The Dark Is Light Enough

"A Winter Comedy," Christopher Fry's own description of his new play, is appropriate. The gay pastels of humor which clothed the British writer's earlier verse plays have changed to colors of a darker hue, and philosophy, not fun, is the keynote of The Dark Is Light Enough. The change of mood has not been an entirely fortunate one, since Fry is more attractive as a writer of comedy than as a deep thinker. But if the tone is new, the language is as it always was: a brilliant flight of imagery that demands air and open space and seems somewhat stilled by the confines of the drama's subject matter.

Though the poet's epigrams illuminate a vast range of topics all the way from freedom to fate and from love to loyalty, one theme dominates all the others. How great, he asks, is the responsibility of each man for the welfare of his fellows? The answer to this overwhelming question is a dramatized version of the biblical Golden Rule, set as a costume piece during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. The protagonist of the play is a brash but cowardly deserter from the Hungarian army who takes refuge in the home of his former mother-in-law. That lady, a countess and sort of philosophical fairy godmother, teaches him what he should have learned in Sunday school and provides him with a brand new backbone.

As the Countess, Katharine Cornell can well be described as wonderful. Filled with charm and kindness, her performance at the same time reveals the inner strength of the woman she portrays. Her reading of Fry's complicated sentences is clear enough to reach even the hidden recesses of the second balcony, but it somehow never sounds declamatory or too loud. Miss Cornell's presence on the stage is so overwhelming, in fact, that the other actors sometimes succumb to the temptation to shout in order to make an equal impact on the audience. This defect is most noticeable in the performance of Tyrone Power, who plays the deserter. He projects the surface brashness of his character, but most of the other possible shadings of characterization are lost in verbal athletics.

Unfortunately, Fry was of very little help to his actors. The people he created are, if anything, too articulate, and their lines are often so clever that they ring faintly of dishonesty. Poetry, especially as it is applied to the stage, can dig down into the depths of a human soul and reveal the raw emotions which lie hidden there. Fry's poetry seldom does this-it seems to float on the surface, a frosting on the dramatic cake. But if the poet cannot be profound, he at least knows how to be amusing. When the epigrams, many of which do contain some momentary truth, are bright, and when Katherine Cornell is on stage, The Dark Is Light Enough redeems its faults and becomes good theatre.