"THE DIVILL A VEGETARIAN."

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 192, 15 August 1925, Page 18

"THE DIVILL A VEGETARIAN."

" SMITHFIEID PRESERVED." CRITICS AND ACTORS CHANGE OVER. " i (From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, July 2.. If you live in the London world you can't escape knowing-that the theatricalprofession is a kindly one, for one of the most gorgeous fixtures of the year's round is its garden party in aid oftheatrical charities. There are amusing features —the rivalry of all the leading members of the profession ensures that.

The feature of yesterday's party at Chelsea was a burlesque called "Smithfield Preserved, or the Divill a Vegetarian"— its very name should interest at once a meat and fruit producing Dominion. But it had behind its screaming farce a serious lesson—we point this out with some hesitancy less the fun be spoiled. The play was written and produced by dramatic critics and criticised by actors and actresses. What a chance to get their own back!

We must say the profession has not risen to the occasion. Miss Sybil Thorndike, who has written the criticism for the "Daily News," and Mr. Miles Malleson, who has done the like service for the "Manchester Guardian" — whose critic, Mr. Ivor Brown, by the way, wrote the play—attack their job in gingerly fashion. - Miss Thorndike frankly confesses she wrote half her notice before seeing the play, which was a solemn parody of a Phoenix or Stage society performance full of Elizabethan language, more full blooded than we.now consider nice.. We understand the first performance was given at a social gathering of butchers. Apart from the play itself, according to Miss Thorndike.—"lf we had a living theatre and loved it, we should there be cultivating continually that sympathy, that power of dramatising oneself as the other man, and so learning his point of view, whih is one of the great functions of the theatre.

"On the other hand, if we had the desire to dramatise ourselves as the other man wo could not rest till wo had a real theatre to express it.

"Now please don't say that this, too, has nothing to do with the case, because it has, and I'm coming to that in a minute, and anyway you never find what a dramatic critic is getting at till you reach the second column. Moreover, I wrote this much before I saw the show at all.

"Now modern realistic acting—as most "Little Theatres" have discovered—is largely a matter of being unselfconscious. But costume acting requires much more, and burlesque of such acting more still. For to burlesque a style one must first be a master of it.

"The Critic's circle company, in the circumstances, came out of the ordeal extraordinarily Well."

Mr. Malleson's notice is too full of generalities before he gets to grips with his job.

"However, now for my notice, I suppose the play doesn't matter so much. I must, think of something clever to say about it. Come, when I approach it like that I feel more like a critic. Perhaps though, I ought to say first what I like about it. It was nice and short, and bits of it made mc laugh very much. He is perhaps better in self criticism than cutting up the professional critic, for he says: "Those critic-actors played their parts on the stage far better than we actor-critics played ours in the auditorium. We all huddled about in corners and looked expectant, we ought to have sat in terrible serried rows in the front row of the stalls and looked bored."

As for what the play is about—there is a comic Queen Elizabeth,' who sets about her lustily as befits so vigorous a character. Her Majesty ends all the imbroglio by issuing a royal decree diedating a national diet whereby meat and vegetable are duly wedded, as in the play are Velia, the- butchers daughter, and A s P a ?agus, the son of Herbaccio, the greengrocer. Rollicking fun to be recommended to New, Zealand twin groups of primary producers as excellent fooling, concealing a grand maxim, eat more apples and more meat.