STAGE JOTTINGS

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 261, 3 November 1928, Page 2 (Supplement)

STAGE JOTTINGS

Mr. Rudyard Kipling, like many other great men, has a rooted objection to being irterviewed, and flatly refuses to give hi* autograph to anyone who is not an intimate acquaintance. The story is told of a man who, though his neighbour, did not know Mr. Kipling even to say: "How do you do!" but who wagered that within a week he would have the famous man's signature. His method, if somewhat devious, was at least ingenious. He wrote to Mr. Kipling, say that his (Kipling's) chickens had been straying on to his property, and as they had done quite a bit of damage to a bed of prize blooms which were being grown for show purposes, he intended to take action. He had not long to wait before he received a pointed reply from "poet of Empire," and there, at the foot of the communication was the signature: "R. Kipling."

It is not uncommon for athletic champions to turn their attention to the stage, for attractive contracts are often put in their way. But few of them, it seems, ever attain any degree of success, and their momentary flame of popularity soon dies. Most of them return to their former calling, but if they have fallen from favour one or two stay behind the footlight in small parts. It is not very surprising therefore to learn that Jack Johnson, the negro who some years ago was the world's heavy-weight boxing champion, is appearing with a travelling show now in New York. The company is known as "The Nifties of 1928," and Johnson is billed as "a gala added attraction." No doubt it is his name that is being used as an attraction, for it would be difficult to imagine him as the handsome hero of what is described as "the greatest musical comedy on the. road."

"The Return Joifwley," a new play by Mr. Arnold Bennett, which was produced in London at the St. James' Theatre last month, proves to be a modern version of the Faust legend. Faust masquerades under the name of Henry Fausting, a Cambridge savant of 80, and the Mephisto who visits him in the prologue and who agrees to renew his youth, appears in the person of Professor Satolloyn of Warsaw. The Marguerite is Margaret Maider, a Newnham girl, and the Valentine is not her brother, but her fiance, Richard Young, an undergraduate. A leading critic found that while the play "is well informed, occasionally witty and asks for sympathy in a mild way, it is frankly flat c .and commonplace at every turn." The denouement comes in novel fashion; Satolloyn gives the whole story of the rejuvenation of Fausting to the newspapers, whereupon Margaret shrinks in horror from her new lover and becomes reconciled with Young. Sir Gerald du Maurier as Fausting, Mr. Henry Daniell as Satolloyn, and Miss Grace Wilson as Margaret, were all warmly praised for their work.

Sir Auckland Geddes' effort to stimulate public opinion against war, by means of the theatre, has not met with the success for which he hoped. The announcement is published in London papers of the withdrawal from the Strand Theatre of the play "The Enemy," by the American dramatist, Channing Pollock, after so short a season as four weeks. Sir Auckland and his friends made possible the production of this play because of its picture of the brutality of war, but their good intentions have failed through the indifference of the public. Such eminent persons as the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, and the Home Secretary (Sir William Joynson Hicks) attended the premiere, so that the drama was launched under unusually influential auspices. In *The Enemy," Mr. Pollock reveals mistrust, suspicion and hate as sundering communities with the outbreak of war; old friends turned into bitter' foes; the man who proclaims humanity to be a greater thing than nationality deprived of his livelihood, and, in the end, devastation and ruin to all but one or two profiteers. The critics, however, while praising the dramatist's ideals, found fault with his method of treating the subject. One writer suggested as a reason for its failure the fact that the British people are already convinced that war is a futile and ghastly business, and do not need any stage lesson to that effect.

To have revealed the methods used to produce the realistic sound effects in "The Ghost Train" when that play was here would have been unfair, but an explanation now will interest theatregoers. Atmosphere, of course, is the excuse for the introduction of such a babel of noise as mystery-thrillers have brought with them. The setting must be strange, forbidding, ominous. This must be emphasised and underlined, and so the mystery-monger calls in the batteries of noise. But despite their real-, ism, all these effects are wonderfully simple in the methods used for their production. Behind the stage one sees a number of men operating strange machines under the direction of a supervisor. First there is a small projector apparatus, through which a man draws a strip of cardboard with a series of holes, which appear as the lighted windows of the train. Another stage hand stands beside a cylinder of compressed air, which is released to imitate the sound of steam. With his gloved hand the man varies the sound emitted from the horn attached to the cylinder. A third produces more steam sounds with a wire brush on a drum, while a fourth draws a heavy garden roller over a number of three-cornered sticks nailed to the flooring. The "bumps" thus pro-, duced represent the gaps between the rail sections.. Another man has a sheet of flat plate glass placed on two chairs, and by rubbing two tumblers on it, produces those ear-splitting squeaks made by brakes: A metal box full of screws and bita of iron is shaken to imitate the clash of buffers. A real locomotive whistle, blown by compressed air, and sandpaper rubbed on a smooth surface, produce the hiss of a departing train. The howl of the wind, of course, is a very simple matter; it is made by a wind machine. But what of the swish of the rain? That, perhaps, was the most simple of all A large tarpaulin of very coarse canvas was stretched out, and another of the same material drawn- across it; to increase the intensity .of the "downpour," the man whose job it was to "operate'' this device, had to work a little harder and pull the piece of canvas across the other more quickly.. These particular appliances, it may be mentioned, were used railwaythn»« -<*» Munich. .