On and Off the Stage

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19750, 17 March 1934, Page 12

On and Off the Stage

News about Plays and Players

An Aucklander, Stanley Brogden, (Who left New Zealand a year or so ago to take up literary and theatrical work in England, has succeeded in making an effective entry into films at Elstree, according to a London correspondent. He has a role with Bebe Daniels in her new musical romance, “A Southern Maid.”

Yvonne Printemps and Sacha Guitry, the French stage lovers who are fully as famous as are Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks in the film -world, recently determined to secure a divorce by mutual consent. The courts, however, decided that neither party had produced adequate legal grounds, and bo that marriage continues. Yvonne Printemps is no longer playing opposite her husband in his comedies. Instead, Bhe is in London learning English, to appear in Noel Coward’s new play.

Negroes from West Africa and the Hlfest Indies presented an all-coloured play at the Scala Theatre, London, recently. It was called “At What a Price.” The production, organised by the League of Coloured Peoples, was played in all manner of dialects and accents. Some spoke the heavy, rich language of the African coast, others in the staccato, sing-song tones of STamaica, and a few, natives of London, With a genuine Cockney accent. These Bctors are mostly students in London, and they aim to raise enough money to build a hostel for Empire negro Students in England. The play itself, Which concerns the “comedy and pathos of Jamaican life,” was written by a West Indian girl, Miss Una Marson, who also played the part of the heroine. The authoress is a journalist who edited and published a monthly magazine in Jamaica.

The great comedian, George Robey, started life as an engineer, but his heart was not in the job. His first appearance on the boards was at a church charity concert in Birmingham. The quick-witted and inimitable youth attended a show where a performer invited subjects for immediate rhymes and songs, which were about soldiers, sailors, statesmen and the like. They Were promptly done and pleased the audience. The rhymster wanted more suggestions and up jumped Robey with the word “impecuniosity.” The man ton the stage was nonplussed for a moment, but then advanced to the footlights, and with an air of deep injury, said: “Pardon me, sir, but I never rhyme on religious matters!” Robey recently announced. that many kind people had described in books and newspapers how they managed to procure for him his first public appearance. “Their accounts have been,” he added in his whimsical manner, “extremely amusing, entirely different and quite wrong!”

Mr. St. John Ervine, lecturing earlier this year to the Royal Society of Literature on the subject of “The Author, the Actor and the Audience,” made copious quotations from “The Works of Man,” by the late Lisle March* Phillips, a work which had made a profound impression on his mind. The central doctrine of that book was that “art in its great creative phases is an utterance, an embodiment, of the ruling thought and prevalent conviction of an age. It is an expression of life registered at the moment when life is most capable of articulate utterance.” They got, in brief, the kind of art and literature they were fit to get. The mood of our time was, Mr. Ervine said, one of despondency, and he illustrated the effect of that general despondency ton the dramatists by quoting, passages from the latest works of Mr. Noel Coward, Mr. Sean O’Casey and Mr. Bernard Shaw. “There would seem to be no common bond between these three, yet the young man of 34, the middle-aged man of 49, and the old man of 77 are agreed in despair. They throw up their hands together.” Mr. Ervine’s conclusion was that the quality of the drama would rise as the quality of the audience rose. “If you Want to improve the drama,” he said, “go out and improve yourselves.”

The English producer, William MolliEon, whose father and mother acted With Tree, Irving and others of high position in the theatre 30 years or so ago, has been recording some reminiscences. His early morning job as a boy was to go to the front door and bring in the milk, a duty he enjoyed because a charming young thing next door invariably greeted him. He Would say “Good morning,” and she would reply “Bonjour." That was as far as it went. Within the last ten years a Frenchwoman stepped into his office at the Palace Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, to discuss a part in a play. They instantly recognised each other as the casual door acquaintances of years previously. The caller was Alice Delysia—the tremendously impulsive and generous sort of Nell Gwynne, adorable when she had her own way! Mollison suggests that Delysia is—bracketed with Evelyn Laye and Jose Colline—the least “sidey” of women stars of revue and comedy. He recalls that “No No, Nanette,” that milestone of musical comedy that started him as a producer, preceded “Prince Charming,” which had a .treribly bad first night at Manchester. He and Clayton (of Clayton and Waller, musical comedy entrepreneurs) were quarrelling on the stage when the agitated stage manager pushed the button by accident and up went the curtain before a puzzled audience. Evelyn Laye rushed on from the wings and unceremoniously bundled the quarrelers off, at the same time demanding in angry lowered tones whether they were trying to ruin her entrance.

Dr and Mrs R. D. King of Timaru, who are leaving shortly on an extended visit to England, will be greatly missed by the South Canterbury Drama League. Mrs King is an enthusiastic and energetic member of the executive and an invaluable “behind stage” worker at the annual festivals, as well as a capable member of the Play Reading Circle of the South Canterbury Women’s Club, and of the repertory group of the League. Dr King is property manager of the League and has rendered most valuable 'services in that capacity. Their friends will wish Dr and Mrs King a very pleasant holiday abroad, and a safe return to Timaru.

The English stage for some time has been hard hit by the crippling effect of Government taxation. Mr. C. B. Cochran recently gave some amazing figures to confirm the iniquity, made worse by the fact that taxes are irrespective of losses. Amongst others, he cited: A musical play which lost £2998 and paid £15,331 tax; a revue that lost £726 and paid £13,919 tax; two musical plays which lost between them £IO,OOO and paid nearly £40,000 tax; the last London revival of “The Miracle,” which lost £15,000 and paid £13,000 tax. He also mentioned three plays which yielded a profit of only £BOOO between them and yet paid £28,000 tax. Meetings are now being held to protest against the form of taxation, which, it is declared, must be relaxed in the stage is to make the progress desired. Mr. Alfred Denville, M. P., who has been a considerable benefactor to impoverished old artists, and Mr. Geoffrey Whitworth, secretary of the British Drama League, are taking a leading part in an appeal to the the Chancellor for relief from taxation'

One of the most extraordinary things in literature and the drama is that the same ideas should strike two, three, and sometimes half a-dozen authors at the same time. In the last year or two, for instance, there have been six or seven plays about the Brontes; most o* them were written by dramatists who had not the faintest notion that other people were at work on the same subject. At the present moment in Loudon there are two important plays about Mary Queen of Scots, one by Maxwell Anderson, the American playwright, called “Mary of Scotland,” which has been acquired for England by Gilbert Miller; the other by “Gordon Daviot,” the woman who wrote “Richard of Bordeaux.” Then, it is announced that Madeleine Carroll’s next big British film will be “Mary of Scotland.” Now it appears that R. C. Sherriff, the author of “Journey’s End,” and Alfred Sangster, who wrote “The Brontes,” which had a long run at the Royalty last year, have been working for some time on plays about Napoleon at St. Helena. The two authors issued the news last month, and each had a shock when he heard that someone else was at work on the same subject. That is not the whole of the story. Mr. Sherriff’s , last unproduced play is about the middle-class man who won a big prize in the Irish sweepstake. Almost as soon as' it was bought by Gilbert Miller there was the announcement of “Sheppey,” Somerset Maugham’s play dealing with the same subject. Mr. Sangster, who was probably first in the Bronte field, discovered after he had finished “The Brontes,” that several other authors were dramatising the famous sisters..