ENGLISH DRAMA

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 117, 21 May 1925, Page 5

ENGLISH DRAMA

IS IT DECADENT?,

ATTACK BY MR.,BRANSBY

WILLIAMS

.WHAT ME, ARNOLD BENNETT

THINKS.

{FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.}

LONDON, 7th April,

Mr, Bransby Williams, the impersonator of Dickens characters, who recently toured Australia, and New Zealand, is full of condemnation for the London stage. Fresh-.from the Dominions, he is evidently struck with the change that has taken place in his absence, and he considers that drama as presented to-day is decadent. In a speech at the Manchester Botary Club he launched an attack on the morals of the drama.

"Some of the plays in London," he said, "are such a scandal, such sexual tosh, and show such degeneracy that I can only call it a cesspool." Since he had come back from abroad he had been positively staggered to find an entire chorus with naked limbs. Was this a change for the better?

The subject is popular, and one may expect to find many further expressions of opinion. Mr. Arnold Bennett is the first to take up the cudgel, and in an article in the "Daily Express" he asks: 'Is real lifs worse than the stage?" "Only the world-notorious hypocrisy of the^ Anglo-Saxon," he says, "would pretend that the spectacle provided by the- Law Courts is entirely unrepresentative. Now the naughty stage has been at its old business of holding the minor up to nature, and the episcopal, histrionic, and other guardians of the peace of mind of the British public have inevitably protested, with their customary violence and fatuity, against tho horrid sights seen in the minor.. And as usual they blame the mirror.

The stage apparently is a 'cesspool'of morbid, decadent, and unsavoury plays —all of them false to beautiful life and representing nothing whatever but the foulness of the authors' hearts and the venality of the authors' .purpoßss.

"SPRING CLEANING" AND "THE

VORTEX,"-

"Three plays have been especially singled out for abuse, two English and one American. Of the two English plays little need be said, for. they have both very successfully withstood the onslaughts of the self-advertisers, and have achieved security. In both sin is scourged and sinners Come to grief. As for the human material in' them, ib anybody acquainted with'life going to stand up and say, for instance, that he has not met— yes, and shaken hands with—all the types introduced into the brilliant opening scenes of Mr. Lonsdale's 'Spring Cleaning' ? Such types swarm around us to-day.

"In Mr. Noel Coward's 'The Vortex,' there is a mother who is freely -unchaste and a sou who takes drugs. Anything unheard of here? Are mothers exempt from undisciplined passion ? Has nobody ever seen a young dope-fiend? Come with with me to half a dozen of the smartest restaurants and mixed clubs, and I will show you such types sprinkled all over the place. "DANCING MOTHERS. "■ • "Of course, it is dangerous in this country for a writer to lay hands on the mother, and, of course, 'Hamlet* is a morbid,. decadent, and unsavoury play. Mr. JS Toel Coward .was audacious. But his audacity is>as naught compared with that of Messrs. Sehvyn and Goulden, the -American authors of the third play, ' 'Dancing Mothers.' (What a terrible innuendo in that title!) Tor they have made the mother their main theme and caused her to behave as an ill-used women well might behave. "The American mother had a husband who lied to her, deceived her adulterously, grossly neglected her, and did all ho could to ruin her influence over a misguided daughter. The American mother had a daughter of tender years who flouted her, defied her, lied to her, neglected her, and came home half-drunk of an afternoon. (Such things have been known even in Britain.) "The American mother, exasperated too far, breaks out into nightlife and enslaves a famous lady-killer. She decides to abandon her husband and daughter and to go to Europe with a, wSman triend m a steamer in which the enslaved lady-killer is also travelling. The husband and daughter appeal powerfully must yield. But she doesn't yield she goes. And that is the end of the story? me mother has been and is imtJiTt D, au.« hters>™ indeed refused to take then- mothers to the Queen's Theatre. And 3 o on. It has all been very funny, for the reason that the only bated. The only . important point isHave mothers behaved as the mother voontfn* ayb<*aved under similar proVocation? And to this there'is-only one answer: They have-and frequently un rele^nt SS Pr°VOCatiOn- The rest !s ir~

RETICENCE OF AUTHORS Ji Fi7 my.-^' wh:lt X wonder'at » not the outspokenness but the reticence of our author*. They might Yaw -Sid ve UU nTh? th<^ dM ' aild »*iHbem mw h» ]n ° mM'k ot truth- -Sodety todaJ■ H, V VOI'Se °? a ljetter atad anything m any modern play Ihe assaulted dramatists have simnlv called our attention to certain Si tendencies, they have brought us lp th™ "Jl w K"owin S human nature a» L hl#"? d°..«»y wiU not expect £l fnv S^ i. t ey Can "asonably ask for is to be heard. They are beinuT<d- „£V xcellenfc tWng, too!" h '■ ,IJIB Daily Express," in a leading article admits that Mr. Bennett's lolic is perfect but he.has fallen into tmfeasy eiTor of thiukinp that what the mirror reveals must be life. . ■' Our playwSts mirror^™' ThP\ k°-ep *°&»S» minor up to every festering Eol . e , % toul growth ('social tendencies,' Mr Bennett calls them), and their justifical.p V £ y arG "s the mii Tor IT PAYS. "Beduced to its most practical level it would seem that the case can be put m this way. There is always a profitawe market for indecency. Every news paper knows that the three milfion circulation mark could be attained by filling Us pages with pornographic details. Ihe theatre manager and the theatrical author realise that the same condition in a more restricted ratio, exists in the theatre. To say that the present rush of sex plays js a sincere attempt to scourge humanity for its sins is to sanctify the playwrights at the expense of common sense. " The West' End theatre is in the grip of a -aecadenca 1 boom. Before it passes —as.it must by reason of its very vioJence—the English stage and English •standards will havo been soiled and English hie travestied and libelled. "But it pays. That.is the real urianswerahle reply to any attack which • may be launched against it." As already announced, Messrs. Williamson, Limited, have bought the Atis-

tralian rights of "Spring Cleaning," and this play will be staged in tho Commonwealth before the end of the year.

WHY GIVE THE PEOPLE FILTH?

"We are faced with the fact," writes Sir Gerald dv Maurier, "that what was the problem play is now the sex play; that 'Lord (Juex/ once scurrilous, is now, in Sir Arthur Pinero's own words, 'for the nursery.' "The public are asking for filtii; the younger generation are knocking at the door of the dustbin. Are we going to give them what they ask for? Decadence is unattractive; but sex is so attractive; The modern mind requires that love should be leprous, in a. blue mask, that Cupid should wear bats' wings, and carry a cocktail shaker instead of "a'bow. If life is worse than the stage, should the stage hold the mirror up to sucli distorted nature? " Is to be caddish, ribald, portiac, bestial, the only way 'not to bore on the stage-? Can one rule it out before evei. cads and pornography become a bore? The beauty that is in most things, as gold is in mud, can still be found for the looking. If people are really so squalid in their lives that they want filth served up to them on the stage, why give it to them? . Naked truth cannot be exploited on the stage; the mirror must be a little finer than the reflection, because the stage is compressed, like the mirror, into a narrow compass. It can only 'give the actual unvarnished present, not the softening past. If Mr. Bennett took the real oharactera he speaks of from their night clubs he would hear their story—what childhood perversely led, or what husband drunk or diseased led such a one to such a pass, and he would .forgive them. You cannot forgive stage figures; they are really thero for an hour.

"What the public want just now is excitement, cruelty, decadence. The warning of Zeppelin was the first sign of it. One said of the warning 'How terrible!' but if no Zeppelin ' came, 'What a bore!'

"Let us unwind, or evolute, go to the natural opposite of things, when to be simple is thrilling—much more thrilliing —when Yorkshire pudding is terribly exciting and one goes into ecs.tacies "if it rains."