DORRIEN AND THE DRAMA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16408, 9 December 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

DORRIEN AND THE DRAMA.

THEATRICAL TASTES. I ' I BY MRS. I.KO. MTERS. Periodu ai.lt, some critic of life rises in his wrath and smites with stinging condemnation the morals of the stage. To-day it is no less a personage than General Sir Horace Smith Dorrien, who. by hurling slings and arrows of bitter denunciation at the drama, has achieved for himself a wider publicity than by sword and strategy on the field. Ihe attack is ill-timed. . . . While the whole man-power of the Empire fights and suffers and dies in this most monstrous welter of war, it seems such a petty thing to prick and harry the socalled standard of the age. There is no standard now. There is lio.thing to he seen and nothing to be thou id of but the welfare and the cheer of our heroes on field and sea. The voice of the men who are fighting for us is the voice of the Empire : and if our fighting men want the lively, kicking hodge-podge of the modem "Revue" with little rhyme and less reason—with its bunches of lovely girls in chiffons and smiles, they are jolly well going to have it!

So long as we are engaged on this grim and ghastly business of slaughtering Germans aud Austrian#, so long shall we refuse to waste any thought on such blighting bogies as the moral effect of modern stage productions. ... If we cannot amuse our Tommies and Jackies with the thinnest, silliest sort of theatric " merry go-round," if we serve them unquest ioningly—we are doing our Topmost Best for them, in catering to their cheerfulness by blotting from their minds this appalling, bloody melodrama in which they play their all too serious parts.

Soldiers' Marching Songs.

Quite consistently in line with the tone of our soldier hoys' theatrical tastes are the songs they sing in ramp and 011 the march. These lively lilts are by no chance classical! Yet how they hearten our heroes !■ . . . Who wore you with lapt night. Out in the Palo moonlipht? And— Who? Who".' Who's yer lady friend'.' And — Here. here, here we are again. And — Another little dunk wouldn't do us anv harm. Etc.. etc. All hot favourites, the selection of which would probably make Schubert and Schumann turn in their German graves, but would fill with delight the cherubic souls of our Gilbert and Sullivan. Sung lustily, they keep up the brave spirit of our men, and their feet forget fatigue. I-or there s a jolly good swing to these marching jingles ; and, be they common or not, they are very dear to the hearts of our boys. That's merit enough, is it not'!

Shall some frock-coated, long-haired musical dux deliver solemn broadsides of criticism against the cheapness of Tommy's musical taste . . . and sternly recommend the uplifting effect of fugue and oratorio? ... I think not.

An Old Charge. So with the' stage, -which has always been an easy' target for the bilious custodians. of the public conscience. Forgetting toe contract the decency of modem •plays as against? the salacious stuff served to the people in the days of the Restoration. They forget, too" that the Shakesperean productions we witness to-day are rigidly bowdlerised. . . . Remember. too, we support a Stage Censor ! The trumped-up old charge of immorality levelled against the theatre is as old as Sin itself. ... It started in those dim days when the drama became divorced from the Church, from which, oddly enough, it had its origin, 111 those Morality Plays in which were impersonated all the vices and virtues which encompass man . . . Somehow, it does not seem such a far cry from Morality mimes to Immorality delusions. ...

e are by way of losing our sense of values, though the psychological effect of this gigantic struggle has put into proper focus so many of our old whimsies. Yet this campaign of Smith Dorrien's for the suppression of everything of a suggestive or indeiVnt nature on the stage, at the cinema, in novels and newspaper, is. in comparison with the magnitude and importance of our Imperial campaign against Prussian aggression. why! it is like the nip of a mosquito on the body of a big howitzer.

111-timed Strictures.

]he contrast on the plane of national importance is really humorous! Vet. the daily papers, in all English seriousness, take up the controversy ; while near by in Essex the skeletons of three huge Zeppelins lie cordoned, and nil over the length and breadth of the land munition factories hum like human hives. AN e are a queer people! Troubling about " the tone of the theatre" to which j our fighting forces flock, when we Well j know the sublimity of the sacrifice each man .Jack of them is making ! It is like j asking a < hap to tidy his word robe be- | fore he cfTes—because tidiness is so exemj plary ! \ There is little danger of our becoming . too frivolous in war time ! Back of J laughter lie tears: under the froth and j nonsense ] i-e the deepest human emotions I that fear to rise too strongly to the sur- | face. "We laugh that we mav not ! weep.'' ... : We go to the show which is brimful of ! frivolity and lightsorneness. r'.,i the I stage to-day, then. "Motley's the i only wear. . . Beauty 111 brief ; attire holly in cap and bells— *o i waken strong men's laughter for an hi.nr. i Then, what Fate': Think of it? No. ' it's tragically unthinkable. . . .But. out ! out I upon these ill timed strictures mi the purity of the stage. j Would you give 'I omrnie and Jackie a tract in three wails to God-speed him 011 I the battlefield'; Lincoln and Gladstone. i 1 Abiaham Lincoln, that stern and loftyi minded patriot, said, at the time of the | American Civil War. "T must cither go I to the theatre or Bust!" And it. is told of the great Gladstone, that splendid and exemplary Englishman, that on the night of General Gordon's death he felt the need of distraction and attended the theatre. Note, this latter statement is made | without corroboration of fact, but it I stands till challenged. History does not I mention the class of play these great J men witnessed. But it was mercifully ; long before the appearance of revues ■ yet not too early for clean, clever j comedy or tor 1-rein h opera bouffe. ' • • . Problem plays of Ibseriesque ci.mI plexity. nor yet the dialectic drama of Shaw ami Brieux. h-d not arrived to perplex the minds of playgoers. In all times the theatre has been an exposition of the needs of the public— it is on the scale of supply and demand. To-day it affords a vast amount of quite harmless entertainment—the kind of entertainment which soldiers, sailors, and civilians want—oll the lines of relaxation and light amusement.

If some of it seems silly to General Sir Horace Smith Dorrien he is free to sit in his study and read Plutarch's Lives : while down Leicester Square way a. very pretty girl is singing : "If I were the only girl in the world and you were the only hoy ! to a delighted music-hall full of real Men I