Passing Pageant

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 23, 18 November 1938, Page 10

Passing

Pageant

by

Trevor

Lane

ITHIN the sound of the Hutt Rivez’s peaceful afternoon song, velvet lawn beneath our feet, canopies of tender spring green over our heads, I talked to Constance Morice at Mrs. IKknox Gilmer’s country home the other day. English mails had brought to us both the personal and more tangible side of last month’s crisis ... even in the peaceful New Zealand sunshine we found it easy to conjure up the curious, oppressive atmosphere that hangs over Europe. re pk. MORICH, abroad for some months now, was in a little vessel off the west coast of lonely Skye when the crisis reached its climax. He knew nothing of the swift moves of Europe’s rulers... a tiny radio set in a ecrofter’s cottage on the Scottish coast gave him his first inkling of the tragedy of the situation. Back in Edinburgh he found the city in darkness, little huddled groups in Princes Street reading the latest bulletins by the aid of shaded torchlights. ‘Chamberlain’s sincerity and single-mindedness was the one topic for talk. The immediate -danger passed like a_ bad dream. A fortnight later Dr. Morice "was back in London, found the people querulous and critical, impatient of their Prime Minister’s gallant move, inclin-

ed to believe that he had ‘‘let them down.’? — In a letter to his family in Wellington Dr. Morice was equally impatient of this type of person who, saved from the ghastly horrors of air raids and poison gas, indulges in an hysterical outburst of, jubila-

" tion only to attack, a fortnight later, the very man whose sacrifices and personal bravery had made peace possible. ‘‘Sometimes,’’ he wrote, ‘‘it makes one. ashamed of. the British race.’’ * se ASHAMED of the Britich | race.’’ Yes, there’s the tragedy of a whole Empire in that little phrase, but how often, how very often do we hear it nowadays! Have we ceased to be great? Are the stamina and tradition and courage — of our nation just so many pricked balloons? | How true are the words of Viscount Grey: ‘‘A man fails to be great because he has ceased to care-or may © never have cared-for anything greater than himself.’’ * PRIDE in one’s country and one’s heritage is more than a matter of politics, more than ‘daily food and clothes and shelter, more-than the books we read.and the people we know. rn ace ea ee

It isn’t so important that our ideais are found to be right or wrong, but it is most important that we HAVE ideals, that we look ahead with our own little hopes and plans to an Empire -to a world-where peace and goodwill mean more than just words on a Christmas card.

THE other day I had a letter from an English woman for whom I have the greatest respect... She’s Marjorie Pease; 73 years old, and an ardent Socialist. For years she has been associated with the British Labour movement, for years ‘she has fought for better housing conditions, better schools; a more liberal educational system. She loves England with a love that amounts almost to fanatacism... She has all the vigour of a woman half her age. Her weatherbeaten face and shrewd kindly eyes in a cottage doorway have been welcomed -by -hundreds of penniless people. whom she has never failéd to help in a practical, down-to-earth way. yi es And this is where I want to stress the importance of _ ideals, In her . letter she condemns Chamberlain .. . maybe I don’t agree with her. . . but she loves England and humanity ... her ideals are directed toward — the same end as Chamberlain’s: She wants to save the peoples of: the earth. . PU quote , from... her. Tethers 8 pete es ye

"ONE stills feels so dazed and bewildered and so ashamed of our country that one finds it difficult to write about the situation. "We Socialists always denounced the Government’s policy of drift and of running away from dictators-also the

way they belittled the League. But we never dreamed we should find ourselves in the state we now are. ‘*Thank God for ChamberJain!’ I say curse him for land- _ ing us in such a shameful position. "There is a very strong feeling in the country among Conservatives as well as others that Hitler’s triumph does not mean peace, and we have cer- _ tainly not got honour! ‘We now await Chamberlain’s deal over Spain-I suppose he’ll hand over Spain to Mussolini, and that is why he refuses to eall Parliament till after this is accomplished. ‘‘Of course, none of us wants _ war and we would not have had war if our Government had had a strong policy and worked with Russia. It is all terribly depressing."’ *

* THE fiendish vengeance which dictators seem intent on wreaking on this old world of ours is pitiful when we look for a moment at the inevitability of .the whole thing-the ease with which the you’s and me’s and the Smiths-next-door will all be dragged into a bloody _ massaere. which none , of, us: WANTS, tee te ee

One of the finest plays I have seen in my life plays its note on this very theme. **Tdiot’s Delight’? came to London at the-precise moment of the Austrian coup. Never had a play been more topical; in fact, but for the very tragedy of the whole thing, one might have been pardoned tot imagining that Hitler collaborated in the most colossal publicity stunt in history!

¥7 "EDIOT’S DELIGHT" introduces a group of little people washed together py chanee and the elosing of a frontier ... the English honeymooners who hoped to enjoy a holiday on skis; the young French pacifist fresh from ‘a conference against war; the old German scientist who will perhaps cure cancer and win the ‘Nobel Prize if only they will let f" ° him earry his inoculated rats to’ Zurich; the American hoofer with his sextet of chattering American chorus girls, traveling from hard times in Bucharest to perhaps better times (and audiences) at Geneva; the flamboyant Russian who is the mistress of an armament manu-. facturer; the Italian officer who does his watchdog job on the frontier, but wants no more wars beeause he remembers the last; the pleasant, simple waiter. who is doomed to be the

nevitable conseript, whether in he ‘Austria-Hungary of his youth or in the Italian Empire hat owns him in middle-age. AN? there they ail are, caught in a small Alpine hotel on the borders of Italy, Austria, Switzerland. They are travellers from anywhere to nowhere-no-where that is safe, anyway. f Europe is drugged with false enthusiasms and the war planes from the base in the valley below the hotel are having a full-dress rehearsal. Suddenly the whirring bombers fly north, and none who watches from the windows of the hotel knows that this time they mean abominable business... for declarations of war are things of the past. He who strikes first and quickly can count a few thousand extra dead on the credit side.

a OME "lines. ‘stick in" my, memory. The German profegsor (Deutschland Ueber Science), aplendidly, played by.

Franklin Dyall, is soliloquising on the horrors of war to Harry Van, the cheerful American dance man, a part that gave Raymond Massey his finest role on the London stage. *‘Ah, the tragedy of it all, the futility, the stupidity,’’ he says. ‘‘I give my lite to saving humanity and war obliterates, by the crudest means, that which I struggle to build up.’’ ‘*Yes,’? says Harry Van (the little man, the you’s and me’s

or the world). ‘ It’s a fair , isn’t it? Have a drink?’? 98 the shrill girlies of the dancing troupe, who have watched the French Communist dragged off after a virulent outburst against the Italian soldiers. They ask Harry Van, ‘‘Say, what are they goin’ to do to that little guy?’’ _ Harry Van: ‘‘Well, I guess they’re goin’ to bump him off for openin’ his mouth too loud."’ The girlies: ‘‘Aw, gee, and those Italian officers seemed such nice boys, too.’’ pa you see the point the playwright-America’s brilliant Robert Sherwood _-is trying to make? hi

~ ° He portrays the simple people of life-and he bumps them up against stark tragedy in the form of a merciless European war. Their minds can’t

cope with it... just as our minds recoil in amazement and horror at the thought of being blown to pieces at our office desks, our workshop benches, our kitchen sinks, And yet that’s war. ‘‘Idiot’s Delight’’ should be shown in every country in the world-and it should be compulsory for everyone to go and see it. A.

aA THERE was another thoughtful play that I saw in London that impressed me tremendously ... its theme wasn’t war, but something that has concerned mankind for just as long-the theory of time and recurrence. It was called ‘‘I Have Been Here Before,’’? and the author was J, B. Priestley. It got its title from those lovely tines of Rosetti’s-do you remember them.... I have been here before But when or how I cannot tell; I know the grass beyond the door The sweet keen smell, The sighing sound, the lights around the shore. 0 That play stayed in my mind B for days and weeks. It developed the idea that time and our ves move in cycles, but that, st re Ze

ye by conscious effort, we can escape out of the grooves into which the fates have thrust us. * I WENT ito the Priestley play with Margaret Macpherson-she is wellknown in New Zealand as a writer. That day Margaret had had a book published in London and the party was hers-a sort of celebration,

We had nothing to say to each other after the show as we walked through the little streets of Soho toward Piccadilly. "Funny thing,’ I said to her finally, ‘‘put the last time a show affected me like that was in New Zealand-and again we were together. ‘Cavalcade’ -do you remember?-and

we walked along Courtenay Place in Wellington in utter silence.’’ "‘- remember,’’ said. Margaret. ‘‘You put me in a taxi and I don’t think we even said good-night to each other,’’ * F all the plays I saw in London,. ‘‘I Have Been Here afore’? was the only one that ruck me as suitable for a pertory production in New ‘aland-and then it would

necd some very eareful easting. Now I’m delighted to see that the Wellington Repertory Theatre is putting it on this month with W. S. Wauchopone of the most capable and theatre-minded producers in this country-in charge of the production. WHEN I left London a few months ago the West End’s most suceessful play, **Balalaika,’’ was just eoneluding its eighteen-months’ scason, But all London was asking: Where is the man who finaneed the production? He had given a big party for the cast a week or so after the show opened, disappeared the game night, and had not been seen or heard of sinee. The publie’s curiosity was shared by Seotland Yard which had a warrant out for the arrest of Stanley Grove Spiro on the grounds of fraud. « spALALAIE A’’-and you'll be interested in this little story if you’ve seen the New Zealand production lately-was no* °

success when it opened at the Adelphi Theatre, London, nearly two years ago. Keceipts were pcor ior the first week ana it was decided to give the play one more week ana, if things didn’t improve, take it off: Business picked up miraculously in the secoud week and it was then that the stow’s backer, ppiro, gave his party. And it was afier that party that he vaisucd into thin air, ** Basaaixa’’ became one of the hits of Lonudcn. it was moved irom tue Adelphi to the most fiusous theatre im we West Had-His Majesty’s in tn2 Haymarket. it ran tue for a@ year 0 Gidwusd houses, THE protits piled up-£50,000 and more-but still Spiro didn’t turn’ up to claim the money. But the other week he made his first London appearance in a long time--at the Old Bailey on fitteen charges of conspiring to defraud. Banking accounts for Spiro’s concerns showed a turnover of just under £600,000. He was told that he was the head of a socicty of men who were nothing more nor less than a

band ot commercial brigands. ‘"Weil, this is the end,’’ he was told by the Recorder. And Spiro walked out of the Old Bailey on an autumn afternoon to face the prospect of eight years’ penal servitude. He told the court, ‘‘I was interested in a very successful play, ‘Balalaika,’ from which I had hoped to make about £50,000. But during my absence from England all my rights, and those of my wife somehow disappeared."’

‘The young Russian aristocrat (it turned out finally that she came from Nebraska) and ° Harry Ven, American hoofer, were the two "little people" who sang "Onward, Christian Soldiers," as the bombs fell about them in the final tragic act of "idiot’s Delight." Here are clever caricatures of Tamara Geva and Raymond Massey as they appeared in the ‘London production, described by Trevor Lane in Passing Pageant today.