Mr Crispin, is a contrived monster of sadistic revenge, scourging the world for his lack of beauty. But if he were real? If such a person really existed …? These are the questions Laughton asked, and the resulting performance shook people to the marrow. ‘His performance was a
danse macabre
rendered by a human invertebrate, whose sagging flesh would somehow shape itself into all manner of harsh angles and gibbet-like postures’, wrote Ivor Brown in
The Saturday Review. The Times
said, ‘Mr Laughton’s acting we are bound to admire, but we owe an evening of something very near misery to its skill.’ St John Irvine, in
The Observer
: ‘a very gargoyle of obscene desires. The sheer ability of his acting cannot easily be estimated.’
In the climactic scene of the third act, when Crispin has bound and gagged his victims, he reveals his soul: ‘You have laughed at me, mocked me, insulted me – you and all the world: but now you are mine, to do with as I will. An old, fat, ugly man, and two fine young ones. I prick you and you shall bleed. I spit on you and you shall bow your heads. I can say ‘Crawl’ and you will crawl, ‘Dance’ and you will dance. I, the ludicrous creature that I am, have absolute power over the three of you … I can do whatever I like with you … the last shame, the last indignity, the uttermost pain.’ Grand Guignol? Evidently. London was not unfamiliar with the genre: Sybil Thorndike had led a season of macabre, violent, spooky plays under that title at the Little Theatre some years before – but (as Sybil’s presence in the cast more or less guaranteed) they were supposed to be tremendous
fun
. This was something rather different. Earlier in the play, Crispin talks to his American visitor about his ‘philosophy of life: a little theory that my father handed on to me … my father used constantly to wonder whether it would be an entertaining experiment to cut my heart out. I think he eventually decided against it, however, on the grounds that it would mean the end of other and still more entertaining experiments … he stripped me and beat me till I bled. He wanted, he said, for my own good, to acquaint me with the heart, the innermost heart of life; and to understand life one must learn to suffer pain. Then if one could suffer pain enough, one could be as God. I went to Westminster School and they all mocked me – my hair, my body, my difference – yes, my difference. I was different from them all, I was different from my father, different from all the world, and I was glad that I was different. I hugged my difference. Different … different … different.’
Here were obviously many points of contact for Laughton. Another was art: Crispin is an aesthete. As he talks, he picks up a Rembrandt engraving: ‘This is one of the most beautiful things of its kind that man has ever made, and I – am I not one of the ugliest things that men have ever laughed at? But do you see my power over it? I have it in my hands. It is mine. It is mine. I can destroy it in one instant (
He tears it to shreds
.) You must forgive my – my lack of reticence. It is just my little theory, you understand – to be above these things. – What would happen to me if I surrendered to all that beauty?’
Laughton made all this that could so easily have been melodrama, real; so real, that there was a serious move by the London Public Morality Council to have the play stopped: ‘We are in possession of a volume of medical evidence that supports our view that the play should not be performed in public.’ Charles gave an interview saying that he couldn’t understand how it had passed the censor: ‘I can only conclude that he didn’t realise its nature.’ Nor, according to a piece he wrote in
The Weekend Review
a couple of years later, did the author. ‘My hero (or villain as you prefer) had been intended originally as a puppet twopence-coloured. I never dreamed that anyone could take him seriously. Laughton
danse macabre
rendered by a human invertebrate, whose sagging flesh would somehow shape itself into all manner of harsh angles and gibbet-like postures’, wrote Ivor Brown in
The Saturday Review. The Times
said, ‘Mr Laughton’s acting we are bound to admire, but we owe an evening of something very near misery to its skill.’ St John Irvine, in
The Observer
: ‘a very gargoyle of obscene desires. The sheer ability of his acting cannot easily be estimated.’
In the climactic scene of the third act, when Crispin has bound and gagged his victims, he reveals his soul: ‘You have laughed at me, mocked me, insulted me – you and all the world: but now you are mine, to do with as I will. An old, fat, ugly man, and two fine young ones. I prick you and you shall bleed. I spit on you and you shall bow your heads. I can say ‘Crawl’ and you will crawl, ‘Dance’ and you will dance. I, the ludicrous creature that I am, have absolute power over the three of you … I can do whatever I like with you … the last shame, the last indignity, the uttermost pain.’ Grand Guignol? Evidently. London was not unfamiliar with the genre: Sybil Thorndike had led a season of macabre, violent, spooky plays under that title at the Little Theatre some years before – but (as Sybil’s presence in the cast more or less guaranteed) they were supposed to be tremendous
fun
. This was something rather different. Earlier in the play, Crispin talks to his American visitor about his ‘philosophy of life: a little theory that my father handed on to me … my father used constantly to wonder whether it would be an entertaining experiment to cut my heart out. I think he eventually decided against it, however, on the grounds that it would mean the end of other and still more entertaining experiments … he stripped me and beat me till I bled. He wanted, he said, for my own good, to acquaint me with the heart, the innermost heart of life; and to understand life one must learn to suffer pain. Then if one could suffer pain enough, one could be as God. I went to Westminster School and they all mocked me – my hair, my body, my difference – yes, my difference. I was different from them all, I was different from my father, different from all the world, and I was glad that I was different. I hugged my difference. Different … different … different.’
Here were obviously many points of contact for Laughton. Another was art: Crispin is an aesthete. As he talks, he picks up a Rembrandt engraving: ‘This is one of the most beautiful things of its kind that man has ever made, and I – am I not one of the ugliest things that men have ever laughed at? But do you see my power over it? I have it in my hands. It is mine. It is mine. I can destroy it in one instant (
He tears it to shreds
.) You must forgive my – my lack of reticence. It is just my little theory, you understand – to be above these things. – What would happen to me if I surrendered to all that beauty?’
Laughton made all this that could so easily have been melodrama, real; so real, that there was a serious move by the London Public Morality Council to have the play stopped: ‘We are in possession of a volume of medical evidence that supports our view that the play should not be performed in public.’ Charles gave an interview saying that he couldn’t understand how it had passed the censor: ‘I can only conclude that he didn’t realise its nature.’ Nor, according to a piece he wrote in
The Weekend Review
a couple of years later, did the author. ‘My hero (or villain as you prefer) had been intended originally as a puppet twopence-coloured. I never dreamed that anyone could take him seriously. Laughton
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