MELODRAMA RETURNS TO THE LONDON STAGE

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 37, 6 November 1937, Page 11

MELODRAMA RETURNS TO THE LONDON STAGE

A sliglitly unusuai feature of the autumn theatrical season, now upon us, is th& numbej of "sfrong'.' dramas and " melodramas ' ' — there is ©ven to be a "melodrama in the modern- manner " — that are to be included in it (writes ; H.G. in tbe London Observer.) "The.Gusher" openecL with high success at the Pxince's a little time ago. "Wanter For Murder'J appears at the Lyceum during the present week. "CTrest of the Wave" follows it at Drury Lane the week after. The new play at" the 'stately Haymarket, "The Phantom Light," is certainly on melodramatic linea, and the above list may have additi'ons before the season is flnished. __ Melodrama ia a very aneient institution at tlie two largest London thcatres, the Lycepm and Drury Lane. One holds more than two thousand three hundred people, the othe'r more thah two thousand one hundred— that is to say, they are eack slightly more than double the eize of the ordinary Shaftesbury avenue theatre. Vast popular appeal must' obviously be the essential aim. Has the fonftula for popular appeal changed since the "great" pre-war days of melodramat ••Eaalc Principles." .Various authorities were consulted, Mr. Ivor Novello of Drury Lane, Mr. Fred Melville oi the Lyceumt and otheri. The answer seemed to be that it has and it hasn't; basic principles have Temained the same ;. naethods of applying them* have modified. Basic principles.' Thp authorities of th# Lane were agreed as follows: "The* famous successes of old Drury Lane drama were such plays as 'The Whip,' 'The Hope,' 'White Heather,' 'The Gre&t Buby.' Various as they were in plot, they all had two f eatures in cominom They made the most of the mechanics- of the vast stage, producing elaborate mechanical ' effect® earthquakes, landsBdes, train smashes, horse races, and so forth. "They ako ma.de a rule of having certain 'topical' scenes — the oarthqUAke play was produced in the year of the Messina earthquake> the horseTacing play the year of & sensational Derby, They introduced something that everyone recognised and was talking about." Mr. Novello either by instinct or by the study of theatrical history, .has kept to, this formula. He makes £uU use of tho meehanicaT_ poasibilities of the Drury Lane stage. This year a most rsslistic deck of the Queen Mary will be only a minor incident. fle also keeps to topicalities; in previoua years he has introduced television and radio; this year thore will be Hollywood, and certain surprises that he is keeping np his sleeve until the fihst night. In the old days mechanical effects were less certain than they are- now. In "The Whip" the whole point of the climax was that the horse of that name should win his xace, run in full view of • the speciators. But on the first n^ght the unfortnnate animal engaged for the part either Tefused to run, or the xevolving band under his feet xefused to levolve, and,he was badly beaten. At the same moment, by another accident, the judge 's box wa® hauled prematurely np into, the flies (the xoof of the theatre). Disaster — only saved by the ingenious manager announcing in his curtain-speech that "as the judges had disagreed?' thern had been "no race7" and that it would be run off on the fdllowihg evemng. " Subtler Mothoda. Modera methods of playing a're subtler. Villain, vamp, and low-comedian have either disappeared or been modified. Nordo they "play for hisses." In the same play "The Whip" (that only dates from 1909), a curate .who had tried to wreck a horsebox, and who had sUcceeded in wreeking a train, confessed his remorse to the vamp. "When I saw all those killed and injured people stretched out . . ." Says the villainess, "But they were only third-class passengers ... and had npt done justiee to her part unless this slightly heaxtless remark had drawn rounds of hisses from stalls to gallery. ThiB same sorfc* of developments have taken place at the Lyceum. in the old days when Drury Lane and the Lyceuih were staging rival melodramas for most of the year, and for year after year on end, the Lyceum never minded being slightly cruder in its Tegard for verisimilitude than the Xane. . ... "Wanted Tor Murder," Credibility was oeca&ionally strajned at the Boyal Theatre; but at the Lyceum it was known to be snapped altogether. What was aimed at was cxcitement pure and simple. "Plots" would be shamelessly "ovfcrheard," clutching hands, would be stretched forth from. nowhere; faces would appear at windows. A sudden and miraculous "finding of missing papers" would set things righ't at the last minute, and everyone would be happy. This week 's melodrama at the Luceum, "Wanted For Mjirder," has, in qddition to its Scotland Yard and police-station scenes, a Chamber of Horrors scene, and the scene of a riot in Hyde' Park. jBut it is only necessary to say that its theme (at least to soinc extent) is h'eredity and psychology — the grandson of a man with murderous instincts flnding those instinel.s coming out in himself — to suggest that the Lyceum is leaving "crude" melodrama behind in favour of subtlety. The names of such excellent actors in its cast as Miss Louise HamptOn. Mr. Arthur Sinclair, and Mr. Austin Trcver, atrengthen the belief.