Best Voices on London Stage

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 532, 8 December 1928, Page 22

Best Voices on London Stage

All Belong to Men YOUNG ACTRESSES’ AFFECTATIONS The recent London production of “The Terror’’ as a talking film has set people talking about voices Most of the voices in this film are rather painful to English ears. But, then, so are many of the voices heard on the London stage. You can count the really fine voices of the English theatre almost on one hand. Most of them are men’s voices, writes a London critic. Matheson Lang has a fine voice, and so have Godfrey Tearle, Seymour Hicks, wonderful in his light and shade and in his whispering. Henry Ainley, whose health is reported to be improving, and Lawrence Anderson, at present in “Thunder on the Left.” Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson’s voice is still marvellously silvery. There is not an outstandingly fine speaking voice among the actresses at present in London. Isobel Elsom, Yvonne Arnaud (most attractively broken English), and Edith Evans have excellent voices, of course, and Evelyn speaks uncommonly well in musical comedy, but now that Madge Titheradge has retired (how deliciously husky she w’as!), Irene Vanbrugh is abroad, and Phyllis Neilson-Terry is not yet in town, the stage is practically barren of great feminine voices. Many of the younger actresses are annoying with their standardised affectations and mispronunciations. It is true, to be sure, that modem plays do not call for rhetoric, or declamation, or heroic speech, but this does not excuse the voice-poverty of the stage, j autiful voices are always a delight; it is just as pleasurable to listen to Mr. Ainley in a lounge suit part as in Shakespeare. But if speech nas deteriorated on the stage salaries have gone up—“gone up out of all reason,” according to William Mollison, the producer.

Violet Loraine, who has returned to the English stage, is appearing in “Old Things, Young Things,’’ in the provinces, before going to London. It is her first part in straight comedy. Miss Loraine was in New Zealand some years ago as principal boy. London is likely to have three successive theatreless days at Christmas. At most of the theatres there will be no performances after the fall of the curtain on Saturday night, December 22, till the following Wednesday afternoon, December 26. “In the ordinary way Monday is the worst night of the week for business, and when you get Christmas Eve falling on Monday you can only hope for a handful of people in any theatre,” said a leading manager. A scrap of the dialogue of “The Vagabond - King” (now playing in Sydney), in which Francois Villon (James Liddy) is talking to the disguised King Louis XI. (Arthur Greenaway): “Had I begotten in a brocaded bed I might have led armies and served France, have loved ladies without fear of cudgellings, and told Kings truths without dread of the halter; while, as it is, I consort with strays and wantons, and make my complaint to a dull little buzzard like you, old noodle.”