THE MODERN STAGE.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19612, 7 May 1929, Page 12

THE MODERN STAGE.

VETERAN ACTOR'S VIEWS. (ibok on* ova coansroronrr.) LONDON, March 27. Mr Ben Greet, the famous actor* manager, now 71 years of age, has given, in the form of an interview, some of his opinions on theatrical matters of the present day. "I don't think the public wants sex plays," he said- "There is a small vulgar public that likes meretricious plays, but that public is so small and bo very unfaithful that it can't keep any sex play going. Unless it is extraordinarily brilliant in the way of literature, such a play rarely has a run of 100 nights.

"I don't think the standard of acting now is anything like as high as when I first became a playgoer. Young men and women are just flung on the stage with very little idea of what they are ' going to do. They rehearse for weeks and weeks, become like parrots, and degenerate into machines. Our young people to-day, although they are awfully nice, are not very fond of work. A young man would rather play a part for a year in something like 'Young Woodley' than spend that year playing thirty or forty Shakespearean parts, but think what a much better actor he would be at the end of the year if he played Shakespeare! "We have no laws in our profession. It is all go-as-you-please. A young fellow with a pretty face thinks he is made for life and can play one part for two or three years. It is the same with young women of nineteen or twenty. I think the heads of our profession are very much to blame for not insisting that young people when they first go on the stage should have a regular systematised training. Recently I offered a young man £3 a week, a small part and thorough training, but he gave it up for 26s a week and a walking-on part in a West End theatre. It was the glamour of going through a West End stage door and gazing down at West End audiences.

"To make anything of the theatrical profession you must be an incurable optimist and have a sense of humour. There are so many extraordinary experiences that if you take them in a morbid frame of mind you will soon land in a madhouse.

"Every branch of the profession is terribly precarious. I know a man in London who has just spent £IO,OOO over a production, but I don't know if it will be a success. The people who never get discouraged are the only ones who make good in the end. I don't see why anyone should not go on the stage if he has ability, and I often wish more public schoolboys and others would do so, and bring to acting that enthusiasm which they give to cricket and football."