STAGE REALISM

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 53, Issue 133, 17 March 1933, Page 8

STAGE REALISM

ANIMAL ACTORS. "THOSE WERE THE DAYS.'! Melodrama, now never seen in New Zealand, had a healthy existence here until quite recently—even in the early years of this century—and there are many New Zealanders who cherish the Bland Holt tradition, just as there are many sworn champions of the still more recent vaudeville. In New Zealand the villian of the piece has been "the silver sheet," before which have fallen all the great stock companies and revue companies of bygone years. When Walter Bentley was Silver Kinging it up and down New Zealand and the six States (then separate colonies) no one dreamed that all the great heroes and yillians of melodrama, from Bentleyisni to Holtism, would receive the knife from something so unsubstantial as a roll of film. • The realism represented by a whole heap of melodrama prdperties—some of which could not get info rural theatres —was remarkable, but it was nothing to the realism of the London melodrama of a hundred years ago. Perhaps few people realise that melodrama was an advanced science before Queen Victoria came to the throne. But a writer (Mr St. Claire Byrne) in "The Listener," tells how they did it in the London theatres in 1832, the year that Byron's "Mazeppa" was staged at Astleys, with wolves and vulture complete. "The wild horse, with a gentleman in skin-tight fleshings lashed to his back arrived on the stage, accompanied by a terrific storm of thunder, lightning hail and rain. He wandered about, to appropriate music, till the sun rose; then with a moying panorama of the course of the River Dneiper as a back-ground he waded upstream. Wolves pursued along the farther bank. Finally, to more music, an enormous vulture hovered over the victim until the horse according to the stage direction, 'disappeared in the extensive distance."

Astley's was, indeed, a "combination of a theatre and a circus," horses and animals were star performers. In the thirties the manager was Alex Duerow "one of the finest horsemen the ring has ever known . . Duerow's recipe for handling an author's script was 'cut the cackle and come ,to the 'esses.' " Many people really went to theatres to see animals as much as to hear men and women. At the Coburg in "Hyder Ali or the Lions of Mysore," the real heroes were the performing lions of a certain Monsieur Martin, which were engaged at what the bills describe as "Immense Expense." The shadow of the lions was over the whole performance. It was also over any other performance- that was in hand on the same night. A "Tattler" critic, who went especially to admire a promising actor's performance in "Othello" complained bitterly that during some of the most absorbing scenes the lions were "in a constant state of isaffection and growl, which resounded throughout the theatre!" How could he expect them to tolerate a rival inferior show, and to endure the "cackle" of Shakespeare? In September, 1832, Astley',s revived "The Invasion of Russia," and advertised "the highly and often applauded view of the City of Moscow in flames," with "Perishing Soldiery amidst the .Mountains in a Dreadful Snowstorm." Was it a better snowstorm than some of those Arctic blizzards made in Hollywood? A feature at the Coburg was "Alonzo tlie Brave and the fair Imogine, or the Spectre Bride." Imogine died, and Alonzo found another love but Imogine "refused to allow a living rival to succeed her. The result was, that at the nuptial benediction of Alonzo and Princess Idefonza, the audience was treated to this spectacle—'as the last stroke of twelve strikes, the spectral form of Imogine, enveloped in a luminous vapour, appears at the head of the staircase.' She , then leads Alonzo to a spacious vault beneath the castle where twelve figures, enveloped in black mantle? and hoods, are sitting at a table. "Pledge him, ye gallant comrades!' cries Imogine, 'and yon, drink deep, Alonzo — 'tis the blood of Imogine!' Upon which according to the stage-direction, /the figures cast back their mantles and display the forms of skeletons! Each holds in his left hand a goblet and in the right a dagger—a strong red light fills the back of the cavern.' Even this, however, pales- before the last scene in which Alonzo dies in the cemetery held fast in Imogine's embrace, while 'the adjacent graves open and skeletons, partially clothed in grave-clothes, raise their heads as if gaping to view the passing scene.' The last direction is 'Alonzo sinks through a trap' enveloped in a 'powerful red glare;' the to*mb of the Spectre Bride 'assumes the appearance of an aerial car, in which Imogine ascends, surrounded with a blue vapour. The spectres below gi'oup, and the curtain falls.' " The old playbills are a literature in themselves. The following titles sufficiently indicate what people in London were getting for undepreciated sterling eight years before the founding of New Zealand: "The Death Light," "The French Spy," "The Bleeding Nun" and "The Murderers of Grenoble."