PLAYGOING IN COMFORT.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5302, 23 March 1878, Page 1 (Supplement)

PLAYGOING IN COMFORT.

(From the World.)

The gentlemen generally entrusted with the important task of constructing theatres cannot be too often reminded that a playhouse is a house in which every member of an audience ought to be able to sit, see, hear, and breathe. The architectural aud decorative effects, whicli are far often relied upon as the chief attractions of a building, ought to give place, where necessary, to those homely qualities which contribute to the comfort and contentment of an audience. The architect, like the scenepainter, if not kept in check, is too apt to display his skill at the expense of more important interests. An architect’s theatre, as distinguished from a “ showman’s” theatre, is usually built to look handsome from one atan 1point, and that standpoint may be the centre of the pit or stalls. looking upward from this position the eye probably rests upon a concave roof, which is supported on columns whose bases rest upon the floor of the gallery. However light these columns may be, they each form an obstruction which is productive of immense annoyance.. Behind each column, when the theatre is full, will be seated six, eight, or ten persons, as the case may be, one behind the other, in the line of sight ; and these unfortunates will spend the whole of their unhappy evening bobbing their heads from right to left in vain attempts to see the stage. If there are ten or a dozen of these columns round the semicircle of the gallery, these will mask soma sixty, eighty, or a hundred ill-treated playgoers ; and in theatres where the dialogue off the stage is not as relined as the Lord Chamberlain makes the actors’ dialogue, the language nightly created by this architectural defective effect is strong, to say the least of it. The angle at which royal and stage boxes are generally planted in a theatre is ,another architectural blunder. It the architect has

only a limited width to deal with, that may be a reason for building a small theatre ; but it is not a justification for building a large theatre in whicli the requisite sidings for the stage are only obtained by turning the points of the auditorium horseshoe inwards instead of

outwards. The stage boxes, including, as they do in England the so-called royal box, ought certainly hot to he slightly turned away from the stage and towards the house, and their occupants ought not to have to risk their necks if they wish to get a view of the performance. In some houses the sides of the dress-circle partake of this character, so that the visitors see the play out of the right or left eye, according to the side on which they are seated ; and a very conscientious playgoer is doubtless impelled to visit the theatre twice, on opposite sides, to be sure that the judgment of one eye is in harmony with that of the other. Cavernous pits that stretch away beneath projecting balconies are alihost equally objectionable ; and they make us sigh for'that pit in the oldest theatre in London, which, in the language of the poet, is “ quite a little heaven below."

The decoration of theatres is a subject which touches architectural projections. No hast, statue, or relief should interfere with the lines of sight ; and no gasfitting should be so placed that, while it bakes a guinea playgoer, it hides the view of a sixpenny playgoer. Tire , Lord Chamberlain’s regulations are minute and fussy enough, but they have not yet reached these rather important details. Ihe overdecoration of theatres is a subject upon which a volume might be written. As the decline of the Homan Empire is supposed to be due to the increase of luxury, so the supposed decline of tlie drama may be due to the grip which the upholsterer and decorator have now got upon the theatre. Defective drainage, cramped seats narrow entrances, and narrower exits are now often covered up by oppressive finery. The sepulchre is no longer whitened, but purpled. In some places the bric-A-brac mania has seized the managements, and pots and pans are beginning to show themselves in entrances and passages that are sadly in want of hat-pegs. I Huge china rases are beginning to appear oil the' stage at each side of the proscenium—a form of theatrical lunacy which originated in Manchester. In some places, plants, 1 fountains, imitation rockwbfk, and other aquariam lumber have kept into spaces required by the 1 public ; and in most places the spirit of over and inappropriate decoration is hard at 1 whrki It seems to be forgotten, what’a theatre is or ought to be, or for what purpose an audience’‘assembles, or ought to assemble, within its ' walls. The 1 stage is the fit anil proper receptacle for decoration ; the auditorium is a place for people to sit in who coMe to see a series of pictures. The

' auditorium should be comfortably ’ furnished, suggesting no idea of meanness or poverty on the part of the management. The tone of the decorations should be rich, but not obtrusive. The proscenium is the frame of the picture or pictures, and the stage boxes in nearly all cases form part of this frame. If the decoration in this portion of - the theatre is laid on with a shovel, as it very often is, the eye of the spectator is districted by side effects, and drawn off from the central feature. When the curtain rises, this central feature, the *tago picture, is injured by the surroundings. If the play is a domestic drama, its commonplace scenes look inexpressibly dirty and mean when viewed through such a framework; and if it is a gaudy extravaganza, its gaudiness {•* partly killed by that other gaudiness which ought never to be allowed the chance of competition. There is one reform which is working its way slowly in our London theatres—the invisible orchestra. If Wagner could put his 100 musicians out of sight at his great opera-house at Bayreuth, surely the ten, fifteen, or twenty gentlemen at each of our theatres may be allowed to fiddle in a hole at the stage side of the footlights, instead of in a long pew on the audience side of the footlights. By putting these gentlemen out of sight, a number of nuisances are abolished. The figure-heads of double-basses no longer obscure the vision of stalls and pit. The fiddler who reads the evening paper or tumbles in and out of the orchestra in the middle of a serious play, and his conductor who used to quietly make his rostrum as high as possible, and take a particular pride in the parting of his black hair—if he had any—are no longer a barrier between the play and the playgoer. The gaping cellar has gone, and with it the broker’s shop of musical instruments. A time will doubtless come when comedy theatres, following the example of the Theatre Fraucais, will dispense w-ith musicians altogether ; but the music for melodramatic houses is improved by being underground, and for musical theatres the architects of the future will have to provide well-constructed invisible orchestras. With invisible orchestras as a reform in theatres, it is desirable to couple another reform in the shape of invisible bars. The ginshop element is far too rampant in front of most of our playhouses. The simpering barmaid, the fumes of liquor, and the placards of brewers and distillers, can surely be dispensed with in most temples of the drama. If “ refreshments ” are wanted—and such refreshments i—they could easily be supplied from private parts of the theatre, and need not be thrust under the eyes and noses of the audience, as if they were the one thing needful. The theatre is not alone in this weakness. One Sunday afternoon I found myself in the Albert Hall, perhaps the finest building of the kind in the world, listening to Mr. Tampliu’s performances on the noble organ. 1 The piece ho was playing was, I think, Schubert’s “ Ave Maria,” bat I may have beemistaken. Following the strains of the music, my imagination was carried upwards above the organ-pipes, until my eye rested, not upon the angels I was seeking, but the blood-red trademark of Bass’s bitter ale, and the equally prominent trade-mark of Kinahan’s Irish whisky,