DRAMA IN ENGLAND

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 70, 20 September 1939, Page 6

DRAMA IN ENGLAND

PLIGHT A PARADOX

PLEA FOR A VITAL THEATRE

There is something curiously paradoxical about the drama in this country, wrote J. B. Priestley in the London "Daily Telegraph" recently. It is this. We have a great many theatres, but no theatre. There is probably more theatrical activity all the year round in Britain than there is in any other country in the world, except Russia. If you include all the London productions, all the touring and repertory companies, our purely professional activity must be gigantic. The financial turnover is immense. The drama employs, thousands and thousands of skilled persons. Yet, strictly speaking, we have no theatre. The dramatic art hardly exists among us. We boast of the greatest dramatist the world has ever known—l mean Shakespeare. not Shaw—and , yet officially we' do not recognise the theatre except for purposes of. taxation. It is not among our institutions. A. strange lingering puritanism in the national mind puts the playhouse far below . the level of museums, art galleries, and libraries, j somewhere down among the swings and dodge-ems of the Fun Fair. This has long influenced our audiences, who may attend theatres but are not really interested in the theatre, that is, in the vital art of the drama. They want an easy evening's entertainment. They may be fascinated by Miss Tempest's gestures, Mr. Gielgud's profile, or Mr. Richardson's delectable voice, indeed in the whole three-ringed circus of personalities. But for what I care about, as a serious dramatist, they do not care tuppence. . . DISCOURAGING EXPERIMENT. There are exceptions, of, course. A few thousand in London, and several ] hundred in Birmingham, Manchester, or Liverpool, and so on pro rata, may have a deep interest in and concern for the dramatic art. But they form a tiny majority, even of playgoers. The rest cannot be bothered to take an intelligent interest. It never occurs to them that their minds could be strungly held and their emotions profoundly moved by what goes on in a playhouse. At the worst their playgoing is a waste of tune, and at the best, "Well, jolly good show, I thought." It is a great relief to talk to any moderately intelligent foreigner about the theatre, because although in his country there may be only a few playhouses still open, he understands that there is such a thing as dramatic art. Because you try to enlarge the bounds of dramatic writing and production, j and so make experiments, he does not think you are merely playing some j outrageous game. It does not occur to him that the drama should stay in the i same place and do the same thing over j and over again. ,It is this public indifference, against which our critics do not . protest enough (and, indeed, some of bur critics seem to be just as apathetic as their* readers), that is partly responsible for the- further paradox that, in spite of all our theatrical activity, we are not producing a school, of good new dramatists. In this atmosphere, being a serious experimental dramatist is rather like being -a landscape gardener in. Greenland. Many of my colleagues&eem to have retired in com* plete-, despair, preferring to yawn over film jobs.' '\ ■■-.:.. NO CHANCE IN ENGLAND. , Recently a serious experimental dramatist in America, Eugene O'Neill, received the Nobel Prize. I venture to declare that if Mr. O'Neill had been an English dramatist he would never have come within sight of the Nobel Prize, because he would have been told long ago that nobody was] interested in his fantastic nonsense.! True, Mr. Shaw has received the Nobel J Prize. But he was 70 then, and dur- j ing the years when he was bringing new life into the theatre' he had no success here and was firmly fold he did not know how to write for the { stage. The very same kind of people who refused to give Mr. Shaw a hearing 40 years ago now use him. as a stick to bludgeon dramatists like me. "Don't you wish you could write like Shaw, eh?" they snarl. And the answer is, so far as I am concerned, "No, I don't, deeply as. I revere that great chief. What I do want to.do is to write my own kind of thing in my own way. The result may be vastly inferior and a rather botched job, but still it is a genuine new contribution, not yesterday's joint hashed up." HIS OWN NEW PLAY. It is no doubt a very fine thing that a number of star players should combine, under a French director, to produce a Russian masterpiece like "The Cherry Orchard." (Considered, only yesterday,- "not a play at all.") But nevertheless they can only do what was done "better in Moscow five and' twenty years ago. And what vabout the English Theatre? Where is that? I can only hope that some sign of its continuing existence, as a vital art and not merely as routine entertainment, may be visible in our first production this coming season at the Westminster where on September 5, with Herr Hitler's permission, we are doing a newly-revised version of my experimental play, "Music at Night." It is not for me to estimate the play's value, but I have every right to say— and cannot be prevented from saying —that at least the production of sucn a play, breaking new ground in writing, directing, acting, at such a time is a gallant gesture on behalf of the real vital Theatre, and .as such deserves the support of those who still believe our national culture to be r'' some importance.