The Stage in England.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 26, 30 December 1908, Page 49

The Stage in England.

(By P. A. VAILE, in the “Saturday Review.”) I am not what is commonly called “a dramatie critic.” I go frequently to the theatre in London, yet am, as men go in these lugubrious parts, a very cheerful person.

This preamble is, I -am afraid, necessary. Without it one might think that I claim to be an authority on the drama and that I am an unmitigated pessimist. It is not so.

1 speak but as a child of nature, who has during the last six or seven years wandered far. and wide in this little world of ours—who has, in short, put a girdle round it several times—and who has in that same space seen nature and acting in many lands. So that when I come to pass judgment on the great men of the greatest city of the greatest empire—of this little dot of ours, swimming in its tiny insignificance millions of miles from anything really big—l am not awed as I suppose I ought to be, for I am on the great foundation level, that is bo markedly absent here. I am down to nature, and my judgment is based on nature.

It is the lack of the tone of nature that is killing the stage in England, as it is killing much that is beautiful in everyday life. And it is the fault of those who lead that this is so, for at heart the Englishman is easily stirred and deeply responsive to honest emotion for all hisbrave show of indifference, and it should be the aim of those whose duty it is to educate to make it known that it is not ignoble to respond generously to an emotion -nobly borne, for the pose of to-day is the nature of to-morrow in the cycle of generations. There is no need for ’Englishmen to try to bottle up their emotions needlessly. The throat that is not used relaxes, the' muscle that is not exercised becomes flaccid, the spirit that is never shown atrophies. Let us then be natural, and we shall improve our national life and our stage life beyond recognition. I speak now as one who has had a world-wide view, and I say without any hesitation that in my opinion an English audience is almost the most emotional that I know. It is infinitely more so than a colonial audience. The colonial is freer in his ways, perhaps more hospitable, more frank, but you cannot stir him in a body as you can the Englishman.

The Englishman to-day responds nobly to genuine emotion, to patriotism and to pride in deeds of heroic -nature, la there here no scope for our playwrights! Must we feebly endeavour to Frenchify or Americanise our stage because wo will not be natural and use and cultivate ♦he very qualities that put ua where we uow are in the forefront of nations?

(Shall we continue to lean more and more on other nations because we do not know what we want, and have not strength and intelligence enough to use the mine that lies at our feet? Ay, truly it is an old mine, but it is rich in pure gold, and so long as England is England, properly used it will prove inexhaustible.

It would be too cruel to attempt to analyse the things that are now being used on the London stage. There is no necessity to thrash the dead horse. When we have taken out French caricatures, American cyclones, Shakespearean parodies and those circuses ycleped musical comedy we are practically reduced to the feeble thing that is produced at the author's expense, and runs for thirteen days—more or less—to “paper houses.”

There are good strong patriotic plays that would bring audiences—and hold them—going begging in London because actor-managers do not know- the English character and taste —we have had a striking example recently—-and always want a play to suit an elderly man with a little Mary, gouty feet, and a wife, who unfortunately also generally requires a part, and although fifty-five or thereabouts has a chronic burning desire to play a poetess of nineteen. I can write a play of sorts myself, indeed have been rash enough to do so, but I find it impossible to produce anything that even shows a colourable imitation of an inherent power to overcome these difficulties, or should 1 say, come up to this standard. The modern play must be written up to an actor-manager and his wife or it won’t do. The other characters don’t matter, don’t you know. They are kind of comic relief, eh what? or anything like that; but really when one considers how diverse are the noble forms of London actor-managers and their rulers, it would puzzle Shakespeare himself, eleven super-Shakespeare, to make his plays fit more than one pair. Then the question arises, “Is the game worth the candle?”

If things are in such a condition in this dear old land that genuine British plays, smacking of the soil, and of the strength and patriotism that goes from that soil into our bones and marrow, are not wanted unless they fit a much too prosperous and globulous actor-man-ager and his wife, who also is probably globular, it is time for England to consider the education of her children in the way that they should go, and so arrest the decline of our drama which is now so apparent. But they are not!

I am a confirmed optimist, and I feel sure that the time is not far distant when it will be recognised that other things pay better than trash. This may be an ignoble reason for reform, but unquestionably it is an important factor. 1 have spoken of the English national calamity, repression. Londoners have recently seen Sicilian, French and American actors in this city. Can it be said that we depict life and nature more aeeuratelv than they do?

I leave the answer to this question to those who should know, and I also make them a present of my diagnosis of the English character. They will not find it far wrong. I have held an audience here for a long time merely telling them of the great empire they have never seen—that 1 have seen three times in five years—and that can be done much better by actors and managers who know how to appeal to their emotions by accessories and acting. Some enterprising actor-manager will perhaps remember that after all, at heart; the English are natural—and he will make much gold.