SHAKESPEARE MEMORIAL

Evening Star, Issue 21080, 18 April 1932, Page 11

SHAKESPEARE MEMORIAL

♦- THE NEW THEATRE TO BE OPENED BY PRINCE. (British Official .Wireless.) Press Association-By Telegraph-Copyright. RUGBY, April 15. The new Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon will be opened on April 23 by the Prince of Wales. At a luncheon Shakespeare’s immortal memory will he proposed by tho veteran Shakespearean actor, Sir Frank Benson. Other speakers will be

Mr Stanley Baldwin and the French and American Ambassadors. It is anticipated that all the leading countries will be represented. An ode by the poet laureate will be recited at the opening performance in the theatre, when both parts of 'Henry the Fourth' will be given. The new theatre is of striking appearance, and is superbly equipped for play production. THE NEW THEATRE SOME UNKIND COMPARISONS Some British references to the new memorial theatre have not been kind to it. " 'Do you see yonder building? Methinks it is like waterworks.' 'Yes,' said my companion, ' it is topped like waterworks.' 'Or like a gaol,' I suggested. ' Very like a gaol,' came the answer—which seemed to recall something I had heard somewhere."- So one newspaper writes. The sight of the theatre is not pleasant to the writer in the ' Morning Post.' " It is an ugly, big, heavy, bare, forbidding red brick factory, with straight lines of featureless windows and a tower like a tank. It is utterly out of harmony with the lovely Avon reach it does its best to monopolise. It blocks out the view of the church completely from Waterside and the Bancroft Gardens. It gives to what used to be an ' other Eden, demi : Paradise ' a sense ot menacing obstruction.

“ I have looked at it from every point of view—from Clopton Bridge and from across the river; from the Warwick road, where the spire of Shakespeare’s church is seen peeping hopelessly over the top like a bayonet through a box; from the other side of the burnt-out remnant of the old theatre, which still plaintively clings to this great lump of a foster-child. I can find no point from which the new theatreis satisfactory. Nor can I find anyone in Stratford (or elsewhere for that matter) who pretends to be sincerely enthusiastic. “ These dear, good people who have to praise it for their own or Stratford’s sake apologise for it by saying ‘ Ah, but it is simple!’ Of course, it is. So is a cartload of bricks. What we want in a Stratford theatre is beauty, appropriateness to the little town among the Warwickshire meadows, to the wind-

ing river and embowering trees, and to a poet who was, among other things, romance personified. “ Even the dropsical bas-reliefs, which are ap yet the only ornaments, are to me unpleasing—and they are carved in the mortared brick instead of moulded in the original clay. The excuse is that a modern theatre has to ‘ look like a theatre.’ But what should a theatre look like? Is it any more like a theatre for failing to suggest one? Though the old theatre had its disadvantages, I never thought of it as anything else but a theatre. - “ Within walls there is no question that the new Stratford Theatre is admirable from every point of view, and beyond comparison better and more efficient than its predecessor, not to say a good many London theatres. It has an ample platform stage, with steps going down to the auditorium, so that front scenes and classic productions are possible in a way unknown with the ordinary picture proscenium. On either side of the stage itself are bays where whole ‘ sets ’ can be prepared and slid in, so that the waits in front of a lowered curtain, which are the bane of most Shakespearean productions, need never happen. The dressing rooms are a delight—with bathrooms—and the scone docks and storage for thousands of costumes all that the most up-to-date playhouse could hope for, “With it all, of course, the question prompts itself: Can Stratford keep a theatre like this, holding a thousand, full all the year round? It could not do so with the old theatre; is it more likely to with this? “ It is inevitable that in the winter the new Stratford Theatre will ‘go talkie.’ This is, indeed, already contemplated.”