FIFTY YEARS OF ENGLISH THEATRE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 759, 5 February 1954, Page 20

FIFTY YEARS OF ENGLISH THEATRE

HE vitality of the English theatre is reflected in the profound changes which have taken place in it during the past 50 years. In a series of half-hour broadcasts for the BBC éntitled Twentieth Century Theatre, Professor J. Isaacs, of London University, recently discussed these. changes and the great playwrights, producers and actors who helped to bring them about. Each talk was illustrated by dramatised scenes from one or two of the famous plays of this century. Transcriptions of these programmes, which were designed to have as wide an appeal as possible, will now be broadcast from YC stations, starting from 1YC at 9.30 p.m. on Friday, February 12. Professor Isaacs, who occupies the Chair of English Language and Literature at Queen Mary’s College, London University, starts off with a study of the late Victorian and Edwardian theatre, at a time when its hallmark was the well-made play. He dates the birth of oe

20th Century theatre from the production of Pinero’s The Second Mrs. Tanqueray in 1893. In his second talk he analyses the play of ideas, with illustrations from the works of George Bernard Shaw, and in succeeding talks he discusses comedy in the theatre of the 1920s, changes in the art of theatrical presentation following the rise of the modern producer, the experimental play of the 1930s, and the recent reviva] of poetic drama. Speaking of The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, Professor Isaacs says that no play was so praised for its exnusition and preparation. He contrasts. Pinero’s careful craftsmanship with the «rudities and unblushing theft from French plays which had characterised the London theatre since mid-Victorian days: As examples of the "big-scene" around which the "well-made play" was constructed there are dramatised’ excerpts from ‘the closing scene of Mrs. Tanqueray, and

the cross-examination scene from Henry Arthur Jones’s Mrs. Dane’s Defence. The play of ideas in the late 19th Century can be traced back to Ibsen, who was a great master of dramatic construction and used all the devices of the dramatist, not for entertainment but for the discussion of fundamental human problems. George Bernard Shaw carried the Ibsen tradition into) the English theatre, putting his own highly individual stamp upon it. Describing his own plays, Shaw said: "In Candida you have action producing discussion. In The Doctor’s Dilemma you have discussion producing action and that action being finally discussed. In other plays you have discussion all over the place. Sometimes, as in Getting Married and Misalliance, the whole play, though full of incident, is a discussion and nothing else." Professor Isaacs .introduces two extracts from Shaw’s plays to illustrate his theme in this talk: the big scene between mother and daughter in Mrs. Warten’s Profession, and the scene between Captain Shotover and his daughter in Heartbreak House. A new streamlined tempo was introduced into the theatre in the 1920s, when, according to Professor Isaacs, English . dramatists responded to the need of a people seeking relief from the 1914-18 war. It was the art of comedy which flourished particularly at this time, but no period, he believes, was

so rich in its theatrical variety. Somerset Maugham, Frederick Lonsdale and Noel Coward were outstanding dramatists of the ‘twenties, and this talk is illustrated by scenes from Maugham’s Our Betters and Coward's Hay Fever. In his talk on "The Actor’s Theatre and the Producer’s Theatre," Professor Isaacs describes the days when actormanagers like Henry Irving, Beerbohm Tree and George Alexander owned theatres in which they reigned like petty monarchs, putting on plays that were deliberately built around themselves. Then a new figure rose above the theatrical horizon: the producer, who

moulded actors and every other element of a play into a harmonious whole. Men like Granville Barker and Gordon Craig began a tradition that is represented today by such producers as Tyrone Guthrie and Peter Brook. The famous "Titanic" scene from Cavalcade is presented to illustrate the points made in this programme. In his talk on the experimental plays of the ’thirties, Professor Isaacs shows what sort of impact was made on the theatre by plays like Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine, Georg Kaiser’s From Morn to Midnight, and Ernst Toller’s Masses and Man. Such _ experimental

plays were put. on not so much in the West End of London as "in the attic of a warehouse in Covent Garden, under the railway arches at Charing Cross, in big-game museums and drill halls, in disused chapels and cinemas and ddoss houses." One was even performed on the base of Nelson’s Monument in Trafalgar Square. Finally there is a detailed analysis of the work of England’s two leading writers of poetic drama, T. S. Eliot and Christopher Fry, illustrated with scenes from The Firstborn and The Family Reunion.