THE LURE OF THE THEATRE.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 134, 8 June 1929, Page 8

THE LURE OF THE THEATRE.

After reading my writings in criticism of the present-day theatre the more direct and engaging of my friends sometimes turn to me in wonderment. "If this is how you feel about it," they are apt to say, "why is it that you continue to go to the theatre at all?" To which I am apt to reply, with equal directness and some bewilderment, "I do not know."

Just what curious streak it is that makes a man a dramatic critic in preference to any other work I am unable to discover. I am, for instance, highly interested in the art of etching. The prints of E. S. Lumsden's "Worshippers," and of Sir Frank Short's "Low Tide, the Evening Star and Rye's Long Pier Deserted," and of Martin Hardie's "Iken" which hang upon my walls are a constant source of delight; my eye is always running over them caressingly; for a really fine Blampied I would perjure myself without reproach; for Mcßey's "Lion Brewery" I would commit murder. Yet I could no more spend my life in writing of etchers and etching than I could spend it in the manner of literary exercise of Mr. Bernard Darwin. Fine music moves me as I am rarely moved in the theatre; the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven, though "staled and rung upon in* common discourse," is greater than anything that Shakespeare has created (what are Hamlet's questionings to that questioning, urgent theme with which the first movement opens and which is no more than a simple scoring of the. yellow hammer's call?); the best comedy ever written falls short of the lightheartedncss of the Seventh Symphony, or of Mozart's Symphony No. 543 in E Flat; the most flawless play is a botch beside- the Brahms Pianoforte Quintet in F Minor; the whole band of Elizabethan dramatists I would sacrifice cheerfully for P-urcell. Similarly, in the modern theatre, it seems to me that the most perfect evocation of a mood falls short of that conjured up by Debussy, with his very limited talent, in "L'Apres-midi d'un Faune," and that the best work of Eugene. O'Neill is of less importance than Frederick Delius' "Dance Rhapsody, No. 1."

I have friends of impeccable taste whom I might allow to do my exploring for me while .1 remained at home with Conrad, A. E. Housman or Marcel Proust, occupying my leisure to some profit and giving delight to my soul. Yet I continue to go to the theatre and waste the precious time that God has given me upon blackface comedians, "triangle" dramas, neglige farces, Edgar Wallace melodramas and the title-strewn backwaters of Mr. Frederick Lonsdale. Why? I really haven't the least idea. The truth, as I guess at it, is that we inveterate theatregoers have an instinct for adventure and that, in this age, with no giants to slay or Andromedas to rescue, the one thing that remains, short of purchasing a ticket for Norman-Douglas land, is to purchase «a stall. There is nothing in this life- quite like the emotion of a first night. The play that is to be seen may he rubbish, it may be a masterpiece; it may be a "Home Chat" or a "Derniero Nuit de Don Juan," and we do not know. It may, more possibly, be another "Chains," or "General John Regan," and there is in the evening all the latent possibilities upon earth. We may be about to see a contribution to dramatic literature or something so bad that it will rival "The Crusaders." We may be about to see something of moving beauty, or something so incredibly gauche that its every moment is a dream of joy. And we haven't a notion, from moment to moment, what is coining next.

That, possibly, is the lure of the theatre. It keeps one guessing. It is a perpetual surprise. The most impossible plays may suddenly spring something unexpected, the worst casts be moved to surpass themselves in presentation. And as for the first-night habit, one must be there on the first night, because on no other night is it certain that tho play will still be on. —QUENTIN POPE.

OUR BIG TREES,

The dimension!! of huge kauri trees in the remote recesses of the northern forests have a way of dwindling considerably when the stories about them are examined and put to the proof. A little while ago a newspaper correspondent quoted a report about a tree which was supposed to bo "one of the largest trees in the world, if not the largest," standing in the Waihou Valley, Hokianga. The dimensions mentioned were: Diameter of trunk, 22ft; girth, 60ft (exactly one chain); length of clear barrel, 75ft. It was estimated to contain over 195,000 superficial feet of timber.

■ ■ That correspondent wished to know more about tho big chieftain of the kauri tribe, and I was sufficiently interested in the story to make inquiries from those in a position to know the facts. This, summarised, is the reply I have received: The size of the kauri has been exaggerated greatly. A forest ranger who inspected the tree reported that it was dry, with the exception of a little green bark on one side —a mere shell, in fact, with walls that vary from a foot to only six inches in thickness. A hole was chopped in the side of the hollow tree, and this was used as an entrance by climbers for kauri gum. The dimensions are: Length of barrel to first branch, 32ft; girth at saw-cut height, 44ft Oin; girth at breast height, 43ft sin; girth at centre (estimated), 42ft 4in; length to spread of branches, 49ft.

The ancient tree of the Waihou has, therefore, shrunk to two-thirds of its original size as originally reported. It is often the way. Moreover, being hollow, there is not much hope of getting sufficient material out of it to build "three double-storeycd houses of twenty rooms each," to quote the first enthusiastic estimate of a sawmiller. Nevertheless, the wonderful Old Man of the Bush is worthy of respect for its antiquity. There once was a kauri at Tutamoe, on the northern headwaters of the Kaipara, whose circumference measured just a chain —the usual width of a road. Tlie first man who saw it thought at first that it was a grey cliff confronting him in the bush. A surveyor measured it, so that chain girth was authentic. But it perished by fire long ago. The same fate, I believe, has befallen a big squat old kauri of 48ft girth, probably hollow, which I once measured near the present Trounson Park, at the head of the Kaihu Valley. Recent reports in the "Star" mentioned two trees, one of 4Sft and the other of 45ft, in tho Waipoua State Forest; these dimensions no doubt are authentic, forestry officers' measurements. It is to be presumed, therefore, that Waipoua contains the largest known tree in New Zealand —unless someone now comes forward with a bigger one hitherto unknown to forestry fame. —J.C.

SEEING ENGLAND BY AIR

Americans with little time to spare will in future be able to see Britain in three days (writes our London correspondent). Plans have been completed to allow United States-visitors to go by air from Southampton to the spots associated with George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Penn, Shakespeare, Burns and the Pilgrim Fathers, rounding off the tour with a flight to Cfoydon to catch the aeroplane connection for the Continent of Europe. "It will be possible," said Mr. L. A. <le L. Meredith, the newlyappointed secretary of the Travel Association of Great Britain and Ireland, in an interview, "for onr American visitors to be met at the landing stage and to be shown more of Great Britain within a few days than has hitherto been possible in a fortnight. The tours of two, three, four and seven days now being planned will be available after the London Air Park opens this summer. The trips will include flights to the churchyard at Stoke Poges, commemorated by the poet Gray in his elegy, and to the Worcestershire village of Broadway. All good Americans go to Broadway, partly for the association of its n»m~e with their own Broadway, but chiefly because the village, with its old inn, is reputed across the Atlantic to be the prettiest in England. Under the proposed arrangement Americans will be able to include Scotland in their sight-seeing. At present not many of them have the time to go to the Trossachs and the Burns Country, but that will be a very diftV/ent proposition when they, can get to Edinburgh between -breakfast imd lunch?'