What is Wrong With The English Stage

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 21, 16 April 1927, Page 21 (Supplement)

What is Wrong With The English Stage

S P B- NAIS OUTLINES HIS IDEAS “Two months’ rest after two years spent in the theatre has given me a chance of regaining my perspective, writes S. P. B. .Nais, in an English exchange in which he gives his views on tlie modern stage in England. I am inclined to agree with H. L. Mencken when he says that “the mob rules in the theatre, and so the theatre remains infantile and trivial—a scene, not of the exposure of ideas, nor even of the exhibition of beauty, but one merely of the parading of mental and physical prettiness ana vulgarity,” and with A. iJ. Walkiey when he saj>&: There is no dignity, ethical or artistic, of spirituality, in the modern theatre Theer is no dignity, ethical or artistic What does abound in it is mediocrity—mediocrity of mind, of ideal, of taste.’ There is, i think, little doubt that these two critics represent the highwater mark of dramatic criticism in America and England of this century, and are therefore worthy of our attentention. It is my business to show in what specific ways the theatre is infantile, trivial and undignified, and how it may be altered. In the first place it appeals to the wrong sorts of audience. My knowledge is unfortunately coloured by too many first nights, but on those oc'casions the expensive seats are filled with people who imagine that by obeying the ritual of wearing elaborate evening dress they have sufficiently shown their devotion to the God if Dramatic Art. The fact that they come in late, eat as audibly as they talk, and rush to the foyer in the in tervals to escape from the atmosphere, seems to me to argue a complete lack of that fervour which every art lias the right to demand of its disciples. Plays are daily cut shorter and shorter to permit of theatre-goers dining longer and longer. It is an un-heard-of tiling for anyone to go without his dinner in order to see a play. It is an unheard-of thing for a lady of fashion to prefer to arrive in time in an afternoon frock rather than to arrive late in her “wedding garment.” HYSTERICAL WOMEN The less expensive seats —I speak of first nights, remember —seem to be j mainly occupied by hysterical women : whose sole object in coming appeals . to be achieved when they have loudi} ! acclaimed, by his or her Christian name, the appearance of some goodlooking revue a.ctor or actress in the stalls. Criticism in this atmosphere vanishes to the four winds. An original idea is greeted with a chorus of quaint animal-like duckings from the pit and shrieks of “Oooo—l from upstairs. The stalls, like the dog tn Calverley’s poem, say nothing, but search for—l will not say fleas—but another chocolate in its bed of rustling paper. The trouble is, of course, that English people do not go to the theatre Most of the present theatre-goers ought to take to hunting or some other healthy out-door exercises, and then the highways and byways ought to be scoured to compel the average mar. and woman to come in and take an interest. Then we might at last get some of that reality and joy which ! M. Synge demanded of the drama; for ordinary men and women would nd tolerate at all the banalities to which you and I, dear enthusiasts, have now grown so accustomed. First then, say I, get hold of the right sort of audien-e Let there be no more dressing-up in the stalls, no more idolatry in the gallery, no more pandering to the oversexed (or should it be under-sexed?) spinsters of the pit with their demand to be shocked at all costs. THEY NEVER GROW UP I After the audiece the actors. Hon ! excited they all got when Osbcrt SitI well told them that they were all i<•«> busy trying to‘be ladies and gentlemen

ever to become actors and actresses. I shouldn’t have phrased it quite like that, but I know what he ment. The profession is crowded with over-grown boys and girls. Actors and actresses never learn to grow up. That, however, is not their fault, but ours. If the Lord Chief Justice, Julian Huxley, Professor J. A. Thomson, the Vice-Chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the whole of the Cabinet and the British Medical Council were to walk in a body down Bond Street no one would know who they were; but watch Gladys Cooper or Henry Ainley trying to escape the public eye. They simply cannot do it. It is our preposterous adulation that keeps them so childlike. Their endearments, their quick use of Christian names on the slightest provocation—these things add immensely to my love for them. But I love them as I love children, and though I love children I always wish them to take just a little more trouble. Actors are too fond of golf, and actresses of being photographed sittinu on the edges of fountains. They excuse themselves on the ground that they need publicity to which 1 would reply that it is just this publicity which is ruining thenart. Painting in this country ha. never been in a more flourishing condition, for the simple reason that our artists are all too busy getting on with their work to worry about Public or the Press. When actors and actresses are content to be judged on the quality of their work the theatre will begin once more to be worth while. There is a slickness of technique in modern acting which deceives apparently all but the elect, but one cannot be altogether serious about the sort of art that merely succeeds in producing a counterfeit Romney or Gainsborough. We do not know how Garrick or Siddor.s acted, but we know something of the seriousness with which they applied themeslves to their art, and though I am not maintaing that :.ctors and actresses do not work hard, I am suggesting that they work hard at the wrong things in the wrong way. Let me repeat that it is not the actors’ and actresses’ fault. First the publn spoils them, diverts them from their • proper business by taking them into that vacuous whirlpool called Society, and gives them a wholly false sens#of their importance by overpaying them (I speak, of course, of stars only) grotesquely. NOTHING TO ACT Secondly—and this is much worse—the managers, producers and dramatists give them nothing to act How can you cultivate imaginative power, how can your temperament become I rich, if you have to spend 300 nights j on end mouthing sugary platitudes and shocking inanities? Acting, so , far as women are concerned, becomes : a matter of wearing clothes—a mere mannequin’s job; so far as men art | concerned, a matter of wearing an Old i Etonian tie as if you really had a right to it. This is what I think Osbert. Sitwt meant by his historic phrase about ladies and gentlemen. If it is, I entirely agree; but it is, I repeat, the fault of the managers who are obsessed by one idea only, that if a play is vulgar it is bound to be a commercial success, and that if a play is a commercial success it cannot b« artistic. Authors are not encourage* to give rein to original, fantastic or beautiful ideas. They are told tha. the new and the unknown do not pay. They must, unlike the dressmaker, model themselves on last year’s fashion, with the result that all tinmen who can write turn in disgust from the stage to disseminate their dramatic ideas in fiction and poetry. The loss to the theatre is Incalculable. The situation has become such that to-day successful plays take about a week to write, a week to rr’ ears#* and six seconds to judge. A farce is a good farce if the noise is and the speed terrific; a comedy is a good comedy if all the characters are as sexually promiscuous as rabbits and speak (especially the girls) always under the infhience of drink; a tragedy is a good tragedy—if but I forgot. There are no tragedies. The playgoing public wishes to leave the theatre in a cheerful sprit. So, un- . fortunately, do I. The only dramatist | who sends me home in cheerful spirits 1 is Tchehov. and he is dead. But he does give his actors and actresses a j chance to become alive.