VERSE RETURNS TO THE THEATRE

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 148, 10 July 1937, Page 8

VERSE RETURNS TO THE THEATRE

The xevival of the poetic drama, which as led in America by Maxwell Anderson, who had three poetic plays running together during the paist Broadway season, has now spread to London. There recently Elliot 's 1 ' Murder in a Cathedral" was produced. Now Mr. Ashley Dukes, owner and manager of the Mercury Theatre, Notting Hill, is oHering two new ventuxes. One of them is a new play by the Prench dramatist, Lenormand, "In Theatre Street." It is at the moniens (wrote a London theatre correspondeht last montji), an unloiown quantity, in the sense that it has not been acted in London before, but^ on its specilication, it Bounds amusing. It deals with the various muddles that (a) a badly-Tun commercial theatre, and (b) a badly-ran £lm company, can make of a poetic drama that they undertake. Mr. Dukes 's other venture is the bringing of an actual poetic drama, "The Ascent of F6," into tho centre of London, to the Little Theatre. It has been playing to full houses at the Mercury, and recently put in a short visit to Cambridge. The interesting question is now whether Mr. Dnkes, having done it once with tl Murder in the Cathedral ' ' (which dealt with the murder of Thomas A'Beckett), can for the second time "get away with" poetic drama ih Central London. Mr. Dukes thinks that he can. "When 'Murder dn the Cathedral' firet began to be a success on a commercial scale," he said, "a well-known novelist told nae cheerfully, 'You needn't think you're doing anything for poetic drama in general. You're merely caehing in on religious enthusiasm.' "Well — he may have been right, There 's» no exact means of telling. But th^ variety of the audiences that we get at least suggests the contxary. ""We played for two hundred and twenty-flve nights at the Mercury; then played for another hundred and forty at the Duchess in the centre of London; then went on tour, where the play has been playing in provincial cities to ' Gilbert and Sullivan' business — that is to say, to the capacity of the theatres. "It is difficult to know how far our comparatively small hudiences at the Mercury Theatre are representative. It's a long tradition in theatrical circles that small 'loeal' theatres draw their audiences from everywhere but their own locality. • I don't know where our audiences come from. I wish I did! An interesting experiment was once made at the.Everyman Theatre, Hampstead, whe'n that theatre was producing a series of adventurous and original plays. The management had the audience 'watched' on leaving the theatre^ to see where they went to. They all xushed straight across to the ■Hampstead Tube and burrowed down it like rabbits, dispersing thereafter to various parts of London! "I suggest that 'F 6' may appeal to the type of audience that goes to the more intelligent cinemas, Studio One, the Curzon, and the Everyman. Comeddes are said to be all the rage in London at the moment, but I think there is' an audience growing up again to appreciate something else as well — tragedy, especially when tragedy is written with its own entertainment value." "Murder in the Cathedral," Vhich has been played in America and is going to be played there again, has already made a trifle of £30,000 for its manager — who is putting the money into building another theatre.