ELOCUTIONARY ENTERTAINMENT

Evening Star, Issue 12026, 26 October 1903, Page 3

ELOCUTIONARY ENTERTAINMENT

THE JUDGES AS EXPONENTS

[By Rhadajianthxjs,. Junior.]

[Rhadaniaathus, a son of Jupiter, reigned with such justice and impartiality that the ancients say he became one of the judges of Hell, in which honorable office he gave so much satisfaction that he obliged even the dead to confess their crimes.] When the Rev. Curzon-Siggers "announced on Friday evening at His Majesty's Theatre that the judges in the recent elocutionary and reading competitions would submit themselves to the ordeai of criticism lw added that we should then probably learn some things that we did not know, but for himself he thought they would have been had they let well 'enough alone. The rev. gentleman had evidently forgotten that judges step in where competitors fear to tread. Nor can 1 say that the outcome of Saturday night's entertainment altogether justified Mr Siggers. The entertainment showed that in Mr Clark we have a tried and practised professional of no mean rank —a man v. ith a good stage presence, cool, clear, and possessing a fine voice that he modulates at Mill in harmony with the :motion he geeks to portray. There is just touch of that late great reader, the Rev. Charles Clark, '.n many of his motions und gestures, especially noticeable, in his rendering of ' Napoleon's Tomb.' and a rather Rtrong, natural, or assumed twang, which, however, in certain pieces is not unpleasant. But it is apt to become wearisome if used too freely, and on Saturday Mr Clark :e-

lied entirely upon American selections to indicate and vindicate his powers. Not selections from Holmes, Longfellow, Motley, VYbittier, Emerson, or Lowell, but fruui Fcgftrsoll, Mark Twain, and two pieces of that broadly humorous or farcical stamp with which we have been made familiar at penny readings and gramaphone grindings Ot literary merit this class? of recitation is destitute. The inflated, artificial rhetoric of Ingersoll, the pathos and bathos, the sickly sentiment, and tawdry appeals, the hits at the rich, the sneers at the church folk, the pathetic mouthing? of the drunken tramp, the country visitor, the man or the steamboat, etc., are neither true to art, true to nature, nor worthy of emulation. Thev are designedly and of pet purpose written bv clever journalists and specialists, and turned out in much the same fashion as boots and shoe« or butter and sugar, to meet the dtmand of a large section of the ptihlic. A little humor, a few indignant protests, an appeal from the judgment of man to the Deity—the latter being dragged in with painful frequency—a dying boy, or deserted wife, or heroic laborer, these" ;uid such as thew? are the time-honored ingredients which, pieced together by the skilled and practised hand, are read'vear in vesir out throughout the United States'and in the small provincial towns of England by talented men to the delight of rural and other audiences. There is nothing real, genuine, or mentally healthy abour them. They neither please ths taste nor promote the intellectual appetite, but can always be relied upon—and herein lies their popularity —to tickle the ears of the groundlings who hang on to the hollow sentiments and sharp contrast?, as the majority of us do to the woes and joys, the tears" and declamations of the hero and heroine in the most Exacting melodramas. I am sorry that Mr Clark bothered himself with, such poor stuff. He is able to do better work, and it would have been educationally— and we are all educationists nowadays—preferable had he shown us how to render such really difficult pieces as ' The Bells,' ' The Bridge of Sighs,' ' The Prodigal Son,' Btc, etc., with which so many yonng people I had struggled arduously and well during the week. Practice and a good voice) plus intelligence, will enable any man to secure the applause and sympathies of his audience, if he makes such pieces as we had on Saturday his objective and eschews the thorny path of s-eri-t'tis effort for v.be sake of the temporarv p.easures of the mere frivolous. Still if our young people want to Tead these concoctions, and are content to stop where they can innocently amuse their friends at a social gathering, then they cannot do better than note the effective simplicity, the justness of the appreciation of the worth of each part, the naturalness of tone and gesture with which Mr Clark invested his readings. On these grounds those of Saturday are deserving of high praise. Mr Baeyertz followed the same unhappy precedent. His chief contribution wss 'A Cliaracter Sketch,' called 'Moving the Fomts,' a piece possessing all the faults and merits (for I presume that everything in this world has some merits), of its American brethren, and rendered irritatingly familiar r JZ- R - Suns and hLs army of imitators. These pieces call for no exceptional literary or artistic ability. They speak or read themselves. No individual, however laulty m voice and delivery, could fail to interest some-perhaps most-of us in the history of the common laborer who trom out his penurious and sordid surroundings, flings himself into the breach, saves the oncoming train from destruction, and remembers nothing more until he awakes in the hospital. Told in the lan gnage of the street, spiced with a few sarcasms on everyday religion, plus some hearty blows at the bloated capitalist the story presents itself not as a piece of literatim, the delivery of which taxes the skill of the elocutionist, and affords play for the refinements and delicacies of vocal expression, but as a bit of carpenter work, deliberately put together for no other purpose than that which, even in ordinary hands is got out of it. It was impossible therefore to judge of either of the 'ate judges along parallel lines to those traversed by them in dealing with others True Mr Baeyertz read the Prodigal Son but I believe tnat he would freely admit that at least half a dozen of "the un placed competithors hi this piece had readit with, truer touch and a jnster realisation of its beauties, as well as speaking it in clearer tones, than he did himself. The suiT-sono-tone, the falling inflection at the end o'f every other line, the seeming inability to distinguish between the characters, the repentance of the younger brother, the resentment of the elder, the joy of the father —these were conspicuously lacking, and I feel that those who affirm that a mistake was made in the placing of the competitors m this reading have much to support their affirmation. Certain it is that anv mimster m town would be able to give a. nearer approach to the ideal rendering than Mr Baeyertz.

I say these things in no carping spirit. I believe that the judges did their thankless task well, and according to their sincere convictions; I believe that in all such contents there will bo jumbling; but I have heard from so many soured that in several of tie recent readings the placing m the first half-dozen-1 am nofc referring to winners part>cularly_was so opposed to the applause of the public and the views of those who are competent to speak that coupled with Mr Clark's Arnerk-aT exjS tions and Mr Baeyerta's practical illustration, I should say that arr com mittee of judges picked h\ haxard would in several instances hav ( . decided not only in another way—that is a comparatively small point—but more in harmony with the standards of good reading Mr A. C. Hanion's 'Clarence's Dream' ■was an excellent bit of dramatic work but Mr T. W. Whitson's 'Henry V. before Harfleur' was marred by his not, bein<r letter perfect, by the introduction of incorrect words, and by his inability to let the book alone. There is an element of the ludicrous after such an impassioned appeal as "On, on, you noblest English," delivered with vigorous enthusiasm, in the reciter inddenly pausing to scan his book, and then look up again and tell his audience the context. The same comment applies to the reading of the famous scene from ' Othello' commencing "Did Michael Cassio, when you woo'd my lady, know of your love?" To see two gentlemen, presumably under the stress and storm of passion, consulting their books at each alternate line is to mar the conception of the drama, and to bring one of the finest delineations of human hate and Jove and jealousy to the borders of the ridiculous. Neither reader under such conditions can do justice to the theme or to his own powers. However able the conception, its presentation is handicapped by the self-imposed limitations of kg exponents". To me it seemed that Mr Hanlon hung on *» >^-yoa:dsk^n3g^^o.^ : theaigc A logg-

drawn-out form that is the reverse of desirable, whilst Mr Whitson as lago was on the light and frivolous side. He questioned Othello as though perfunctorily anxious about his health and feeling the way to ask for the loan of his umbrella. Mr A. H. Bnrton gave the test piece from Thackeray's 'Four Georges,' but was hampered by the light, and hardly able to do what he can do..

And who is " Rhadamantbus" that he should offer an opinion? Well, I am, I hope, neither hypercritical nor an unnecessary carper. Nor am I an enraged competitor, nor even a competitor at all. I do not even pose as an authority, and have never read a line aloud outside the family circle for years, but I have heard all the famous actors during the last thirty years. 1 can remember J. C. M. Bellew, Ross, Walter Montgomery, and, of course, Charles Clark; I also attended Professor Roskilly's class in the City of London College, and was a pupil of George Neville, a leading member of Sir Henry Irving's company: and from these things" I have learned (1) that it is easier to criticise than to expound ; (2) that to judge justly one must have definite lines of judgment "clearly laid down, and that these lines should be made known to competitors prior to the contest: (3) that the judge should remember that it is i.ot what he likes, but what a fairly wide experience of sifting and comparison lias taught him to recognise as good all-round work that should constitute the standard; (4) that an intelligently modnlated reading in a voice that can be heard distinctly is preferable to bastard attempts at dramatic contortions: and (5) don't scare the candidates, which is another way of saying the judge should be rarely heard and" seldom seen.

To sum up, might I suggest that in all contests care should be taken to exclude the professional and semi-professional elements. I take it that the object of the competitions is not. primarily to enable a few persons to obtain a few guineas, nor to use for personal aggrandisement a list which may or may not be a certificate of character as to the work he or she may turn out. It is hardly in keeping with the reason of the society's being that those who are thoroughly at heme on the platform and receive remuneration for their services should W. ranked with schoolgirls and youna people in business. Yet I understand that in the art and singing contests there was snme room for complaint in this relation. If so. the evil should be checked at the outset. There is good material in Dunedin to work upon without this strain admitted, and with the selection, as far as possible, of judges from our own community—clergymen, lawyers, doctors, journalists, etc.—men whose characfers would place them above suspicion, the Competitions Society may become a source of benefit to the individuals, profit to the promoters, and amusement to the public.

Mr Clark, of Wellington, would seem to have a. high opinion of the elocutionary ability of our local veteran, for he was heard to say that he considered that in the reading from 'The Four Georges'on Saturday evening Mr Burton's pronunciation and enunciation were perfection. It is satisfactory to have local opinion thus corroborated by outside impartial testimony. Mr Burton's second piece, a scene from ' Twelfth Night,' was given at twenty minutes past ten, when the audience weie weary and leaving, and therefore the conditions were not favorable either to speaker or people.