SNAP SHOTS
Middleton, George
SNAP SHOTS By George Middleton THE ARRIVAL in New York of Sacha Guitry and his wife, Yvonne Prin temps, is an event of great interest to those who love a certain phase of French acting. It was my...
...His wife is one of the lovely personalities in the theater...
...It was my pleasure to see them many times when I lived in Paris and I can recall no more happy evenings than when I was watching their extraordinary facile acting...
...He is one of tin fastest talkers, whet...
...It is a charming piece written especially to reveal the lovely voice of his wife, as his part is second to hers and he graciously stays in the background...
...sentences in cold script mean nothing, which is the reason it is frequently so hard to get the values of any play from a mere reading of it...
...I am sorry they can only be with us a few weeks...
...It is not always acting in the sense of characterization...
...It has the capacity of charging each sentence with great importance, of loading it with implication...
...The opening comedy, "Mozart,"' had unfortunately not succeeded, for a variety of reasons, in English...
...Her beauty of face and figure is obvious, but that would not alone account for it...
...The Guirries are only in New York for at >:.'ort engagement...
...clean and glittering is his delivery...
...a trick I am sure she learned from her distinguished father-in-law...
...it is the mysterious, subtle quality of something always in reserve, a something in-expressed yet felt, an invitation yet not a complete acquiescence—in other less confused words: charm...
...I know of few women on the theater anywhere who have it as she has: each thing she does—important or not—possesses it...
...for her singing voice is gorgeous, well trained and lacking the unpleasant timbre found in so many French voices, due to the -inging method...
...It is practically impossible, in making the adaptation, to separate them from their sentences...
...But, after all, what Paris loves is Sacha, and when he plays himself in some charming trifle of love and laughter Paris is content...
...I am glad to have seen them again for they bring back once more a phase of the French art of acting which always fascinates me because it is so iridescent—like rainbows caught in bubbles...
...for it is not only what they say but how they say it...
...I have seen on her face a look that would in one moment range for the depths of *heer ignorance to all the subtle understandings that may exist between man and woman...
...And then she told me she did not understand a word of what she was singing...
...But to "hear him talk personally of his art, as I have been so privileged, is to know there is a philosophy underneath...
...her diction has all the clarity of crystal—each little intonation vibrates with the claret-like colors of her rich voice...
...The difficulty of bringing a large troupe makes it impossible for him to offer a wide variety of his plays...
...I went every night for two weeks to see them and I never tired—such was the spontaneity of their "jeu...
...For Sacha Guitry is the living personification of a facet of the French temperament...
...As he acts in all his own plays, and for years has never appeared in any other, he tends to limit his scheme to his own personality...
...Shortly he will do another comedy, "L' Illusionist," in which he is a prestidigitator and she a little singer in a music hall...
...She sang in perfect English...
...Very imposing in appearance, m- nil.the eye on the stage...
...And I saw, too, why it is so difficult to adapt for America plays written, as his are, around very definite personalities...
...Her mimetic sense has such tonal accuracy...
...few ex-eel him in the capacity to suggest the double meaning of any line and few can play witi his scintillating rapidity...
...though h<-does not hesitate to step out of it should the occasion require...
...The plays of Guitry are especially full of this interplay of face and phrase and I am convinced it Is well nigh impossible to catch and preserve their native qualities...
...And as she always plays in the pieces her husband writes for her, he knows only too well how to revise all that is loveliest in her art...
...But to one who knows French and has some secret kinship with the esprit gaulois the plays of this facile Frenchman are joys indeed...
...Guitry himself is one of the finest light comedians I know...
...Her fashion of speech js interesting to study...
...It was my pleasure to adapt one of his plays while I was in Paris...
...It is not easy to try to define the secret of her power over an audience...
...that half-cynical-wistful-yet-fact-aceepting way of cultivated Frenchman looks at life...
...Lines in the theater are always colored by the stage business which accompanies them...
...often it is the mere projection of their own personalities in a series of charming scenes, and dialogues...
...only one versed in the theater knows what art goes often into the making of apparent frivolities...
...I have neve: seen him attempt anything of tragic -power -the type of high suppressed emotion in which his father, Lucien Guitry, excelled...
...yet not one word is lost, s...
...There is generally just the suspicion of a pause before each sentence...
...She sings several songs in English...
...In it Yvonne Prinfcemps sings delightfully...
...his tone is lighter though he caresses the deeper emotions and thus suggests their presence...
...You always feel another card is up her .sleeve...
...his "mask" i- the perfect actor's face, mobile and subtle...
...I recall one night in her dressing room in Paris she asked me to hear her sing these songs to see whether her English accent was all right...
...the occasion demands it, that I have ever listened to...
Vol. 19 • January 1927 • No. 1
