BORN TOO LATE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 24 July 1929, Page 7

BORN TOO LATE

ALLAN WILKIE DOES NOT LIKE THE MODERNS j «'A HIDEOUS, UGLY AGE". "I was born; 300 yours 100 late." This confession from Alan Wilkie gives one an idea of what lio thinks of the moderns (says the "Sun"). Frankly he dislikes them. "I hale everything mechanical," again confesses the actor-manager. There is no consoling Mr Wilkio to "the advance or advantages of civilisation." "This is a hideous, ugly age," he will tell you. and almost conviucu you that ho is rightPerhaps it is Mr WilkiVs intense love for Shakespeare and Sheridan, and Goldsmith, Congrove, Wycherley and other early writers, which has made him dislike' the ago in which ho was forced to be horn. Ho sees no breadth of outlook, jio majesty, no beauty in the work of modern playwrights—or at least very few of them. And when one makes comparisons, perhaps he is right again. Listen to some of his reasons for wishing that ho had been born to wear doublet and hose. "WE ARE NO HAPPIER""I admit there are certain advantages in this age, but 1 would willingly go back 300 years if that were possible. I contend that wo have lost more than wo have gained for all our boasted advance of civilisation. Are we any happier; do we get more enjoyment from life than the people did 300 years ago? Merry England then was Merry England. "People had a stronger and fuller sonse of beauty about 300 years ago. Our sense of beauty consists of sticking a number of pictures in a gallery, cultivating pieces of land and calling them parks, or else collecting objects and relegating them to museums. . . , There was scarcely anything in Elizabethan days which was not beautiful. "In those days the people could entertain themselves and get an intense amount of enjoyment from it. Nowadays people rely on getting everything done for them. Everything is mechanical—to the detriment of the character of the people and their enjoyment of life." Now for modern drama. THEMES TOO SORDID Mr Wilkie considers that some of the dramatists of to-day are more subtle than i they were in the old days, but their themes are small and sordid and are dealt with in a sordid manner. They have lost the grandeur, the beauty,, the greatness of the Elizabethans. In Shakespeare's day, he will tell you, there were a dozen theatres -in London, all of which were devoted to the poetic. drama. London at that time was about half the size of Auckland to-day. Many of it? citizens were ignorant < and illiterate, but their taste for theatre entertainment had not been vitiated. There were jio brilliant lights to heighten effects, no tricks with scenery—the whole effect depended on the beauty of the drama and the spoken word. "Industrialism and mechanical methods tend to make life stereotyped and ugly," he says, "and- nothing is being done to counteract that. Statesmen try only to improve the material side of man's existence. Art and beauty can be encouraged to fcounteract materialism, but this is not being done by any Government. That is where I think modern civilisation is tumbling down. Today we need statesmen with a broader outlook. They always say, .when any scheme as suggested for the advancement of art, that they have no funds available * . . Funds were found readily enough for the,Great War." NATIONAL THEATRE WANTED • In England recently, Mr Wilkie explained,' enormous sums of money were expended on the purchase of two old masters for the National Gallery! These two pictures will be appreciated only by a very small percentage of the public. Yet the sum which was spent would have 1 gone a long way toward establishing a National Theatre in "London, a. scheme which will not be considered by the British Government. "The theatre could be made an enormous factor in the development of taste and beauty among the people," he very rightly says. "It has the widest appeal of all the arts." As an example of what another country could do Mr Wilkie instanced the fact that not so very long ago the Government of Egypt guaranteed an English company against any loss and paid all transport costs so that a season of Shakespearean plays could be done in Cairo. Marie Ney, of Wellington, who began her stage career in Mr Wilkie's company, plays the leading redes.. NEW ZEALAND AND AUSTRALIAN RECORD "We often hear H good deal about how often Shakespeare is played in Germany," he continued. "I have looked up the Shakespearean year book, which shows that last year there were 1,634 performances. In proportion to the ratio of the population New Zealand and Australia have been given I double that number of performances by my company." No, don't talk to Mr Wilkie about the "talkies," though he will discuss the modern novels with a full understanding of them. But here again he does not really like them. ,His love is for the authors who wrote broader, bigger things in the days of Merrie England and a century later.