Bigger Than Life

London's drama critics, not noted for the fire of their enthusiasms, have found better reason in the last several weeks to use glowing adjectives than they often do in the course of a whole theatrical season. Objects of their eloquence: Sir Laurence Olivier's Macbeth at Stratford-on-Avon (scheduled to remain in the Stratford Festival repertory until season's end on Nov. 26) and Orson Welles's blank-verse adaptation of Moby Dick at London's Duke of York's Theater.

Olivier's return to the role of Macbeth, nearly 20 years after he first played it with the Old Vic, was hailed by the London Times's Harold Hobson as "the best Macbeth since Macbeth's." Said Critic Hobson: "It must be admitted that the opening scenes of Sir Laurence's Macbeth are bad; bad with the confident badness of a master who knows that he has miracles to come . . . As distress and agony enter into him, the actor multiplies in stature before our eyes until he dominates the play, and Stratford, and, I would say, the whole English theater . . . I do not believe there is an actor in the world who can come near him."

Said London Observer Critic Kenneth Tynan: "Sir Laurence shook hands with greatness, and within a week or so the performance will have ripened into a masterpiece."

All the critics agreed that Olivier had infused one of Shakespeare's most unplayable creations with disturbing life, and set a standard for the part that has rarely been matched.

Vivien Leigh's Lady Macbeth was not so kindly received. The Observer found her performance "more niminy-piminy than thundery-blundery, more viper than anaconda." But the Times found that her "pale and exquisitely lovely Lady Macbeth does at least explain why Macbeth married her, a mystery that too many Lady Macbeths leave unelucidated."

Both critics and public were considerably more baffled by Welles's tempestuous and unorthodox production of Moby Dick. Set on the bare stage of "a provincial American theater toward the end of the last century," the play opens as a rehearsal of King Lear, then transforms itself into a rehearsal of Moby Dick. Wearing a false nose, and playing variously a theater manager, a New England preacher and Captain Ahab, spotlighted Actor Welles storms up and down the shadowy stage spewing and roaring blank verse, fights Ahab's final battle with the whale while standing on a table that protrudes into the center aisle, driving his imaginary harpoon into the audience.

Many of the critics were awed. "It is outrageous and impossible, but it comes off," said News Chronicle Critic Elizabeth Frank. "As Captain Ahab, Welles has devoured the essence of the living theater, the lustiness of the Elizabethans and the fearless, innocent eye of the barnstorming Victorians." The Daily Mail critic thought that Welles the adapter-director got in the way of Welles the actor, allowing "too many words to impede his action . . . But when the play does move . . . the whole theater shudders with the fury of man and mam mal alike."

The Times was more cautious: "The theater for Mr. Orson Welles is an adventure, and to an adventurer so valiant our hearts go out, even when he comes to wreck . . . Everything is against him . . . Yet, for something like half the perform ance, he succeeds against all reasonable expectation . . . The evening, though most exhausting, has been worth having."

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