NATURAL ACTING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10025, 22 April 1910, Page 4

NATURAL ACTING.

A wonderful theatrical performance was given recently by tbe unsophisticated inhabitants of Aldbourne, a tiny village far from the madding crowd, sheltered in the folds of the rolling downs of Wiltshire. The story of these rustic players is a charmingly simple one. Mr Charles McEvoy, something of a dilettante in art, took up his abode at Aldbourne. How he happened to discover the villagers' histrionic ability, history does not relate. But the fact remains that an amazingly fresh and natural performance of Mr McEvoy 'a [ play, "A Village Wedding" was I given by simple country -people who I had never seen a stage in their lives I before. The theatre Is a malthouse,

a stone barn in Mr McEvoy's grounds, and never, perhaps, has .a village j drama been played to such a distinguished audience. Bernard Shaw, Herbert Trench, Granville Barker, William Archer, Frederick Whelen, and other apostles of the "advanced drama," picked' their way through the mud from their motor cars and crossed a little bridge to the barn door. While the great dramatic critics were watching curiously and admiringly about the "dtaee door," one ofjtheir number was introduced impressively to a village player as Mr Bernard Shaw, and the polite reply was: "Ah I've heerd tell o' you," a compliment which the brilliant composer of paradoxes would j appreciate keenly. Once inside the fashionable playgoers found them-, selves in a theatre such as Shakespeare must have known. The black benches were sec on the sanded floor; the trombone, the drum, and the bassoon rioted in old English songs, and when they had finished the light went •out. It went out literally, for the theatre was lit by a farm lad holding a lamp on top of a pole. Then the play began. It held the audience enraptured with the natural charm of it; for these people—the gardener, the enginedriver, the postman, the innkeeper's daughter, the labourers —did not "act" at all; they were the characters themselves. It all gave the audience the curious impression that they were eavesdropping. The players did not care a jot for the spectators; they scarcely evefr looked at them, and they stood just where they wanted to, and did not change their seats after every funny remark, as most actors and actresses have an annoying habit of doing. In fact, it was as if a cottage had had one wall knocked out and an invisible audience was allowed to watch the life that went on within. Mr McEvoy is thinkng of transplanting this unique "show"-to London, but the success of the scheme is very doubtful, because in a town theatre the atmosphere would be missing the village theatre, the red brick walls, the' wooden benches, the illumination that walks in and out, and the village band. It is curious that one should learn so far from the temples of art the secret of one branch of it—to hold the mirror up ;o Nature.