AUDIENCES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20028, 18 August 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

AUDIENCES.

BY GRAHAM HAT.

NOT WHAT THEY WERE.

Audiences are nob what they were. Now, don't hold up your hands and your eyebrows and start to harangue me about old fogeydorn, my modern young friend, I haven't said anything against them—?sot yet! I've merely said they are not what they were. I wonder if you are old enough to have fought the Germans at Trcnlliam or Tauherenikau. Do you remember kiw we felt after being stabbed in the arm and spending a month on slew and pebbles, and the humour of sergeantmajors, lopped off with the pale sallies of orderly corporals ? Then we were given a bath, had our hair brushed and sent off to hear a, concert party from Wellington. Oh! that wonderful concert —London had nothing to compare with it. Wo had seen nothing feminine for a month and we were enraptured. Wc had heard nothing but barking and growling by raucous voices, and those songs were like liquid sunshine. We went to hear the same concert by different artists every night for a week; then wc tried to stay away every night for a week and failed. At the end of two months we'd heard thoso songs about three times a week at concerts, twice a day at the Y.M.C.A. hostel, and some cheery soul in our tent had played them 011 a tin whistle twice after each meal. It was no longer a tune, it was an earache. Wherever wo went some kindly person would shoot thoso frightful tunes at us till they tasted like Sodom in the mouth. (I'm not strve that simile is technically sound, but its meaning is clear enough). The only pleasure to be got by our blase souses was to go and see how ecstatic the rookies became at their first concert. A Change in Values. That's what you are like, my young friend; you're like those concert-fed warriors. No, no, I still have said nothing against you. Your values are far truer, your artistic sense is higher than ours was in bygone days. Those were pretty poor songs, I have no doubt, and the artists used to do their best, but that's all. When you condemn the shows of to-day as dull, tedious, not worth enthusing over, ninety-nine times out of a hundred you are right. I know you, with your higher standards, would never have sat out the shows we thought were wonderful, You are right, and we were wrong, without a doubt. But isn't it all a little sad ? You miss such a lot of fun. This frenzied pursuit of pleasure seems to leave you in the cold somehow. Igo to the pictures about once a year and I always regret it. There's something lacking in me, 1 suppose; but, without pretence, they bore me. I went to see Jannings, who is acclaimed as a star, and I've never seen anyone carry on like that in real life; and as he wasn't funny either, I couldn't see why he did it. So, as pictures are not for me, I avoid them. Not so the girl who sat next to mo last time I went. She gazed coldly upon the screen, and at the first interval, re marked that it wasn't much of a show, and turned her attention to an ice. Her escort, trying to save tho evening, suggested that the music wasn't bad, but the girl thought the band at the Regal was better. So, surrendering to her mood, he said that you didn't often get a good show, and they reached unanimity ;it last. They didn't seem a whit more gloomy than the rest of the audienco. Not So Neighbourly.

I compared them with the audiences of tho past—oh, not so many years ago. Wo didn't go to three or four shows a week; there were not many to go to. But we looked forward for days and weeks to them. I won't say that our hearts were in a twitter all day, but we were pleasantly aware that the day was going to end up well. We didn't just throw a coat over what we were wearing, but wo sallied forth resplendent. Inside {he theatre everybody knew us and wo knew everybody, and it made us feel all warm and neighbourly. Very often tho pit carried on a one-sided conversation of extreme intimacy with us as we sought our seats. Then the band came in, and there were no half-measures about the band. There was lots of rhythm and drum and cymbals and the man with the bugle grew very red in tho face. The play itself was not half-hearted, either, especially if it was a Bland Holt season. It was before the days of nature and problem plays and bedroom comedies, and life ran very red and eventful during those three hours. You knew tho villain tho moment you saw him; he carried his villainy stamped all over him. When the hero had anything of

importance to say, he didn't let it trickle out like a casual remark about the weather; no, lie threw out his chest, drew a deep breath and let the back stalls have it. Realism of Yore. But the great moment came when, amid cheers and shouts and indescribable hubbub, a real live horse was urged on, blood, bones and all, so bedecked with ribbons and streamers and tinsel and bravery, with the hero entwined gracefully aboijt his neck,' that we could almost persuade ourselves that the old moke in his pride might lash out and kill a super. A real horse on the stage! What more realistic do you want than that? We didn't want anything, and we liked it all the better because we knew this horse well. Ho was a friend of ours, so to speak, and we felt almost as if wo had taken an actress to supper. Because you could see this old horse in Queen Street any day with old Barney Baxter, the Cookie, driving him in his gig. Somewhere during the evening there would be a shipwreck or a fire and the scenery would fall down and the villain would be foiled and virtue triumphant, and there would be feasting and mirth and wedding bells, and we would go home happy to bed.

That's what I mean when I say that audiences ave not, what they -were. I'm really praising your judgment.