Must Night Fall?

Irish Jesuit Province

Must Night Fall?Review by: Gabriel FallonThe Irish Monthly, Vol. 65, No. 772 (Oct., 1937), pp. 701-709Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20514209 .

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701

Sitting at the Play.

Must Night Fall ? By GABRIEL FALLON.

RAGEDY, it is said, purifies the affections by terror and pity. How it does so more concerns those who are at half-sword parley in the matter of the undefined

Catharsis of Aristotle than it concerns the poor playgoer. Nevertheless, the poor playgoer-being not yet the dull and muddy-mettled rascal the cinema would make him-will, on

being questioned at curtain-fall, readily own up to a certain feeling of liberation, of well-being, which the experience has given him. He will tell you, perhaps, that he feels lighter, somehow, as if a load had been lifted from his mind, that he is a new man

altogether; or unheeding, he will pass you by with firm step and head erect and, probably, such perusal of your face as if he would draw it.

It m-atters not to the poor playgoer that this strange feeling may be the aftermath of a purgation administered by means of a transition from natural to real and poetic knowledge. It never ocetrs to him that he may have received a lesson of morals, more or less disguised, insinuated, suggested rather than fonmulated, but still definitely a lesson, a body of teaching addressed to his surface factulties, principally to his intelligence and through his intelligence to his will. If, by some extraordinary chance, this grave thought did strike the poor playgoer, he would very probably suspect himself of being more than a little mad, or would give up going to the theatre altogether. Which, after all, is just as it should be.



702 THE IRISH MONTHLY

Nevertheless, the playgoer has come to look forward to this feeling which he can ill define. Without it he is vaguely dis turbed, dissatisfied. Something is lacking; there is an incom pleteness in his theatre-going. If for him the play alone is the thing, he-unknowingly, no doubt-expects his conscience to be caught in it at the same time. Unconsciously he evaluates the cunning of the scene to the measure that it strikes his soul.

" It is the business of tragedy," says Hazlett, " to open the chambers of the human heart. It leaves nothing indifferent to us that can affect our common nature. It excites our sensibility by exhibiting the passions wound up to the utmost pitch by the power of imagination or the temptation of circumstances; and corrects their fatal excesses in ourselves by pointing to the greater extent of sufferings and of crimes to which they have led others. Tragedy creates a balance of the affections. It makes us

thoughtfutl spectators in the lists of life. It is the refiner of the species; a discipline of humanity."

It is almost impossible for us to recall our experience at per formances of certain tragedies without immediate assent to much of what Hazlett says. But let us make no mistake. Hazlett's words are true only of those works in which the dramatist's powers are of a very high order. Not every playwright can move a horror skilfully enough to touch our souls to the quick. The great tragedy of Macbeth's Castle at Inverness must never be confused with the mean tragedy of the underground chamber in Madame russauds. Othello and Sweeney Todd may strut their hour upon the self-same stages but they move along parallels that will never meet. Othello and Sweeney Todd are, in a sense, theatres apart. Nevertheless, Sweeney Todd is of the theatre. By no stretch of the imagination could one feel that The Demon Barber of Fleet Street belonged more to the dock in the Old



MUST NIGHT FALL ? 703

Bailey than he did to the rere of the green baize curtain. Murder in the theatre is not the same as murder in the criminal court.

At least it wasn't so in Sweeney Todd's time. But things are rather different to-day. The much misunderstood word "6 psychology " covers a multitude of strange things. And not the least of these is the crime play. Now, in a sense, Hamlet is a crime play, and Othello is a crime play, and Macbeth is a crime play. And what magnificent crime plays they are ! And Sweeney Todd is a crime play. And what an honest, straight

forward, unpretentious crime play Sweeney T'odd is! Not much " psychology " about poor Sweeney, who was wont to " polish you off while you wait, sir ! ". No one like Swceney for cutting the cackle and getting to the gentlemen's thlroats. No, no

psychology "

about Sweeney.

But to-day we have crime plays (that is to say, London has them and We have just begun to import them) which are not only " psychological but in the opinion of their honme-townl critics

are natural and " true to life ", as well. Now Shlakespeare's plays are natural and " true to life ". As Lamb says: "c It is common for people to talk of Shakespeare's plays being so natural that everybody can understand himn. They are natural indeed, they are grounded deep in nature, so deep that the depth of them lies out of the reach of most of uIs ". And Shakespeare's plays are (forbear to dig the dust!) " psychological ". Yet it is not the fashion of the critics to press this popular word into ser vice when scribbling their journalistic comnmnents on Mr. A.'s study of Hamlet. No, the word is reserved for our modern " crime " play. Generally it is the stone under which lie hidden the pathetic clues of our "; criminal "-author's inefficiency.

But if Macbeth, Othello and Hamlet are natural, true-to-life, cs psychological " crime plays they are plays with a difference.



704 THE IRISH MONTHL-Y

And the difference is this. No one- -not even the least lettered -Can witness them and not be the better of having witnessed them. Let horror on horror stalk and blood drip upon blood the chambers of the heart may remain open; the effect is cleansing. Shakespeare was not merely a great playwright but "the bent of his mind, the cast of his thought, the turn of his speech, ' the weather in his soul ' " was great with a Catholic greatness. Life to him was the very stuff of immortality. There is not more of earth and less of Heaven in any one of these three plays.

As we observe the reprobate Lady Macbeth move in somnam bulistic horror through agony and despair we are caught with supreme dramatic cunning and thrust into the shadow of the watching physician and, stunned as we are at this vision of final impenitence exiling itself from God's clemency and our own, we are compelled in answer to his fervent " God have mercy on us!" to breathe a deep " Amen! ". Instance could be heaped on instance to prove the contention of Rev. J. Darlington, S.J., that Shakespeare in his plays " shows us human nature on this side of the grave-living, loving, working, sinning, and struggling against sin, in the light of the same illumination which accounts for the universality and excellence of the Summa, the Divine Comedy and the Imitation ".

But to come forward to our modern crime play. Night Must Fall, by Emlyn Williams, was presented to packed houses at the

Gate Theatre for five weeks in August-September. Nothing succeeds like a London success. And Mr. Williams' play was very successful in London. It was praised by the critics; it was patronised by the theatre-goers, despite a " quite extraordinary glut 9" (J. G. B. in the Evening News) of this type of play. It was praised (by J. G. B.) for its " brilliant matter-of-factness

"



MUST NIGHT FALL ? 705

and Mr. Hubert Griffith of the Observer joined in agreement with a Fellow of the Royal Society by declaring " it is magnificent ". Dublin newspapers lagged not far behind the Evening News and the Observer representatives in their praise of this play. There was much setting-up of the word " phycho logy" ' of course, and one critic (a lady) described the play as

a masterpiece of subtlety ". Was it to be wondered at then that many who were not sufficiently prudent enough to avail of

booking facilities were turned away nightly from this mag nificently brilliant matter-of-fact masterpiece of subtlety?

The plot of Night Must Fall has been outlined by Mr. Sean

O'Casey in his essay Murdher in the Theatre (The Flying Wasp: Macmillan). The outline is as follows: " A young page-boy in a 'modem hotel ' on the outskirts of a forest in Essex murders

a flashy blonde guest who has made up to him; he hacks the body about, and after cutting off the head, which he carries about with him in a hat-box, hides the body in a rubbish-heap in the garden of a bungalow which forms the scene of the play. The play opens with the murdered woman missing. The maid in the bungalow, owned by a Mrs. Bramson, is with child by the young

page-boy. lie has an interview with Mrs. Bramson, who is a

self-made invalid, miserly and contentious; the boy impresses Mrs. Bramson, so that he is employed by her, and becomes her favourite' Danny Boy '. A poor young niece, Olivia, is being kept by Mrs. Bramson as a companion. She intuitively senses Dan to be the murderer, and falls in love with him. He, at the end of the play, murders Mrs. Bramson for her money. Acci dental circumstances bring the police to the bungalow, and he is carried away to be tried and hanged."

Should it be that you have not seen the play, you may take the word of one who has seen it, that Mr. O'Casey's outline




spares the reader much. In the skilled analysis which follow it, Mr. O'Casey tears aside the pitiful tricks which hide Mr. Williams' lack of dramatic craftsmanship and succeeds in reduc

ing the high-sounding praises of the London critics to something less than folly. But Mr. O'Casey misses a point in merely proving that Night Must Fall is the work of an unaccomplished technician, a dramatist who does not know his business. He gives too much ground to Aristotle, perhaps, and leaves room for the error that a perfectly constructed play by a mediocre writer should rank higher than the work of a great writer who falls technically by the way. Nevertheless, this analysis should be read by those who wish to be convinced of two things; firstly, of how a debased public taste will sometimes help to cover a wilder ness of inefficiency, accepting the mountebank for the artist, and secondly, the low level to which dramatic criticism has fallen. Mr. O'Casey's analysis disposes of the "brilliant

matter-of-factness ", the " psychology ", the " masterpiece of subtlety " in a fashion that makes things plain even to the simplest of minds.

Night Must Fall opens with' a Prologue which is almost an Apologia and is certainly a trap. The Lord Chief Justice in the Court of Criminal Appeal, addressing his court (the audience), states that the circumstances surrounding the crimes perpetrated by the individual whose appeal he is about to refuse, are such

that they call for the background of the theatre more than for the surroundings of a Court of Justice. Having made that declaration (rather emphatically aided by the actor), he leaves us to the crimes and circumstances (i.e., the play). Never was author so badly served by his prologue, for it posited a question which we were determined to answer before the final curtain fell.

Night Must Fall is, at its best, the badly dramatised criminal



MUST NIGHIT FALL ?' 707

court evidence of two revolting crimes; at its worst-and that is for the lengthier part of it-it is an attempt to serve up certain

Sunday newspaper material in a less censored and a more drama tic (and, therefore, more titillating) form. " You will get good value for your money at the trial " declares the murderer Dan, taking his handcuffed exit in the care of Inspector Belsize. Thus

Mr. Williams' attempts to force upon the realisation of the good people who thronged the Gate that they have cheated justice, and got their good value in the theatre instead-full criminal court value, pressed down and brimming over.

Mr. C. E. Montague, in an essay in I)rawatic Values, dis credits Synge's Playboy of the Western World in a rather peculiar way. Holding that the subject of Synge's play, " a play of genius ", had no " absolute " badness of aniy kind about it, he says that " there was at a certain time atnd lace so much

badness, relatively to certain sentiments curiTent in its hearers that there was a riot in the theatre ". Accordingly lhe contends that while " absolute " badness may be present in quite small

measure, "; relative "badness may be present in such abuindance as to make a play impossible. It is a far cry from the Playboy riots to Night Must Fall. Judging by Mr. Montague's standards one would say that while Mr. Williams' play was " relatively "

a work of genius, since, far from provoking a riot, it roused a fever of popular enthusiasm, its " absoluite " badness was such that one is tempted to despair of the condition of the theatre.

The central character of Night Must Fall is a wretched mnurderer, there is a swift inevitability between his neck and the rope ; that is all there is to it, unless the lurid details of his crimes, the " comic" relief provided by the author at the expense of the seduced servant-girl, and the five or six badly-drawn conven

tional puppets in the modern manner, really matter. There was




some real tragedy, no doubt, in watching Mr. MacLiammoir's talents turned tQ this ignoble end, but the audience didn't see it that way, and Mr. MacLiammoir dutifully gave his audience

what it wanted. Two of his gestures were necessarily remini scent of The Grip of Iron, and one spectator, at any rate, would have preferred to see him in the leading role of that crude but clean and unpretentious melodrama which bears the lurid sub-title of The Stranglers of Paris.

There is more than a little evidence of the topsy-turveydom of our moral sense in the theatre in the reflection that the very people who would rise to protest against Mr. O'Casey'si grim and salutary treatment of seduction in Juno and the Paycock sat and sniggered (or loudly guffawed) at the inept bawdiness of Night Must Fall, in which the seduction of Dora Parkoe (the servant girl, of course) is made the subject of salacious inanities calculated to provide " comic " relief (one supposes) from the heavy "c psychological " stuff of Olivia Grayne, who wrote diluted verse, babbled overmuch of the fall of night, and lovingly kissed the murderer en route for the scaffold. It almost seems as if shame and intelligence have fled the theatre together.

No doubt many of those who went into raptures about this work of Mr. Williams' would feel as Mr. Sheriff (the young author of Journey's End) felt on being brought to see Hamlet for the first time. On being asked what emotions the play stirred in him, he replied with modern frankness that it moved neither his pity nor admiration. His chief feeling, he said, was that the Prince of Denmark wasn't a man with whom he would like to spend a week-end. Hamlet talked far too much and did too little. The ghost, he said, was full of the spirit of revenge, such a little attitude of mind for a man who had suffered physical death. Shakespeare's technique did not impress Mr. Sheriff.



MUST NIGHT FALL? 709

As for the tragedy, it didn't move him greatly. He was more moved by Young Woodley. "I could feel no pity for a man who could express his emotion so lucidly. I had real pity for the schoolboy in Mr. Van Druten's play, none for the Prince of

Denmark." Mr. Sheriff's feelings need no comment. Most likely they would force him to stand on the side of the London critics and the Dublin critics and the many who were moved by this body-hacking murderer of flashy blonde hotel guests, this hider of heads in hat-boxes.

There are " crime plays and crime plays. And between the glorious " crime "plays of Shakespeare and the modem crime plays that glut the London stage, there stretches an impassable gulf. The Catharsis of Aristotle is no longer opera tive, a titillation of the senses is effected in its stead. The honest

melodrama of Sweeney Todd or The Grip of Iron or (despite Mr. Williams's Olivia Grayne) East Lynne are proper to the

theatre and have had, each in its own way, a purgative efficacy. But Night Must Fall has nothing about it but a dramatist's inefficiency and the horror and morbidity of the cnrminal court.

Should the criminal court disown it, and on many points of evi dence a judge and jury might consider it more nightmare than crime, more artificial than human, then, with the honours of its " comic " relief thick upon it, it can return to what is perhaps its rightful home-the Sunday newspaper. The theatre of Sweeney Todd knows not its like; the theatre of Shakespeare abhors it.



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Must Night Fall?