A THEATRICAL SURVEY

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21744, 28 March 1936, Page 17

A THEATRICAL SURVEY

From Phelps to Gielgud. By Sir George Arthur. Chapman and Hall. 256 pp. (15/- net.) Sir George Arthur has written his reminiscences of the English stage during the last sixty-five years. He has been what is called an inveterate first-nighter, generally indulgent and always ready to praise a good play or a good performance. His book is a series of pleasant characterisations and anecdotes, broken by shrewd comments on theatrical fashions and methods of production. So keen a playgoer Was he that even when he was on foreign military service he arranged that careful correspondents should inform him thoroughly of all that happened on the stage. Three happenings are fixed in his memory: “Mrs Kendal in the ‘Likeness of the Night,’ Forbes-Robertson as Buckingham, and Irving when, at the Garrick Theatre he played Corporal Brewster for the first time before a London audience.” For the renaissance in the English theatre sixty years ago, Sir George Arthur, like other observers, gives most credit so far as plays are concerned to Tom Robertson, and in production to the Bancrofts. If Sir George has any unfavourable reports to make they are not bitter; he does not care for the freedom of some modern young actresses, and he had his suspicions of Ibsenism. He is glad that from Pinero to Priestley, the English playwrights have not been highbrows. It is interesting to read the dramatic criticism of forty years ago, to see “The Times” attacking “The Second Mrs Tanqueray” and sfiying that “nothing more essentially hideous and squalid” had ever been seen. One critic wrote of Duse very frankly. “While the Signora walked through her part, IVie prompter threw Kimself into it with a will; he worried everyone in the theatre except the Signora her self, who listened placidly to the prompter’s reading, an* as soon as he had finished, reproduced it in her own way. This process made the matinee rather a long one.”

There are chapters about the great actors and actresses —in our own time John Gielgud is much praised—about plays and playwrights, and about diction, war plays, and the actor-manager. All the information is amiably presented but some of the French phrases should have been corrected.