Magic.2

Last night, Hopkins and I joined a mutual friend to see Magic, G.K. Chesterton's first play. Evidently Chesterton was provoked by George Bernard Shaw to write the play in the first place. The program contained an excerpt from a letter from Shaw to Chesterton from 1908:

"I shall deliberately destroy your credit as an essayist, as a journalist, as a critic, as a Liberal, as everything that offers your laziness as a refuge, until starvation and shame drive you to serious dramatic parturition. I shall repeat my public challenge to you; vaunt my superiority; insult your corpulence; torture Belloc; if necessary, call on you and steal your wife's affections by intellectual and athletic displays, until you contribute something to British drama."

And so Chesterton shouts out to Shaw in the Duke's voice in the play: "Now I don't want you to take it in that way. I want you to take it in a broader way. Free, you know. [With an expansive gesture.] Modern and all that! Wonderful man, Bernard Shaw!"

The play is full of great lines, unsurprisingly, especially some zingers on news and progress:

"Duke. Well, Professor, what's the news in the conjuring world?

Conjurer. I fear there is never any news in the conjuring world.

Duke. Don't you have a newspaper or something? Everybody has a newspaper now, you know. The—er—Daily Sword-Swallower or that sort of thing?

Conjurer. No, I have been a journalist myself; but I think journalism and conjuring will always be incompatible.

Duke. Incompatible—Oh, but that's where I differ—that's where I take larger views! Larger laws, as old Buffle said. Nothing's incompatible, you know—except husband and wife and so on; you must talk to Morris about that. It's wonderful the way incompatibility has gone forward in the States.

Conjurer. I only mean that the two trades rest on opposite principles. The whole point of being a conjurer is that you won't explain a thing that has happened.

Duke. Well, and the journalist?

Conjurer. Well, the whole point of being a journalist is that you do explain a thing that hasn't happened.

Duke. But you'll want somewhere to discuss the new tricks.

Conjurer. There are no new tricks. And if there were we shouldn't want 'em discussed.

Duke. I'm afraid you're not really advanced. Are you interested in modern progress?

Conjurer. Yes. We are interested in all tricks done by illusion."

It was most delightful to see this play with a journalist.

Seeing the play was very nice. First of all, it combined seeing a play with seeing a magic show due to the conjurers role. There was a trick with goldfish that was very clever (I have no idea how they did it). Second, the way that they dealt with the doctor's lantern (the light outside of his office, which was crucial to the play) was interesting--the put it at the back of the audience. I've never been so possessed by the desire to turn around and look in the middle of the play to see if it was there or not (I don't think it was--it's just that the characters were staring back there so intently). It would have been awkward to turn around, since we were in the front row.

I had a couple of critiques of the performance, though. The characters were almost allegorical in their static-ness--you could have called them "faith," "science," "progress," etc., instead of their names. This was mostly Chesterton's fault probably. The production highlighted it, though, by giving each of the characters different accents--the brother had an American accent (representing science and progress); the sister had an Irish accent (representing romance and fairies); and the doctor had a British accent.

There was a lot of overacting in the performance--the sister ran around carrying flowers (really, she was gathering flowers outside at night?). I think that overacting romanticism undermines it.

Also: the play started with a little film that filled in events that were supposed to have happened before the beginning of the play. I wasn't crazy about it: I think that acting that part out (rather than showing it on a screen) could have been just as effective.


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