PLAY IN WEST END CHURCH.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20501, 31 August 1928, Page 6

PLAY IN WEST END CHURCH.

A VERY MODERN DEVIL “CHU CHIN CHOW ” TUNE. (From Oca Own Correspondent.) LONDON, July 5. “A Prophetic Adventure in Creative Psychology” is the title of a religious drama performed at St. Peter’s Church, Piccadilly, on Friday night. This amazing play was performed by actors whose names were not revealed, and no indication was given on the programme of the authorship. It was produced by a body of philosophers called the Schola Vitae, given by permission of the Bishop of London, and it is to be produced again “ in more comprehensive form ’’ in St. Paul’s, Covent Garden. No make up was used by the performers, with the exception of the adventuress; the characters, from the “ flapper ” in knee-length skirt and silk stockings to the girl with her gold bag, were all in modern dress.

In the first part of the play blue and gold curtains formed the background of jhe stage which had been set in front of the sanctuary rails. The first scene takes place on the Road of Life, in front of the inn of the Last Hope, a realistic piece of scenery. A company of varying types, from an adventuress to a doctor, talked quietly in front of the inn until they were startled into silence by the coming of Satan, in crimson robes draped with black lace, and an enormous striped hat in black and crimson.

“ Satan pushed a wheelbarrow bearing the legend " Eat More Fruit,’’ and sang a more or less comic song to a tune from “ Chu Chin Chow.” SATAN’S GIFTS.

“ Satan ” offers his gifts to the revellers —flower girls, workmen, loungers, and beggars. He gives them falsities in place of realities —“Frivolities” instead of •‘Joy”; and he subtly steals from them potential talents which he throws into a rubbish heap or keeps for his own evil purposes. Lights are switched off as “ Satan ” and the gratified crowd leave the stage. The next scene begins with_ the singing of verses set to the tune of “ Ten Thousand Times Ten Thousand," beginning: Come, rise ye men to conquest In Michael’s holy war, Bring Love’s intelligence to fight Satanic mystery. The congregation joined devoutly in the singing. Next “ St. Peter ” appears with his dangling key, and after some words to a priestly figure in white, who represents the “Spirit of Adventure,” with whom is a golden-haired little girl, four characters, the Adventuress, the Self-righteous One, the Suffragette, and the Doctor come in turn on the stage. SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE. The Self-Righteous One, who is a fashionably dressed middle-aged woman, who has spent her life in rescuing the “ fallen ” of her sex, is severely reprimanded by the Spirit of Adventure, Who tells that she lacks love. Penitent, she throws off her crucifix and gives her lilies to the little child. With curtains thrown back, and the chancel as her setting, the Adventuress approaches the Spirit, still making up, andf with a jaunty announcement that she doesn’t want to be saved, she asks the Spirit to give her a good time, telling him that the “ sanctimonious old sinner ” who has been trying to save her soul has not the courage to do what she does, but finally decided to try the experiment of finding a new kind of good time.

The Doctor jocularly tells the Spirit that if its iealing virtues were all allowed to work, the medical profession would lose half their bank balances, but decides in the end to co-tperate with the Spirit. And the Suffiagette learns that she has no “ rights ” but the rights of self-abnegation. Then comes a fire dance, representing the liberation and domination of the Spirit among mankind. In the third scene “ Satan,” frightened by the growing power of the “ Spirit,” returns to see what is happening. He finds that there are now many adventurers waiting to start on the Great Adventure of Life, and when St. Peter comes to unlock the Gate of Heaven he finds it closed upon him. The Archangel Michael appears, and “Satan” finally collapses, and is no more.

HONOUR IN RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES. "It would be a pity 'writes the theatre correspondent of the Morning Post) if too much—or too little —were made of the movement confessedly in progress for allowing an element of burlesque to enter into those modern ‘ moralities ’ which are being played just now in so many churches throughout the country. The promoters of this performance have contended that there is nothing new in it—that humour has been admitted into religious observance since the Jays of Greek comedy, and that the mediaeval ‘ interludes ’ and such occurrences as the ‘ Feast of the Ass/ when priest and congregation brayed together in church—not to mention touches of humorous character in ‘ Everyman ’ and in Mr Masfield’s play in Canterbury Cathedral—are to be held as precedents. Laughter, it is claimed, can be as truo as tears. Satan’s song was a kind of doggeral sermon, addressed to the ‘ sensations throng,’ of whom Satan says that ‘ when their passions he has lit ’ he will ‘throw them all into a pit.’ Afterwards St. Peter arrived and led them into a better way. But the impression was not so much one of sincerity as of an affectation of stupidity: which is a very different thing.”