Music and Drama.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 13, 28 September 1910, Page 14

Music and Drama.

By

BAYREUTH.

BOOKINGS.

(Dates Subject to Alteration.; AUCKLAND—HIS MAJESTY’S. September 29 “Sweet Nell of Old Drury.*' October 3 to 19—Allan Hamilton. October 20 to November 4—Fred Grata nt. November 21 to 26 —Auckland Competitions Society. THE OPERA HOUSE. In Season—Fuller’s I’.cturea. TIVOLI. Vaudeville (permanent). WE L LIN GTON.—O P (2 R A HOUSE. Sept. 24 W. John son-Ketehel Fight Pictures Oct. 7 to Nov. 5. Alhan Hamilton. Nov. 12 to Nov. 24. —Macmabon’s Pictures. December 24, six weeks’ Hea&on. —J. U. Williamson. THEATRE- ROYAL. (permanent). A Comedy by the Date Clyde Fitch, s "B” O\ EK’S Lane” is to be the next | I 1 comedy that New Zealand will witness, and is to be presented by the new Plimnier Denniston combination, under the management of Allan Hamilton. It is nod a melodraIna tie or a romantic production—at least, -it should not be if correctly handled. It is more a comedy of character and' atmosphere. The dominating personage of the story, »lhe Rev. Thomas Singleton, vicar of Brentford, is a lovable, gener-ous-natured man, whose parsonage is filled with financially helpless people. It is ruled over by Miss Mattie, a lady .whose acidulated loquacity, occasionally Sweetened by her devotion to Tom Singleton, is well and brightly shown by Miss Valero-ine Sidney. Miss Mattie has had to put up witYt the addition, to her household of Simplicity Johnson, a iMvrry “tomboy” of twelve, expelled from an orphanage asylum; Aunt Martha, a nil very-haired coquette, Muw dread of “dying in a workhouse,” is thus generously relieved: and I'iicle Bill, the bellringer, who thereby acquires home comforts in his old age. This open handed hospitality is regarded with jealous dislike by the narrow-minded parishioners. -The parson is ••stretching them all he tan,” but his purchase of a billiard-table "for the young men’s club is denounced bn all sides, his investment in playing cards is voted a sacrilege, and their cup is filled to overflowing when it is discovered it hat pretty Mrs. Herbert Woodbridge, the actress fiom London, who soprano in the choir, i«s separated from her husband. Tin* lady-organist declines to accompany a “divorced voice,” the Sew ing Circle boycotts the dangerous .so that she i* at her wit’s end to find lodging for herself and her little sou, and Singleton, with his characteristic defiance of local opinion, promptly finds room for her in h/s already crowded house. This leadls indirectly to the nearest approach to a dramatic situation that •the scope of the story admits of. Mary Larkin, a pretty bride of 18 years, arrives at the parsonage, with Herbert Woodbridge, in order to get married. •Singleton, much caught l»v the girl’s youthful charm, after asking the ufliial •Official question, gives her a ring from his finger do supply the place of the one forgotten by the care Jess bridegroom, and then calls in members of his household a«s witnesses. This brings the divorced pair face to face. Mrs. Woodbridge still loves her husband, the young man on his sid(‘ has told Mary nothing of this complication, and (he girl at last con sends jo follow the vicar’s advice, and at least wait .six mouths before uniting herself <'ith a man of whom she evidently knows ko little. *1 he rest of the coinedv is devoted to showing with ingenuity ami tact how Mary, appointed school mie. ress by the parson whilM waiting the halfyear of trial, insensibly responds to his warm admiration, and begins to think less of Herbert Woodbridge. Singleton’s position, i»s a deeply-in (created adviser who yet assumes an air of clerical Impart ialit\, is extremely delicate. Eventually a rocoip iliaTion is effected between yVoodbridge and his deserted wife. Tim growing attachment bdween him and -Alary sounds the happy ever afterwards note Dial heralds the curtain. Mr.

“Reynolds D< ‘nnistoii is to appear as Woodbridge, Mr. Harry Pliinmer as the Rev. Singleton, Mm. Robert Brough as

‘ Mrs. Woodbridge,” whilst Miss Lizette Parkes will take the part of "Simplicity Johnson."

The Evolution of Clyde Fitch. Clyde Fitch was no doubt the most industrious of American playwrights. Never a season passes now where two or three of his plays are not produced with varying success. And yet the critics, when lie was alive, especially in New York, dismissed his work, as a rule, with supercilious praise. He was not regarded as literary. And this curious fact must also be recorded: Europe, which regards most American playwrights with amused contempt, lent a willing ear to the late Mr Clyde Fitch. Three or four of the leading theatres in London have produced plays by him, and the sophisticated critical (hand Moguls of Berlin have received "Truth,” a drama New York has rejected, with enthusiastic approval. Americans have always regarded Mr Fitch in the light of a clever dramatic causeur, not to be very seriously discussed, but Mr Martin Birnbaum, a friend of the playwright, demonstrated in ‘The Independent” just before the dramatist's sudden demise last year, a logical development in Mr Fitch’s dramatic career. Mr Fitch, it seems, had made and lost several reputations. There was a deepening in his work, though his prodigious facility and his impatience, originating in plentitude of ideas, debarred him for a while from serious recognition. His Career. Fitch’s real career as a dramatist began in 1890 with "Beau Brunimel.”, Ho was entirely in sympathy with the subject, being an elegant young dandy himself. lie was only twenty-six at tho time of the first performance. The play, it will be remembered, achieved a noisy triumph. The author since devoted himself entirely to the drama. His adaptations from the French and the German were -not, Air Birnbaum insists, slavish imitation of foreign works. He endowed the figures with new life, trans formed foreign types with genuine American types, and was often entitled to the credit of original creation. This work improved his technique; he became a master of stagecraft and a writer of simple, fluent dialogue. Much of his work was acknowledged to be poor, flimsy hack work; but he might have replied with Dr. Johnson's couplet: “The drama’s laws, the drama's patrons give, And those live to please must please to live.” If, says Mr Birnbaum, the critic suggests that the favourable opinion of his audiences meant too much money in the playwright's pocket, Fitch, who was above all things a typical American in spirit anil a child of his age, smiled blandly and complacently admitted it. In his early original plays, such as "A Modern Match,” "The Moth and the Flame,” Fitch still clung to established dramatic conventions; but there was the promise of finer work. Before he died: he had abandoned the hackneyed phrases, filling his work with technical innovations and keen realistic characterisations. The apontaneity, freedom and liveliness of “The Climbers” effaces the memory of his early transgressions. “The Climbers.’’

“‘The Climbers’ opens with a scene which is distinctly Fitch’s. To start a play with a party of women returning from a funeral was so daring that it was with difficulty that a manager could be found willing to put it on the boards. Since its very successful production, however, in 1901, his audiences invariably expect some example of this bold pictorial originality. He rarely disappoints them, for his power of invention seems unlimited. At times he allows himself to be too amusing. He hesitates at nothing and occasionally goes beyond the verge of daring. His first nights have an air of gaiety, of delightful expectation. We never know what may or may not happen on those festive evenings. In ‘The Way of the World’ (a title which liml been used by Congreve for one of liis masterpieces) we were guests al a baby's sensational christening; in ‘The Stubbornness of Geraldine’ we were on the wave tossed deck of an ocean liner; in.'The Girl with the Green

Eyes' we were shown the Apollo Belvedere, surrounded by a group of pepper-mint-eating Cook’s tourists; in ‘The Giri and the Judge’ there was the famous folding-bed scene; ‘The Cowboy and the Lady’ had the mirth-provoking cure for cursing; ‘Her Great Match,’ the convenient lovers' corner, moonlit at will, and so on through the long list of plays.”

Unrecognised by America Whilst Alive.

Fitch’s stage vibrates with life; everything moves with dash, and we are blinded to the fact that many scenes are inessential to the development of the action. As Fitch agrees with Lawrence Sterne’s remark that digression is the soul and the sunshine of literature, he deliberately impedes the action for the sake of introducing his brilliantly polished and epigrammatic sayings. In his loiter work, Fitch succeeded in avoiding the error of distracting life audience. “Her Great Match,” “Hie Woman in the Case,” and “The Truth” represent a notable advance. He learned that straightforwardness is not incompatible with theatrical situations. The metropolitan critics, however, with few notable exceptions, treated him with scant respect, and were either purposely or hopelessly undiscerning. They dismissed him as a merely clever man tainted with commercialism, as a writer of ungrammatical English deformed with slang, and a creator of vulgar characters; or they employed tliait barren kind of criticism which finds fault with dramatist for not writing like some other man. The language of the theatre need not always be correct. Indeed an error of speech, a slang phrase or a colloquialism often breathes illie breath of life into a character. The charge of vulgarity is for the most part also, the charge of stereotyped criticism. To arraign Fitch because some of his characters are not relined types but ordinary people is as unjusit and absurd as it would bo to impute to Dryden the obscenity of life. ‘I feel very strongly,’ said Fitch, in a lecture on the ‘Drama,’ delivered at Yale, ‘the particular value—a value which, rightly or wrongly, I can’t help feeling inestimable —of reflecting absolutely and truthfully the life and environment about us; every

class, every kind, every emotion, every motive, every occupation, every business, every idleness.” The Last Phase. Fitch does not condone the weaknesses of his characters, but he is a genial saitirist, and his irony free from bitter? ness, is often mistaken for sympathy. Also the patience of selection often deserts him. He could not restrain liis impetuosity. He knew there was room for improvement, but new works had an irresistible fascination foi him; and instead of perfecting the old play, he determined to improve upon it in the next. That was the secret of liis slow evolution. In his last phase of dramatic authorship, Fitch freed himself in a measure from ithe tyranny of "stars” —at least, the "star” no longer dominated the entire situation. His studies iu femininity were unsurpassed, and liis late European successes justified the belief that lie would one day write something really fine, at least a great social sa tire. Unhappily America’s most brilliant dramatist was cut off as a comparatively young man. He was just forty-live when death stepped in a few moons ago. Shortly before he died the dramatist declared that "The City” was the finest play lie had ever written. Apparently Fitch has profited in his latter years by the study of Ibsen. "Ibsen is right,” he confessed to a biographer; ‘‘l accept him thoroughly as the master genius of the age. Perhaps we are not ready for him as playgoers, but we shall mount closer and closer to liis perfection by reason of the example he has piled high before the intelligence of the younger men who are aware of his message.” "The City” was not the last work of Clyde Fitch. There are still two unprddueed plays of recent date —"Kitty and the Canary.” his last completed work, written for Zeda Sears; and "The Social Guide.” "The City,” however, is regarded as his valedictory as a playwright. There are touches of humour in the first act, touches of sentiment in the last, which show Clyde Fitch at his very best, and which will compare favourably with the work of any English playwright. The play, said a critic at the time of its production in New York, “is as strong as a raging bull.

an elephant in passion or a hungry tiger.” ‘•Here is a play that shocks its beholders into thought, smites their frail conventionalities, makes the timid and formal gasp; a play that is as soothing as a salvo of artillery. If it be asked what the spectator will see as he sits through this three-act drama at the Lyric Theatre, let the answer, briefly enough, be this: He will see a highly respected, tax-paying citizen, the leader of his community, banker, philanthropist, pillar of the church, blackmailed by his illegitimate son—as twisted a knave as ever crept among men; he will see and hear this esteemed subscriber to worthy causes rebuke his legitimate children for their desire to live in ‘the city,’ where there is opportunity, fashion, the chance and the game; he will hear the country extolled, the city traduced, then the country traduced and the city extolled; he will hear the model father confess to his model son his faithlessness, and will presently learn of the esteemed gentleman’s death under the shock: he will see the model ami legitimate son risen in the city, a public figure climbing higher and higher on a ladder of lies and graft; he will see the illegitimate son tricking, undermining, scheming, drawing his nets around his seemingly iuckit 4 brother, but finding himself caught in his own intrigues, and married to his own sister, killing her in a gorilla-like rage when he learns the truth : ho will see the model brother, with the governorship within his grasp, ruined in his political, professional and social ambitions, but. responsive to his fearful Besson, ready to start life anew with a real man’s courage.” In his long and busy career, remarks Louis De Foe, in the “New York World.” Clyde Fitch experienced his share of failure. He touched the life around him with the feather of wit and sometimes pricked it with the dart of satire; but not until his name became only a memory did he deliver the unexpected sledge hammer blow. ‘‘Certain it is that in ‘The City’ Clyde Fitch did not concern himself with beauty. He dealt with life only in hideous aspects. He laid human nature bare and exposed its cankers in their most repellent forms. He cut through the quivering flesh to the very heart. He made the foundation of his work firmand then went on. piling sensation upon sensation, multiplying horror with horror. until he reached uncanny heights. Murder, incest, suicide, blasted ambition, the degenerate raving of a mind dulled by drugs—these were only a few- of the materials with which he worked. Out of them he bu tided a structure so firm in the illusion it created that it seemed no longer a counterfeit of life, but life itself. And when he reached the .summit of this structure he turned his climax into a pathological exhibition which vividly recalls that scene at the fast moment of Ibsen’s ‘Ghosts,’ when Oswald grovels at Mrs. Alving’s feet gibbering and crying wildly for the sun. . . . “The craft and cunning of the play compel admiration. They will arouse amazement at Fitch, who, throughout his career, was charged with being a dramatist of women and a photographer of drawing-room manners. ft was often said of him that the virilities of life Awn 1 beyond his reach, and that he could only make frivolousness seem real. He could not live until he had proved the contrary, but he left ample testimony in ‘The City’ that he could play with volcanoes as well as pin wheels.” Calve Has Heart Seizure. Madame Calve, the famous dramatic soprano, suffered, a , heart, seizure on Friday evening in Wellington, and it was only due to her courage and persistency that a very large audience did not lose an opport unity of hearing her. Aladame Calve had sung only a few notes of her opening solo, “The Alveoli,” when she became iH, ami hqd to hurriedly leave the platform. Dr. E. Bruce Allnutt, surgeon on the steamer Tongartro; was among 'the audience, and immediately offered his services. lie found that .Madame Calve was in a very distressed condition, and administered a restorative. When the sufferer recovered, Dr. Allnutt strongly urged her no*t to take the risk of Ringing again that evening, but she insisted on keeping faith with the audience, and the full programme was gone through. Indeed, the programme was extended, because Signer Gasparri and AT. Vintel gave extra numbers during the time Aladame Calve was ill.

Lord and Lady Islington, who were in 'the audience, sent their aide-camp to the manager to inquire about Madame Calve’s condition, and »to express their sympathy with her. After the concert, Madame Calve, Chough still considerably upset, was a great deal improved, and it is hoped •that she will quite recover during the voyage to Sydney, for which city she and her party left Wellington on Saturday by the Ulimaroa. “ The Third Degree.” 'Chose who appreciate high dramatic art should not fail to see Misn Katherine Grey in the realistic presentation of the heroine in “The Third Degree,” says “The Southern Sphere” in a recent issue regarding the Williamson production we. are shortly to see in New Zealand. No more naturalistic piece of acting, no truer portrayal of a woman with the genuine instincts of her sex. has been seen on the Melbourne stage for many

a long day, and we, say this with the fine emotional histrionics of Margaret Anglin fresh hi our memory. Miss GrcV, in the opinion of some people, might not equal . Miss Anglin in the display of emotional intensity, but while the latter would tear a passion to tatters, the form er-achieves her effect with that restraint which suggests reserved power, and is the mark of the true artist. Miss Grey is perhaps the mo-t natural actress now on Mihe Australian stage,. Iler art ie the art which hides art, and is therefore the highest art. In the more intense scenes of the drama she thoroughly grips the audience, the more impressionable among whom are reduced to tears or strung up to hysterical pitch by the realism of the situations. Tho part in a rather arduous one, for the progress of the play is practically a series of scenes in which a plucky, true-hearted woman exercises her indomitable will over adverse influences, or opposes her whole moral strength against persons who are moved against her by vindictiveness ami cruelly. Air. JoJiutS Knight, it is needless to say. gives a finished picture of the part of the barrister, Rich-

ard Brewster, who at the irresistible appeal of the young wife. cuiiHents to defend her wrongly-accused husband against the charge of murder. The other lady in the cast. Miss Ethel Warwick, possesses temperament ami sensibility, and gives a convincing study of Mrs. Jeffries, senior, wife of the hard-hearted autocratic father, who is well presented by Mr. Winter Hall. Mr. George Bryant is impressive and powerful in the picture of Captain Cbirton, the coarse-grained and ruthless criminal investigator, who hypnotises young Jeffries into a confession. Mr. Cyril Mackay plays the lastnamed character with admirable transemblance, while Mr. Sydney Sterling gives a graphic study of a ruined ami hunted man, who has come to the end of liis resources and finds surcease from his troubles in the •suiriile's bullet. It onlv remains to say tha' the pl*y is mounted wi'h artistic taste, especl P • in respect to the first scone, depicting the chambers of an art collector