"NOISES OFF”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 814, 7 November 1929, Page 1

"NOISES OFF”

AUCKLAND HEARS DIN OF BATTLE EFFECTS AT HIS MAJESTY’S Acrid smoke, blinding flashes, and deafening detonations—these predominate in impressions gathered behind the scenes during the presentation of the great dramatic play, “Journey's End,” at His Majesty's Theatre. f J , HE grim realism of battle is portrayed with a fidelity rarely achieved on the stage, and when the play moves to its gripping climax, and the curtain falls on the collapse of the parapet as Stanhope rushes from the deathbed of Raleigh to join his men on the fire-step, the effective picture seen from the front of the house is pallid compared with the hectic spectacle at the back. Behind the scenes the outlines of the properties and the figures of actors and stage-hands are blurred and dim in the pungent murk. Smoke is produced from an ammonia smoke-gas cylinder as actually used in France, and in the dense cloud move the figures of men rushing’ from battery to battery, while yellow tongues of fire stab through the smoke, until the climax&is reached with the explosion of four heavy steel pieces placed well away from everyone against the distant rear wall. CAREFUL PLANNING

All this uproar of battle cannot be produced by haphazard arrangement. Responsibility for its creation is in the hands of the stage manager, Mr. Reginald Carey, and his assistant, Mr. E. Burke, who prepare the formidable armoury each evening, and with a squad of active helpers bring in the effects of gunfire at the appointed times and with carefully-planned graduations in sound. One man has a particularly arduous task. It is his job to keep the guns rumbling “up Ypres way” (“ . . . They never stop up there”), and that ominous accompaniment to the whole action of the play is given by the simple plan of rocking a square iron tank to and fro on a large piece of felt. There are two other iron tanks back stage. Into one of them a stand of revolvers is discharged in quick succession. The other produces an echoing sound when a battery of electrically-fired explosives is discharged against its side. More than 100 detonations are produced from these appliances in very quick succession.

Machine-gun noises are simulated by the application of an empty cigarbox to the teeth of a geared wheel driven at high speed by an electric motor. While one man is doing this, another slaps two leather pads very rapidly with flat sticks to produce the effect of Lewis guns some distance away. Then there are the two yacht guns, giving a sharper detonation, and last of all, the four steel bombs, touched off electrically, and each charged with half a pound of gunpowder. PARISIAN BEAUTIES Realism has been pursued earnestly throughout. There are real maps of the St. Quentin sector on the table of the dug-out, and real beauties from “La Vie Parisienne” gaze brazenly from the walls. The Verey light that sheds its ghostly radiance through the door of the dug-out during the night watches is operated every 35 seconds, just as it was at the Front, and behind the scenes by the step to the main entrance of the dug-out is a tin of real mud, brushed on to. boots and clothes at appropriate intervals. In the midst of all this dramatic sincerity it is sobering to note that the whisky consumed by Stanhope is only burnt sugar and water—discovered long ago to be the best stage substitute for the intoxicating juice of the rye. It is cheering, too, to find that no cases of shell-shock or deafness have yet occurred among the members of the company or the men behind the scenes But they wisely take precautions. During the two brief periods of intense noise the assistants stuff cotton wool into their ears, and the others with free hands clasp their palms hard against their heads. And lastly there is a fine irony in the fact that the book to which one of them turned in his spare moments last evening was, “All Quiet on the Western Front.”