MIDNIGHT PLAY.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 9, 10 July 1909, Page 10

MIDNIGHT PLAY.

» BEFORE FIVE HUNDEED ACTORS AND AC'IiiESSES. While this issue of the Daily Chronicle was being, in compositors' phrase, "put to bed" upon the printing machines, writes that journal of 21st May, the final curtain was falling upon a truly historic production of an. entirely new and unprecedented play, "presented" before an audience of something liko five hundred actors and actresses at the Hotel Cecil. The occasion was the long-promised reception given by the Stage Society to all the actors and actresses who have taken part in its performances during the last ten years. The play was called "Dull Monotony," and had been written specially for tie occasion by Mr. Gilbert Carman. It need hardly be said that a title which might have been applied in all frankness to some workaday productlona entirely belied this midnight effort. It proved an uproariously amusing little skit upon the selection of a play by the society's committee — as others see it. Though lasting for only twenty-five minutes or so, it boasted of three a6ts. One represented a meeting of the committee of the "Ultra-Drama" Society, another — a peculiarly lively one, be it said — showed forth a joint meeting of the members and of a body of unacted dramatists ; another, heavily charged with pathos, was supposed to happen during a rehearsal of the selected play. The significant nature of the environment may be guessed from the fact that beside the "Ultra-Drama" committee, a newspaper man, a young dramatist, and an old one, the whole of the minor characters were inmates and officials of a workhouse. The cast, it should be added, was an "all-star" one, but upon the identity of its members everybody concerned was sworn to eternal secrecy. Quite apart from the midnight play, the reception itself wae one of the most memorable events' that have happened in the theatrical world for many a long day. It hod been entirely designed as an expression of tho Stage Society's gratitude to the actors and actresses who had appeared in the society's fifty productions. As all keen playgoers know, few things have been more noticeable in these performances than the amount of fine acting that has been called forth, sometimes from players who had had no chance of showing any special distinction in an ordinary way. On the other hand, if the Stage Societ" has given many an eager young actor or actress an all-important opportunity, the "profession" has more than fulfilled its share of tho artistic bargain. For not on^y has everything thtit has been done> for the Stage Society been done with whole-hearted enthusiasm, but in its early struggling years no payment, whatever was made to the company, and there was not even the reward of criticism, for the performances were, during the first year, at any rate, entirely private. Accordingly, it was for the actors' cake that the reception did not begin till the West-end theatres had closed at 11 o'clock. From then till midnight, what with the society's fifteen hundred member* and five hundred players, the whole intellectual aristocracy of the play-going world seemed to be ga-tbered in the Grand Hall. Refreshments were served at half-past eleven, and the Kingsway Octett discoursed music until the play was ready.