Ugo Betti's Troubled Waters

UGO BETTI'S TROUBLED JI7ATERS* DIRECTING, RECENTLY, THE FIRST PRODUCTION IN English of UgO' Betti's "Troubled Waters" (Aqua Turbate) set me wO'ndering about Betti's ultimate standing as a playwright. That he was possessed O'f a fine and sensitive mind is nO't by now in question and that he was a natural-bO'rn writer is alsO', surely, beyond doubt; but whether the cast of his writing fell naturally into the dramatic mold is much more a moot point, and worth debating, I think. His plays are dangerously O'verlO'aded with mere ideas, which seem often to' exist independently of the play's central experience O'r even of the essential nature O'f the characters themselves: nO't that the ideas are precisely irrelevant, but that they usurp by outside comment the theater's ultimate purpose of a re-creatiO'n of the reality of experience. They tend to' superimpose O'piniO'nated and intellectual sO'lutions O'n particular problems, rather than allO'wing the plays to reveal, by the sudden juxtapO'sition of unrealised and previO'usly unperceived relatiO'nships O'f things, the truth O'f being humanly alive. I came to' the cO'nclusiO'n, during rehearsals for Troubled Wa,ters, as I had done earlier during rehearsals for The Burnt Flower-Bed in England, that with Betti much O'f the danger of damage from this kind of didacticism arises nO't frO'm the offence itself but frO'm the cO'nstant suspiciO'n O'f the offence which his methO'd of writing seems almO'st gratuitO'usly to' arO'use. The Villain, I suspect, is neither didacticism nO'r Betti, but the naturalistic cO'nventiO'n itself and the naturalistic mO'de O'f dialO'gue. It is nO't that the naturalistic cO'nventiO'n in the theater has always been inadequate-Ibsen, Strindberg and ChekhO'v are eternally there to' prO've the cO'ntrary-but that it has been adequate fO'r great artistic purpO'ses O'nly when it has been most clearly recO'gnized as a cO'nventiO'n, that is to' say, a highly fO'rmalised means O'f expression with the same ceremO'nial and hieratic O'vertO'nes PO'ssessed by all valid theatrical fO'rms~ The slightest cO'ncessiO'n to' the O'bviO'US temptatiO 'n-tO' allO'w it to' imitate life in tO'O' O'bviO'US and literal a sense and to' degenerate intO' a merely cO'llO'quial and anecdO'tal mO'deplunges it intO' artistic banality at O'nce, and this is especially true in *Troubled Waters, by Ugo Betti (translated by Gino Rizzo and William Meri· wether) was directed by Eric Salmon and presented at the Gate Theatre, New York, on June 3, 1965· 97 98 MODERN DRAMA May the matter of language. Because it is the convention (i.e. the pretence) of this kind of play that the characters speak as they would in a similar situation in real life, the author's constant temptation is to try to represent his characters as discussing in the dull, edgeless prose of everyday conversation the gaudy a"nd complicated fantasies by which we live. The result is both flat and flatulent and for a good and simple reason-people in everyday situations do not discuss those things at all, in any kind of language. It is this very dumbness, this lack of articulation in the face of powers dimly felt and half-acknowledged , that provides all art with its urgent raison d'etre. The dilemma is, strictly speaking, beyond resolution and J. M. Synge was right when he attacked Ibsen on precisely this ground. Somewhere in every play that is a real play at all, you have to make somebody say things that people off-stage never say: that is what the play is for. You cannot do this in the flat and pallid speech of the things people always say (except, of course, by parodying this speech in the manner of Ionesco or N. F. Simpson). You have to accept the fact that naturalism is a convention, that the creation...