LOST JOYS OF BOHEMIA

Evening Star, Issue 20256, 17 August 1929, Page 21

LOST JOYS OF BOHEMIA

WHAT THE THEATRE LACKS TO-DAY [By L. T. Luxton, in the Mol bourne ‘ Argus.’] I knew the urbanity of his maimer, mellowed by nearly sixty years, the facility of his wit. the diversity of his anecdotes, and the endless ramifications of his friendships with people of .the stage. His silver-white hair showing dimly in the darkness of the body of the theatre, he was watching the mechanics set the stage for the fulldress rehearsal. “I am not suggesting that the actors of yesterday were better than those of to-day,” he said. “ What I contend is that their personalities ran less along formal. lines, that they had more of that Bohemian spirit which blows through life like a blast of fresh air. I, remember in a touring company in America there was a clever fellow to whom humorous antics came naturally —and to whom whisky came naturally, too. He was frequently so intoxicated that he was unable to go on the stage. Finally the manager hit on the plan of holding his salary and paying it out iu small amounts at a time. On the day on which the company was hilled to open in a new town the comedian, with an unquenchable thirst gnawing at him, conceived the ingenious idea of pawning himself for lOclol. As he himself was the security for the loan, lie had to stay in the pawnbroker’s shop, but he sent out a boy who bought him whisky. Ten minutes before the show began,'when it was too late to find an understudy to take his part, the comedian sent a curt note to the manager intimating that he was in pawn, and would have to be redeemed if the show were to go on. 'Within three minutes the manager was paying the astonished pawnbroker 15dol to redeem his comedian from pawn!” . “ I remember another time when the hero emerged from his dressing room sober enough to act, but too drunk to remember his lines. He gave the call-boy a copy of the script and said, ■ ‘ Follow me.’ The first scene was very dramatic. Rushing up to the heroine, he said. “ I am here.’ The boy, misconstruing his instructions, promptly came out .from the wings, book in hand, and stood behind him. The hero walked left. The boy followed him. The hero walked right. The boy followed him. He, strode no to the heroine and mouthed ‘ We are alone, ail alone.’ and the hoy stood .behind him. At that the hero lost Ills*.temper, and picking the bow up by the scruff of tho neck he threw him with one mighty fling into the wings. Then, to the accompaniment of a great roar of lan"liter from the audience, he went on, ‘Now that that wretched little brother is gone we are alone, my darling, all alone.’ ” Scenery in those old travelling companies was always something of an unknown quantity. i reinegihyr one show

in which tho moon used to drop out of the sky every second or third night. I remember another time when 1 was playing ‘heavy’ in the ‘Lights of London.’ It was in a little town in Western New South Wales. I had to deliver a long soliloquy reeking with villainy down-stage. As 1 learned afterwards an amateur stage mechanist had tied the curtain rope to the wrong cleat, close - to a gas jet. Halfway through the soliloquy, at the darkest and most villainous part, the rope burned through and the curtain, rattling down with a crash, obliterated me. We angled for the burnt rope, caught it, hauled the curtain up again, and T went on from where I had been cut off. Will you believe that there was hardly a laugh P _ People in the back country took their play-going_ so seriously then. They would even bring their own seats. You laugh? Well, that is what they did in another back country town in New South Wales. There was no seating accommodation in the hall, so each man brought his own seat and hanged it down in the front of the hall. It happened, however, that the finale of the first act was a fire scene—we dragged a rag soaked in methylated spirit across tho stage with a piece of twine. The audience were quite unused to such novelties, and as soon as they saw the sinister blue flames they took the fire for genuine, and in the twinkling of an eye every man and woman had hoisted his or her .chair on to his or her shoulder and dashed for the exit door. “ Needless to say, every self-respect-ing actor in those days observed all the time-honoured superstitions. Within the precincts of a theatre no actor or actress would have dreamt of whist ling, quoting ‘Macbeth,’ speaking the last line of a play at rehearsal, singing * Alice, Where Art Thou,’ or TostiV ‘Good-bye,’ carrying ‘props’ in a ca* pet bag, or burning three candles to gether. I remember one girl who lit three candles to make up by—she died three weeks afterwards. I remember a manager-actor who sang Tosti’s ‘Goodbye’ in place of another song at rehearsal, and his company had no option but to join in the chorus. Misfortune overtook them almost immediately. Oho of the actors collapsed on the stage half an hour afterwards. The actormanager, who used to boast that he bad not missed a performance for fif teen years, temporarily lost his voice next dav; another actov contracted a septic throat, and was - forced _to stand down for six weeks; and■ within the same Week one of the girls lost a valuable string of pearls. , I could multiply instances* of that sort for an hour. 1 remember one time ”

“Splendid!” He had stopped short in the middle of his homily.- I followed the direction of his gaze. The palter of the comedians on the stage had died away, and across the blackness and silence of the empty theatre came tho soft tapping and the slithering of many foot. Then as the chorus swung across the stage in full show costume the orchestra struck up the song Which was destined to become one of tho ‘ hits ” of the year. Swinging, stamping .swaying, pirouetting, every girl was throwing herself into the work to the exclusion of every other thought'.

He turned to me. “There is the eternal spirit of the theatre,” he> said. “Joy of living, light and gladness, lilting song, and the fervour of youth. In the midst of our drab, everyday world, a world of light and beauty. It is absolutely splendid. I doubt whether I have ever seen better.” “ But it hasn’t the care-free spirit of vesterday,” I insisted. The Bohemianism, the joy of living, the delightful informality—the modern theatre has lost all that.” Over the venerable face there spread the warm smile tinged with pleasant irony of that well-beloved actor who gave immortality to a catch phrase. “Aren’t we ali?” he asked.