THOUGHTS ON THE NATURE OF REPERTORY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22066, 23 September 1933, Page 7

THOUGHTS ON THE NATURE OF REPERTORY

By C. R. Allen. ,

The question has been raised, in connec.i. tiqn with the recent production of “5.0.5.,” as to the nature of repertory. Funk and Wagnall’s dictionary gives as 4 the primary meaning of the word, “ A place where, things are stored.” A ■ ' secondary meaning is, “ A list of numhers to be performed.” The word has made' some progress since those two , American lexicographers put their heads together..... Now wehave but to speak the word, and a vision of tense faces, scrappy meals of eggs cooked on gas rings,; three taps on the stage floor as a .signal that the severe curtain is about to rise on a dumb and empty orchestra well. That unfortunate tag from “ Hamlet,” “ The play’s the thing ” has been so often misapplied without its context that 1 shall refrain from quoting it now. What is essential about repertory is that there* should go into the acting of a play and the witnessing of a play an appreciation that can be gained only by hard and intensive study. In England- what is called the repertory movement is a reaction against a certain convention which grew up, let us say, in the time of Garrick. There was, of Si course,, the efflorescence of the Restoration dramatists when Nell Gwyn was a ' parishioner of Saint i Martin’s-in-tbe-Fields, but the commercial theatre may ’ be said to have had its beginning with ■J Garrick and Foote. The Elizabethan % theatre, with its apron stage and its i circular auditorium, was run ,to keep managers like Henslow in pocket, but the spirit that dominated the ■j theatre in Shakespeare’s time was '$ what we would now call repertory. % In an article by a distinguished I Shakespearian scholar©!! the nature df ' an Elizabethan audience it was, recently pointed out that Shakespeare’s verbal | dexterity would be appreciated by an audience in his own day more cogently a than it would be appreciated to-day. The system of grammar schools in Shake- “ spearc’s time fostered a class of intelligentsia whose appreciation of Shakespeare’s genius would be readier and -deeper than that of the man in the street to-day. The writer of this article* a scholar of some note, seems to have left out of his reckoning the Old Vic. audiences to be found every night in the Waterloo, road. Commercialism entered the theatre with the footlights. It was riot dispelled when oil made way for gas, or, as in the case of the Savoy Theatre, when electricity superseded the latter illuminant. The premiere of “ lolanthe,” when each fairy wore an electric bulb in her hair, and Captain Shaw, of the London Fire Brigade, was invoked as he sat in a box, represented the apotheosis of the theatre. The Savoy Theatre was one with the Savoy Hotel. Yet a quarter of a century later the plays of Bernard Shaw were being performed at. the Savoy, arid Shaw was represented by a, contemporary cartoonist as a beribbohed Strephon, bearded like Pan and playing on , those pipes which are associated with the goatfooted god. Despite this attempt to' hearten his readers the cartoonist must have known that the wind of Repertory had blown through the Savoy. Nowadays both the Repertory and the commercial theatres are threatened with extinction by the sound film. If they are to combat this menace the respective positions should be made clear. Thirty dr forty years ago Repertory connoted a stock company touring the provinces with two or three or four plays which were staged at the various towns belonging to a particular circuit. In New Zealand repertory was represented ;by Mr Tom Pollard, who produced comic opera and musical comedy with amazing resource. Mr Robert Brough and Mr Tithcradge gave New Zealand the cream of London successes. Pinero, Henry Arthur Jones, and Sidney Grundy were three of their representative authors. Mr William Hawtrey's

repertory company suggested more of the "English provinces than did the BrougbTitheradge combination. There were other managers who led repertory companies through New Zealand, the last but by no means the least being Mr Allan Wilkie. In England began that movement which ended in the invasion of;the Savoy itself with such a play.hs “The Doctor’s Dilemma,” a play which belongs emphatically to the genus -repertory. Miss Horniman began her enterprise in Manchester. She secured a lease of the Gaiety Theatre, surely an odd name for a temple of repertory. The Manchester school of dramatists arose. Stanley Houghton, tlie author of “Hendall Wakes,” Miss Baker, the authoress of “ Chains,” and Alan Mdnkhouse, who wrote “The Conquering Hero,” may be cited as the Manchester

triumvirate of dramatist—if one may speak of a triumvirate with a lady in the centre. The Manchester repertory movement had a strong ally in the late C. E. Montague, author of “ Dramatic Values,” a very incisive and informative hook upon the drama. Birmingham followed the lead of Manchester. Mr Barry Jackson, now Sir Barry Jackson, produced plays that had nothing to recommend them from the point of view of those who buy chocolates at the theatre. Among these was the “Abraham Lincoln” of John Drinkwater. The author was a young actor in Mr, Jackson’s company. Sir Nigel Playfair, who had recently acquired a derelict opera house in Hammersmith, of all places, came to Birmingham, and saw “ Abraham Lincoln.” He acquired the London rights of the play, and it went into the evening bill at Hammersmith, and stayed there for months. The West End picked up its skirts and came out to Hammersmith to see it. "Abraham Lincoln ” settled down to a run, but it remained a repertory play in spirit. A repertory play will stand many revivals, and.“ Abraham Lincoln” has stood at least three.

Shaw began his campaign on behalf of the intellectual play in earnest at the Court Theatre, where he had the no-operation of Harley Granville Barker, himself a dramatist with the repertory stigma upon him, and Mr Vedrenne, one of the first managers to defy the London convention. The Court Theatre has seen so,many interesting premieres that it has become the subject of a thesis by some student for an academic honour. Repertory was known in France long before it appeared in England. The French' partake so eagerly of theatrical activity that it was inevitable that an entente between actor and audience should be established. In Italy repertory reigned at the Scala. The question presents itself to New Zealanders, “Is an. indigenous drama possible?” The question is no new one, but it presents itself afresh in the, light of what, was recently written concerning the production of “5.0.5.” by the Dunedin . Repertory Society. “ 5.0.5.”. was accepted by Sir Gerald Dri' Maurier, whose policy during a 12 years’ joint management at Wyndham’a seems to have been the exploitation of his own very attractive personality in plays of a light and ephemeral nature. One such play was “ 5.0.5.,” excellent in its way, but of no significance from an intellectual point of view. It belongs to what may be called the “ opportunist” class of play. When the wireless S.O.S, call was a comparative novelty its introduction made for a momentary appeal. The first play, by the way, in which wireless was exploited—or perhaps one should say in which broadcasting was exploited—was “Listeners In.” This is a personal note, but I offer it for what it is worth. As my information comes to me entirely through the medium : of my ears or my fingers I cherished the notion that the title of this play was “Listeners’ Inn,” and had visions of something in the vein of Mr Lucas or Mr Milne. I was disillusioned. On the other hand “ R:U.R.” is certainly a repertory play. It is a play of ideas, and it arraigns our mechanised age as does Ernest Toller’s “ Man and the Mass,” which was put on for a matiuee with Dame Sybil Thorndike in what was. if I remember aright, the only woman’s role. Repertory has come to mean the play of ideas rather than the play of sensation. We may like both types of play, but, to be consistent, we should leave the performance of the afterdinner ploy to the amateur dramatic clubs, and the play of ideas to the repertory society.