STAGE AND CENSOR.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 4 August 1925, Page 9

STAGE AND CENSOR.

“TIGHTENING UP” DEMANDED

CRITICISM OF PLAYS. LONDON, July 19. The Public Morality Council’s intention to petition the Government, requesting a tightening-up of the theatre censorship, with a view to preventing the production of sex plays, has aroused th e keenest controversy. The movement represents London churches of all demnominations, and aims at making the London County Council the licensing authority, with power to withdraw a theatre license in the event of an objectionable prodc-t-ion. . . Mr: Seymour Hicks, in an interview published in the Daily Mail, says: “Obviously there is something wrong, apart, from the question of decency. The Deity’s name seems to have become accepted as part of stage dialogue, and frequently is used in the most light-hearted way, merely as a colloquialism and not as an emotional expletive. “Nevertheless, because we are living in days when women smoke between the acts and youths adorn themselves with Oxford trousers don’t let us lose our sense of proportion and make a ‘cock-shy’ of the censor, who is a benevolent person in an extremely awkward position. He has a difficult course to steer. A policeman can decide what is basically indecent, but. the Lord Chamberlain is forced to decide whether delicato subjects, which, perhaps, are in bad taste or ar e mildly suggestive, are sufficiently obnoxious to deprive a hundred people of their daily bread. “I hav© seen the most beautiful words in the language, ‘I love S’ oll *’ made grossly indecent by a pause and a gesture. I favour a, vigilance committee to urge the withdrawal or modification of objectionable plays, but the censor must he the final arbiter.’’ Mr. Frederick Lonsdale, the playwright, says: “A preacher is forced to mention sin in his pulpit, and if wickedness were omitted from plays there would, be no opportunity of presenting a conflict, ending in the triumph, of virtue, which is the dramatist’s trump card. My contribution to ‘immoral’ drama— ‘Spring Cleaning’ —is really an unintentional sermon. I cannot conceive anyone being incited to vice by witnessing ‘Spring Cleaning’s’ castigation of modern degeneration.” The Daily Sketch says: “Only four plays in London could be described as indecent or pernicious, namely, ‘Rain,’ ‘White Cargo,’ ‘Fallen Angels,’ and ‘Spring Cleaning,’ yet the last, as a whole, ourports to run down vice and hold up virtue. Bishops should see more plays and not listen to prejudiced persons who are so walling to give information.”