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[PAGE EN CONSTRUCTION - Traduction
à venir... et plus encore...]
La vérité au sujet des danceurs russes...
Une revue de cette pièce fut publiée
dans Punch. Nous la reproduisons ci-dessous (merci,
une nouvelle fois, à Robert Greenham,
à qui je dois tant et tant) :
PUNCH,
Vol. 158.
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March 24, 1920.
AT THE PLAY.
"The Truth About The Russian Dancers."
With that uncanny tuition of his Sir James Barrie has, of course,
hit on the precise truth. Russian dancers are not born but made—by
the Maestro, which I take it is (broadly speaking) Italian for
Producer and Presenter.
When Karissima goes on a visit to the stately
home of the Veres the peace of that ancient haunt of the conventionally
correct is queerly broken. Young Lord Vere loses his heart.
However, that might just as easily or more easily have happened
if the Gaiety had been invited. But a dreadful change comes
to Uncle Bill—he buys his clothes ready-made (at La boutique
fantasque, for a guess, or possibly Mr. Mallaby-Deeley's), grows
dundrearies and goes hopelessly off his game at golf.
Karissima, poor dear, can't walk or talk or
putt, for that matter, except with her toes. Bill calls this
last cheating, but young Vere thinks it simply adorable—as
do we all. Lady Vere, his mother, can't get used to being kissed
by Karissima, who will stand upon her lightly with one foot,
oddly waving the other meanwhile in the air. Besides it takes
too long and is rather too demonstrative. And couldn't Karissima
dear just try to walk with her soles really flat on the ground
in the solid English county way? Certainly. Karissima will try,
to please Madame, and with painful effort achieves a half-dozen
clumsy steps till unconquerable habit and Mr. Arnold Bax's allusively
witty music lift her on tiptoe again. And really she is such
a darling that the once reluctant dowager finally consents to
the marriage; wedding bells forthwith (within); a white-haired
clergyman, surprised at nothing, as becomes the very best type
of padre, appears; follow corps de ballet bridesmaids; and Bill
gives her away.
Karissima, says Vere to Maestro later in the
evening, is depressed. Because she hasn't a child. They both
tremendously want a child. Maestro, silently showing his watch-dial,
would seem to wish to suggest that they were unreasonably impatient.
Karissima also pleads. Well, he will see what he can do. But
there's an awful penalty. For a new Russian dancer cannot be
made unless another surrenders life. Anyway he fetches his black
bag. And Karissima dances down the main staircase with her babe,
who grows apace and is shortly seen prancing in the garden (on
his toes—"Thank Heaven!" says the Maestro).
And Karissima dies and is brought in on her
bier, and dances (she would!) her own funeral service. Maestro's
heart is touched; he lies down in her stead, and she, dancing
on a carpet of thistle-down shot with stars (I think), and her
lord (I am sure), perpetually exclaiming, "How perfectly
topping!"—both achieve an enviable immortality.
Madame Karsavina is exquisite; she is well
supported by Mr. C.M. Lowne (Hon. Bill), Mr. Herman de Lange
(Maestro), Miss G. Sterroll(Dowager), and Mr. Basil Foster (Lord
Vere). And I thought I detected Mr. Du Maurier's appreciation
of the bizarre in his production. But the triumph is the triumph
of the whimsical author. I don't think he has ever done anything
better; more ambitious things, yes, but nothing so free from
flaw.
Isn't it more than possible that just three-score
years ago, on a May day (see Who's Who), some Maestro of Fantasy
slipped into a little house in Kirriemuir, N.B., with a black
bag? Wouldn't that explain the otherwise inexplicable, the unwearying
resourcefulness, the unabashed playfulness of this impenitent
youth?
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