STAGE DEGENERACY

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1678, 27 April 1904, Page 74 (Supplement)

STAGE DEGENERACY

It is the actor-manager (says the writer of “Musings Without Method” in “Blackwood’s Magazine” for March) whose greed and vanity have brought the worst disgrace upon the drama. ; When once the actor had made himself the tyrant of a theatre, the art of the. stage was doomed. The star was determined to shine alone in his firmament. j He did not wish anyone to dispute his: brilliance; he was quite content that the company which surrounded him should walk on and off as quietly and unobtrusively as possible. The play became the player, about whom the willing playwright knocked 'up'-hia mechanical pieces. The public, the drama’s real patron, accepted the ojiango with enthusiasm, for the ppbhc is almost intensely interested in personalities, ana it fell upon the worship of the actormanager with eagerness. It caresse his portrait when it might not enter the!

august presence with flattery; who can blame the actor-manager if lie mistook a large balance for an artistic triumph? To-day, indeed, the actormanager is the master of all the theatres in London which are not given over to the cult of burlesque. , More than this, he would he lord of the provinces also, and he covens the country with the companies trained to mimic the actions of their chiefs with accuracy and submission-. How different .the time when our theatres were directed by _ men of taste, who-considered the best interests of the drama, and employed the best actons that were available to carry out tlieir designs! As for the rest of the theatres, in all of which a girl from somewhere or other dances and Chirrups inanely through three acts, they are in the hands of a syndicate or two which have not the smallest ambition to benefit anybody or anything save their own pocket. So we go round in a vicious circle, from the actor-manager who makes acting impossible, to a kind of acting which is the plainest discouragement to the composition of serious drama. And the worst is, the public is by no means displeased, being perfectly satisfied if it can cany away from the theatre a few tunes which it is able to bum, and a pleasant memory of an awkward and inexpressive dance-