BACK-STAGE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22832, 17 March 1936, Page 10

BACK-STAGE

GLIMPSES BEHIND THE SCENES THE ESSENTIALS OF SUCCESS By Onlooker. Like the gifted and volatile personalities who serve it. the theatre differs in appearance and character from every angle. To the unsophisticated lay mind it is a place of glamour and glitter, a region of romance and reconciled impossibilities, all of which arc divorced from everyday life. Stars, lights, music, and colour make up the deversity of the stage for most people, and little is done to give them any more adequate idea of the multitude of conflicting things the stage can be simultaneously, while still retaining its comprehensive and unified character. Unless one has a friend in the stage manager and can peep back-stage at the right time one must remain in that ignorance that is bliss. And since it is not in the nature of things for stage managers to be friendly the ignorance persists. The writer found a genuine exception last evening in Mr H. C. Nightingale, who directs the momentous happenings behind the proscenium at His Majesty’s, and does as much as anything to ensure the success of “White Horse Inn.” The real paraphernalia of production comprises more than exquisitely gowned actresses, emmaculately clad leading men and shirtfronted managers. Behind the scenes there is a background that must be examined to see how the theatre really functions. In this instance, there are players by the score, miscellaneous performers of all grades down to choruses and supers, not excluding goats, pigeons, and synthetic cows, all the way from the original show in Germany. BUSTLE AND HASTE Among them stage assistants, property men, electricians, and extra hands work in jostling proximity with no “ begpardons ” and little ceremony. Haste, seeming disorder and makeshift are the normal conditions. Personalities clash and wrangles are frequent. The crooked lanes back-stage, pierced here and there by narrow badly lit doorways seem full to overflowing. Everything is highpressure bustle, except where the peroxided heads of the chorus girls and sleek oiled crowns of the men cluster on the O.P. side while they wait to go on. There is an animated discussion about “ the marvellous blonde in the second row.” Everyone is consumed with eager curiosity, but the minute the call comes the off-stage expression changes to the footlight smile and all else is forgotten. The state of congestion at His Majesty’s just now cannot easily be imagined. To the onlooker it is too bewildering to be coped with, but it leaves the impression that the stage manager must be something more than a first-rate organiser. He must have imagination as well ns technique, infinite forebearance as well as all the qualities of the strict and tactful disciplinarian. At the close of each performance when the last curtain call has been taken and his notes of the show are complete he must close his prompt book with a heavy sigh of relief. THE REVOLVING STAGE But with “ White Horse Inn,” with its huge, revolving stage, Mr Nightingale’s task must be lightened. He did not say so, having, after the manner of his kind, no time to say more than a cheery “ Good evening,” but the great turntable seemed to breathe efficiency. Modern realism in the theatre is a highly artificial thing, arid, perhaps, if glamour is still to cling to the footboards, the audience should stay out-front. There is no end to the variety of the stage mechanisms which create the varied illusions of the theatre, but none is more impressive than the revolving stage in action in Dunedin this week for the first time (with apologies to Mr Bland Holt). Yet the revolving stage can hardly be said to be “quite at home” at His Majesty’s. The scene back-stage, in fact, is a perfect example of modern innovation and archaic survival functioning in smooth juxtaposition. Again, one feels, it is a case of “ hats off ” to the stage manager. He welds the old and the new into a working whole and hardly has to look at his watch to make sure that the show is on time.

The company requires two of the revolving stages, one always travelling ahead of the other. While the play ie performed in one centre, the other stage is installed in the next. Then when the company arrives the scenery is rushed to the theatre, and generally within eight hours of delivery six “ sets ” are in readiness for the rise of the curtain. The stage holds four, go that two changes are made on the turn-table during the evening. Within a minute of the curtain of one act, the stage is transformed, and an entirely new set is ready for the audience. Modern usage in larger centres in Australia and Europe provides for power ns the motive force, but in His Majesty's an old-fashioned, but extremely useful substitute is found in the form of a serviceable hand-winch, which a most important individual bestrides like a Colossus, holding in the hollow of his heavy hand the success of the show, and the stage manager’s peace of mind. STAGE ARTIFICE

It is interesting to note the variety of artifices used in the pursuit of realism. Side by side with the most complicated modern lighting sets exist the simplest of devices. No box of rice with a perforated slide makes the rain shower in “White Horse Inn,” but a long bar which nestles, among floods, spots, and baby spots, high up in the air, and sheds its dripping, drenching showers on the stage below. And that waterfall! It glistens and sparkles in the glow of a well-directed shot ns a pump draws from a five-gallon tank the water which cascades down only to bo caught up to cascade again and again. The goats are real goats and so are the pigeons, and the cows look real enough to be cows, but,for their remarkable intelligence. Clouds and the blue mist of hills, bright sunlight and summer colouring are all the result of cunning lighting, skilful manipulation and imaginative craftsmanship. ABOUT CHORUS GIRLS The chorus girfe, like the goats, arctea!, and one has only to see them at work to realise how much they deserve the kudo s they so rarely receive because the stars get it all. The general conception of the chorus girl ig still coloured with the memory of times when the ladies of the gaiety drove jp to the stage door in their broughams and drank champagne at sumptuous .suppers given by wealthy admirers whom they finally married. That tradition, like many others in the theatre, has fled. The truth about the modern chorus girl is that she is a little robot in the huge amusement factory of the entertainment industry. She is the hardest worked and lowest paid of the theatrical rank and file. Watch her as she dashes from stage to dressing room (or what passes for such at His Majesty’s) and you will realise how hard she works. Dancing, singing, romping, she must always smile. Hot, weary and dusty with the grime of the boards, she must never relax. She is the routineer, drilled almost to forget initiative and the creative uree. Standardised stops and movements and smiles are the hardest work of all. But it is always done and generally done well. The high spots of publicity all go to the star, and the higher the spots the more the real facts about these heroines of musical copiedy and revue are thrown into obscurity. Spare a special round of applause next time for the ladies (and gentlemen) of (he chorus.