LONDON MUSIC HALL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 April 1939, Page 9

LONDON MUSIC HALL

OBSERVATIONS OF DRAMATIC CRITIC. JOCULAR CRUELTY OF STAGE. Observations at a London music hall made by the famous dramatic critic, Mr. St. John Ervine, are recounted by him as follows: —The audience was mainly composed of unexacting, goodnatured members of the lower middle class: small shopkeepers with their wives, clerks with their girls; a good average British crowd.- Yet there was not one joke cracked that night which would have been allowed utterance on any music hall stage in Great Britain and Ireland 30 years ago. Almost every 'jest was salacious. The jokes that were not salacious referred to physical deformities. About half the number of “artistes” in the programme were American. Nearly every girl who came on the stage, especially if she had nothing to do but hand a stick to a conjurer, was almost naked. The entire tone of the entertainment was physical and slightly sadistic. There was less “character” in the turns than would have been found in a pre-war music hall, but there was also, it seemed to me, more wit, though the wit was all of one kind. I came out of that music hall with a fear in my head. Were not those good-natured people toe complacent about sadistic jokes? Are we not over-occupied by the body. Thighs have their attractions, but they also have their limits, and endless parades of limbs are boring. I like our release from the borbid propriety of our immediate ancestors, a preoccupation which is not characteristic of the historic English, and acknowledge without the slightest sense of shame my delight in libidinous lyrics; but I feel qualms when I listen to comedians mocking the frail and the infirm, the mutilated and deformed. A wave of brutality is sweeping across the world, and the jocular cruelty on the stage is only a reflection of lhe very real cruelty off it.