CHURCH AND STAGE.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19611, 6 May 1929, Page 10

CHURCH AND STAGE.

GOOD PLAYS WORTHY OF SUPPORT. EMPLOYING LEISURE HOURS. "Leisure hours arc, for most people, a great part of life, yet it is curious that modern education is almost entirely a preparation for working hours, training the young for the acquisition of possessions rather than moulding a character which could shine outside the shop, factory, or office." Such was the observation made by the Rev. Charles Perry at St. Michael's yesterday, when expressing the view that those who wished to spend their leisure hours both profitably and pleasantly, should support the best that the theatre has to offer. The theatre, he said, made provision for leisure. It had arisen out of the mystery plays of the Church. The Puritans of the seventeenth century discountenanced it, while Congreve, Wycherly and others, by verging on the indecent, failed to win the support of the Church. But the stage was now rising from its degradation and should have the discriminating support of Christian people. Gilbert and Sullivan, the many authors of charming drawing-room plays, and the modern literary plays of irreproachable moral character should be encouraged actively by the public-spirited.

There were three difficulties before the high-minded commercial producer. He had to compete with the cinema, tc control the sex appeal, and to keep the theatre somewhere near literature. Mr Allan Wilkle—not in the great centres of European culture —but in the Australian Commonwealth and this Dominion, was doing much in all these directions. Sir Benjamin Fuller thought that not even the "talkies" would be able to kill legitimate drama. Mr achievements lent colour to his opinion. There must sometimes be a sex appeal since sex was one of our complexes. A story of Mr H. G. Wells was refused for the screen, because it lacked this requisite. But the appeal could be healthy and elevating. Had Juliet, in her balcony, no appeal f Or Rosalind in the Forest of Ardenf Or Portia or Desdemonaf Lastly, the theatre must show at least some loyalty to literature. In France they had never been separated, but in England popular plays frequently had no literary merit whatever. Since Ibsen, however, there had been an improvement in this respect, and today many of our best authors had turned their talents to play-writing and repertory theatres, and to the interpretation of them, while Mr Allan Wilkie had succeeded in making the plays of our greatest literary master commercially profitable. Christian people in Christchnrch, said Mr Perry, anxious to spend some of their leisure hours to fheir own advantage, and that of the public, might well support by their presence, the productions to be seen In our local theatre during the coming weeks.