THE STAGE IN GERMANY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 261, 4 November 1925, Page 8

THE STAGE IN GERMANY.

ENGLISH PLAYS PREFERRED. PROBLEMS OF POST-WAR LIFE. (By Cable.—Press Association.—Copyright. • (Received 2.30 p.m.) LONDON, November 3. The Berlin correspondent of the "Daily Chronicle" says that foreign playwrights have taken the German theatres by storm. Bernard Shaw's "St. Joan" and "Back to Methuselah" had crowded houses. Other Shavian plays put on had short runs. The most successful was Galsworthy's "Loyalties," which has had a triumph. Jerome K. Jerome has had two plays running, while Oscar Wilde, Eugene O'Neill, Pirandello, and other dramatists have had plays shown. Managers attribute the eclipse of German dramatists to the fact that the older dramatists, though masters of technique, are strangers to the problems of post-war life, whereas the younger men have yet to learn their business, and are full of wild, impracticable ideas. Ferdenand Meysel, the well-known theatrical manager, says that dramatists must dismiss their stenographers and stop dictating. When they return to pen and ink the wearisome flood of unnecessary dialogue will vanish. The typewriter is fatal to dramatic art.—(A. and N.Z. Cable.)