MELODRAMA IN THE RUNNING.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, 17 November 1910, Page 17

MELODRAMA IN THE RUNNING.

HOW IT APPEALS. There came a time a few years since when people said melodrama was played out; that it could no longer play an audience in. A number of adequate explanations were given (writes Pett Ridge in an English paper). We had become too finely educated to enjoy its extravagances; the trend of dramatic art was in a higher direction; some declared that a Norwegian writer had drowned it with the contents of his inkstand; new rules of no soliloquies, no overbearing, no postal deliveries, no asides had made, it impossible that melodrama should ever again be in the running. And here it is, after a temporary rest, as lively and strong as ever with Fate indulging in the old sports; folk murdered in first acts, and the police force instantly apprehending the nearest innocent person and conveying him thus avoiding middlemen’s profits direct to penal servitude, where he discovers in the governor of the prison an old rival for the hand of Rose Mayfield; a kind-hearted but fatuous-headed warder earns applause by assisting the prisoner to escape by a boat; a fire at sea, an earthquake on land, and no luck at all .for the poor youth until five minutes to eleven. What the audience likes in melodrama is that provided they have evaded the reading of press notices, there come situations of perplexity wherein the way out is not to them obvious. Prepared for the unexpected, they find a solution offered that never occurred to them, and they join in the amazement without sharing the disappointment of the evil person of the play. I remember once being greatly affected at (I think) the Elephant and Castle Theatre by the perils of a young woman who, in a room at the top of a house that occupies one half of the stage, had barred and locked the door against an intrusive person; he began to smash in the panels of the door, and I could see no grounds for hope- Suddenly the young woman opened a small window that looked out well above roofs of other houses, and. with a cry of “Thank Heaven, I was brought up a wire walker!” (a fact not previously mentioned), stepped neatly, with the aid of a balancing pole, across the telegraph lines into safety, leaving the features of the villain, distorted with rage, at the opening. Melodrama is indebted to its wellbehaved and decently conducted people. but it owes more to those who make no attempt to walk in the straight, narrow ways; it has to be grateful for the fact that the audience is made up of demure and sedate men and women. For it is these who enjoy to the full the looking on at serious lapses from good behaviour. The universal nature of the appeal made by melodrama has become evident to me when I have seen burglars of my acquaintance sharing the interest experienced by those who respect laws, starting and directing the applause when a villain is Interrupted in the very act of blowing up the lock of an iron safe. With such a combination of support, melodrama can scarcely do anything but continue to flourish.