Even he acknowledged, a propos The Cocktail Party, that "every step in simplification brings me nearer to Frederick Lonsdale", a creator of popular boulevard divertissements. And, in attempting to pour both Greek myth and dramatic poetry into an acceptable West End form, he can be said to have sacrificed two babies with the bath water. Just as Eliot's religiousness can subside into misanthropy, so his politics can descend into snobbery. His constant emphasis on contrition and self-denial becomes oppressive. Even Shaw has had to battle against decades of neglect.Įliot is a more complex case, and I would readily concede many of the arguments against him. We expect drama to conform to our own politically correct concerns with a few shining exceptions, theatres now show a deep incuriosity about the past. I wouldn't bet on it: we live in an age of peculiar theatrical narcissism. Time will tell whether this will be enough to restore Eliot's theatrical fortunes. It will include a revival of The Family Reunion, readings of Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party, and a performance of Four Quartets complemented by music from Beethoven. Next week, the Donmar Warehouse in London is bucking the trend with a two-month Eliot festival. The ultimate irony is that Eliot achieved the theatrical breakthrough he sought only with Cats: a musical that, at the last count, had been seen by over 50 million people worldwide you could call it Old Possum's posthumous revenge. Even the drawing-room settings he used as a spiritual battleground seem redolent of a lost world. His high Anglicanism is now a minority taste. I s there a dramatist currently less fashionable than TS Eliot? The verse-drama revival he so ardently championed bit the dust.
0 kommentar(er)
