After Dinner Gossip AND Echoes of the Week

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXV, Issue 21, 25 November 1905, Page 17

After Dinner Gossip AND Echoes of the Week

Plays Which Should Not Be Played. A considerable amount of correspondence has reached this office concerning Sudermann’s so-called sensational play, “The Fires of St. John,” and certain criticisms on the same which appeared in the columns of the “Graphic” devoted to drama, the bulk of the letters coming from those who had seen the play dow n South or in Australia. The question raised, either in the affirmative or negative, is mainly this: “Should such plays be tolerated on the public stage or no?” And be it said at once, the answer is by no means entirely easy to find, tn specific instances, the difficulty would, of course, not be serious, but the danger is in creating a. precedent. The censor of plays may be, would seem to be, in faet, a necessary being; but it cannot be denied that he has on occasion proved a very mischievous one to the eau.se of dramatic art, and that some individuals who hive held the position have proved hopelessly narrowminded, and have created a general impression that the office ought to be dono away with. We of the English breed do not love censors, or at all events censors as individuals. Public opinion is the safest, best, and most effective censorship to our minds. \\ ith regard to the censorship of plays, one must admit certain plays are unplayable, and Sudermann’s “The Fires of St. John” is one of these, but not because an ‘'incident” is unprintably disgusting and obscene, for in that case you must logically rule out of court that cheap religious melodrama, ‘'The Sigi? of the Cross,” But the point is that in "The Fires of St. John” the “incident” and the “just in time” turning out of the lights and quick curtain, are doubly offensive, because they tre the sole raison d’etre of the play, which, as said last week, labouriously burrows its way through alternate drivel and filth to the dirty point striven after, and then crawls awav from it tiresomely as ever. In “The Sign of the Cross” the “incident” between Marcus and Mercia in the act where, after locking all the doors, Marcus proceeds to pursue the lady round the stage, the intention is equally obvious. the ’’incident” equally indecent. Place the characters in modern evening dress, translate the place and period of the play from pagan Home to the draw-ing-room of to-day, ami can you honestly sav one “incident” is worst than the other? Scarcely, but the extenuation remains for the “Sign of the Cross” that the “incident” is merely an “incident.” The play could exist without it, ami though cheap ami clap-trap in sentiment enough, “The Sign” has an effect on some minds, and a good effect at that. Its ultimate lesson—what there is of it—is for good. Sudermann, on the contrary, is only fit for the sewer, so far, at all events, as “The Fires of St. John” go. But the danger of unplayable plays lies not so much in such as those we have mentioned, but in such as are really clever, and appeal to reason. to intellect, and the logical sequence of thing. Take, for example, the latest case. George Bernard Shaw’s “Mrs Warren's Profession” recently interdicted in New York. There is no single “incident.” no situation, in this remarkaide and brilliantly written play to which exception can be taken as to those in “The Fires of St. John,” “The Sign of the Cross,” “The Gay Lord Quex” "(one of the worst, by the way), and others. Yet for mischief it. holds an infinite greater capacity', and the broadest or most careless-minded man would admit after reading it that such a play would work incalculable harm if played on the stage by a competent company. The play is brilliant, its dialogue sparkles, the logical arguments of the principal character are forceful to an almost terrifying dogree, and just because of all these things It is a piny which cannot, must not, be allowed to be played. Tn squashing its

performance New York did right. For very obvious reasons it is undesirable to say much in detail of the play or its plot. Let this suffice, Mrs. Warren has amassed a fortune out of conducting or rather managing on an extensive scale what Kipling has called the “oldest profession in the world.” She and her partner have “establishments” in all the principal European cities, and on their capital of £40,000 they get a return of at least 35 per cent, “even in worst years.” Of all this, needless to say, one sees nothing on the stage, and save in a couple of speeches it is little alluded to in the dialogue, which brims with wit, with caustic sayings, and “very palpable hits” at society and the world in general The woman has a daughter, beautiful and innocent,and brought up at Newnham, where she is “equal third wrangler.” She is a direct fine charactered English girl of 22, who is in entire ignorance of how the money' has been made which provides her with everything. She has, in fact, barely seen her mother since childhood. Once she meets her “impossible” but all good-natured and affectionate parent, and some of her men associates; she dimly suspects something, but not the truth. This, however, comes out, and in the explanation and justification of her conduct the woman Warren entirely takes the sympathy of the audience. Mr. Shaw has given her one of the most terribly forceful speeches one has ever read, and the whole danger of the play' lies not in anything unpleasant on the stage, not in offensive dialogue (there is not a double entendre in the play, not a single immoral situation), but in the damnable plausibility and almost convincing justification of Mrs. Warren’s explanation and exculpation. This is special pleading, so intensely elever, so passionate, so half true, that it might easily send half a theatre full of girls borne, with the idea that after all immorality under certain circumstances is not so shocking. A play like this would do mischief. —mischief horrible and intolerable. Whether Sudermann does much one is inclined to doubt. He is too dull. There is little harm in revolting people, if little good: but to so cleverly paint and disguise vice as to almost make it appear virtue—-that, indeed, may and can work dreadful harm,-and the censor would, therefore, appear still a necessity. 4. 4- 'F Shadow-Catching. The man without a hobby must find life pretty miserable. How he fills in his time I don't know. The men of my acquaintance who are hobby-less arc very helpless specimens of the human kind, and would in all probability be most unsatisfactory people to live with. Woman seems created to spend her enthusiasm on a variety of interests, and if she has a pronounced hobby she is apt to ride it to death and become tiresome. Man is such a vacillating mortal that he wants a pretty keen bobby to give him a rallying point, as it were. Those compass less mortals who up till now have wobbled through the world without a hobby should make a vow this very summer to wipe out the stain and join the ranks of that vast army which will never need compulsory conscription which "Bobs” is advocating from the housetops for another and more belligerent army. I mean, of course, the noble army of “shadowcatchers,” or photographers. Buy a camera and be busy—and perhaps even happy. At all events you will be less nuisance to your friends —unless you persist in wanting to take their portraits, in which case you will probably make more enemies than you did in your antecamera days. Don’t be deluded into liecoming the embarrassed possessor of the most expensive instrument on the market, w'ith about half a hundredweight of accessories and chemicals, the names of which you will forget a« soon as you have

learned them. Just buy a cheap quarter plate stand or box camera, and never mind whether the lens is homoeeutric or any other “centric.” Just potter about with your “cigar-box and bit of window glass,” as your superior friend with the twin-lens or the aristocratic reflex will dub your humble weapon, and you will lasurprised what a lot of fun and pleasure you can get out of it—profitable pleasure. The day you buy a camera marks a new era in your appreciation of Mother Nature. Looking at the world through a photographic lens seems to widen instead of restrict one’s vision, and the study of light and shadow, which photo-

gruphy demands, educates the eye to ad things in land mid mu and »ky whirl' you never dreamed existed, Colour and form and lighting are no longer mean ingless terms, but cover a field of fa-ci bating beauty, of which you regret you had lieen so long ignorant. By all means buy or beg a camera. If you once start the odds are pretty good that you will l ever cast it aside, or if you do it will only be to take on a more expensive and elaborate one. Also, if you get anything specially good send i» along to “The Graphic” and have the pleasure of seeing your handiwork embalmed in all the glory of the wonderful half-tone process.