ON BEING AUDIBLE

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 219, 16 September 1939, Page 3

ON BEING AUDIBLE

Anew Zealand visitor to London complained recently in the London Press that he could not hear what London actors said. He had come 12,000 miles and naturally he looked forward to seeing some London shows, but visits to half a dozen West End theatres had been marred, to put it mildly, by the inaudibility of the players. One can feel for him, but he probably did not know that the complaint was not new.

Some of the London critics have been hammering at it for years. "I thought some of the acting shocking," wrote Mr. James Agate, of a performance of "Henry V.," "and found nearly all of it inaudible. On Wednesday night I saw the third act from the last row of stalls in the little Arte Theatre," he said of another play, "and even at this comparatively short distance all that had seemed of interest earlier on had evaporated, leaving an indistinguishable and something mumbling young lady." The cream of the joke is this, that there are London producers who actually say it doesn't matter if the words are not heard clearly! A prettier example of the divorce of art from common sense it would be impossible to find. What pray, does one go to the theatre for if not to heard the words of a play ?

Inaudibility on the stage is mainly the result of a reaction against the old declamatory school. This, of course, had its absurdities. Lines were often mouthed in a most unnatural way. Passions were torn to tatters. The acting was obvious. Now the idea is that the actor must be natural at a l ' three; it

By--Cyrano

is not realised that if art was only being natural, it would be much easier than it is. Art is emphasis; it is the underlining of Nature. Too many actors and actresses seem to think that all you have to do is to behave on the stage exactly as you do in a drawing-room. If you do no more than that you probably won't be heard, and audiences still have a prejudice in favour of getting at least that much value for their money. The same complaint is made about some New Zealand amateurs. There is this excuse for these players, that the acoustics of the halls they are compelled to play in are probably not as good as those of theatres in London. Still, difficulties exist to be overcome, and the lesson of London should not be lost on New Zealand amateurs

It really is a shame what most of us <lo with our voices. Many of us take the trouble to learn an instrument, but it seldom occurs to us that we neglect the commonest of all Instruments, the human voice. Moreover, the voice is not an instrument for our hours of recreation; it is an instrument for every hour of the day. We use it when we ask why breakfast is late; we use it on the telephone; we double no-trumps with it; we make love with it; it plays our tunes of bargaining, threats and persuasion. Yet how many of us ask ourselves what our voice is like? Is it soft, hard, loud, flat, sweet, or raucous? Are we second cousins several times removed from Bernhardt, of whose voice it was written by a good judge that she charged a line of Racine's with so great a sorrow ana so great a load of beauty that one thought the great poet must

have stirred in his tomb—second, cousins, but not outside the pale; or are we like the man in 0. Henry of whom it was said that his voice was like sour milk dropping on to a kerosene tin? All classes suffer from neglect of this gift. When Matthew Arnold went lecturing in the United States it was said that only the first two or three rows caught his words. The President, Ulysses S. Grant, commented to Mrs. Grant something like this: "Well, my dear, we've seen the British lion, though we may not have heard him." A friend told me the other day that I should be disappointed if I went to a lecture by a very distinguished English writer for wh<An we both have a great regard. He had a mincing voice and talked al«|tit the "pooetray of the prooletariat." Bernard Shaw sets us all a splendid example. His articulation is perfect; his accent is accentless; and his method is exciting. Moreover, he knows what he is going to say before he begins. Too many people are not interested in their own voices, nor, for that matter, in other people's. They speak themselves without beauty and clarity of tone, and tliey don't value it in others. They mumble and slur, so that the unfortunate listener has to interrupt with frequent "Pardons?" They get on their feet with no clear idea of what they are going to 6ay and they don't say it—at great length. It is a curious thing that so many men and women should be particular about their grooming—their clothes and their hair and their hands —and yet give no thought to the tones of their voice and the graces of their speech. There is this excuse, however, that no one really hears hie or her voice. Broadcasting is doing something to correct this, for voices are frequently recorded, and immediately the recording is made it can be played over to the speaker, so that he hears a faithful reproduction of his own voice. It is significant that everybody is surprised at the sound of his own voica.