed to acclaiming his Hamlets. He has appeared in four separate productions between 1929 and 1936. Many who witnessed the cast of his nighted colour in Manhattan last week had no difficulty in understanding Gielgud’s popularity in the role. The size of Actor Gielgud’s features, ludicrous when magnified on the screen, greatly assist him to project his range of expression into the depths of a legitimate playhouse. Majority in Manhattan audiences found his voice as melodious as it was cracked up to be, responded to his almost feminine delicacy of gesture, appreciated his youthful grace of movement (Actor Gielgud says he will not play Hamlet after he reaches 35).

Those who favored lustier interpretations of the part were frankly disappointed at Gielgud’s refusal or inability to scale the dramaturgic heights in the grand manner. Those who preferred the new school of low-key interpretation considered that Actor Gielgud admirably analyzed his own fluid impersonation of the world’s best-known literary case of frustration when in Scene II Hamlet informs the Queen: ‘Tis not alone my inky cloak . . .

Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, No, nor the fruitful river in the eye . . .

That can denote me truly . . .

I have that within which passeth show . . .

To Producer McClintic goes the palm for 1936 Shakespearean innovation. He has represented the King’s ghost as a spooky silent presence whose voice croaks hollowly from an off-stage microphone. As the Queen, pneumatic Judith Anderson makes good theatrical sense. As wan and woebegone Ophelia, Lillian Gish is Lillian Gish. Jo Mielziner’s articulated Hamlet set caused the form-book perusers to recall a similarly successful one by Norman Bel Geddes for Raymond Massey in 1931.