Dark Days on the London Stage

Personality Seems Definitely To Have Vanished from the Theatre in England

HUGH WALPOLE

I SUPPOSE that at no time in the memory of living playgoers has there been so much discussion, both in public and in private, concerning the condition of the London theatre as at the present moment.

The reasons are not far to seek. Play after play is withdrawn; actors and actresses in the thousands are out of work; and-no single explanation of these tragedies seems of itself strong enough to account for them.

There are certain obvious causes. The strong attraction of the cinema is one, the enormous rental of theatres is another, the poverty of the world in general a third.

As to the cinema, I do believe that it cuts short the life of doubtful theatrical productions, and by doubtful I mean productions that have no very strong reason, artistic, commercial or sensuous, for their existence, but that might have lived once upon a time because then there was no alternative attraction; but the art of the cinema is, I am convinced, never going to damage the art of the theatre at its best.

As to the question of theatre rents, I know nothing about it and had therefore best be silent, but from the mere onlooker's point of view, there seem to be any number of "hardheaded commercial gentlemen tumbling over themselves to snatch at any vacant theatre, and I refuse to believe that they would do this if to take a theatre were almost certainly to court failure.

There is, I think, another reason for the present sad state of affairs. As one grows older and looks back, distance most certainly lends enchantment to the view, and it may be mere middle-age that makes me think that the theatre, both in plays, in performers and jn actual production, was richer in personality twenty years ago than it is at this moment.

Ellen Terry, Irving,Tree, Wyndham, Hare, Alexander, were, twenty years ago, artists who, however strongly you might criticise them, had outstanding, definite, highly coloured personalities. The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, The Liars, Gay Lord Quex, Arms and the Man, and a host of others Were highly coloured plays, and whatever you may say of Tree's productions, of Herod and Ulysses and The Darling of the Gods, of the Vedrenne and Barker management at The Court, of George Alexander's staging of Paolo and Francesca, those were events that will remain in one's theatrical memories for ever.

An Arid Time

WITH the theatre of 1922, one seems to be swimming in a kind of misty sea and never setting foot on dry land. No actor, save Sir Gerald du Maurier, no actress, save Miss Irene Vanbrugh, seems to follow a definite theatrical policy. Actors move from theatre to theatre, are to be found at one moment on the music hall, at another in revue, suddenly in the provinces, then off to South Africa or Canada. One of our finest theatres is given over to inane, clumsy barbarisms, and alxwe all, most of the actors and actresses of the older school have left us and we are quite uncertain as to who will take their places.

There is no question that the theatrical fare in London during the last two years has been of the thinnest. We have had one of the best comedies of our generation in Mr. Milne's The Truth About Blayds, another admirable comedy in Mr. Maugham's The Circle, an eternally memorable revival of The Beggar's Opera, a splendidly plucky and interesting management in Hampstead, some excellent Grand Guignol acting, and then what else? Where are the new plays? We have had, it is true, Heartbreak House, which the critics rose up early in the morning to kill, but Mr. Shaw is something to be thankful for, indeed, but not to acclaim as the hope of the next generation.

Play after play seems to promise good things and then not to have enough red blood in it to carry it through the evening. A single exception to this, besides the work of Mr. Milne, is that of Miss Clemence Dane, WHO, whether you like A Bill of Divorcement and Will Shakespeare or no, is at any rate stuffed with personality.

And as for the plays, so with the acting. Who are stepping forward at the head of the theatre in line with Sir Gerald du Maurier, Sir Charles Hawtrey, Miss Vanbrugh. One remembers individual performances, one can see Mr. Godfrey Tearle at one moment, Miss Fay Compton at another, here a glimpse of Mr. Leon Quartermaine, there a passionate half hour with Miss Sybil Thorndyke, but all these impressions are fugith'e, and Ave slip from theatre to theatre, hoping for some good thing but finding an actor or actress Avho has shown great personality in one part giving no sign of it at all in another.

We have two younger actresses who never fail us in any part that they may undertake. I mean Miss Meggy Albanesi and Miss Athene Seyler, and those Avho saAv Mr. Basil Rathbone's astonishing Iago will feel doubly reassured about his future if they also Avatched his brilliant creation in the strange and illfated Andreyev play, He Who Gets Slapped, and then his cheerful, irnpertinent burlesque of the nonsense in The Edge o' Beyond, both in the same day.

Yes, but Miss Albanesi, Miss Seyler and Mr. Rathbone are not enough, nor do they seem anywhere near the position of command that they ought to have. Why, what a comment on the English stage of the moment that for three quarters of the year it should be impossible for us to see Miss Seyler on the stage.

We are told that theatrical expenses are so high to-day that managers dare not risk more artistic and probably less financially successful productions, but it seems to the outsider that they lose over the non-artistic productions just as heavily as over the artistic. Put and Take fails even more completely than Will Shakespeare, and in which was there the greater glory? Who thought that A Bill of Divorcement and The Beggar's Opera would run for over a year apiece? Is the poor British public, Avhich is invariably cursed Avhen an artistic production fails, so entirely in the Avrong when it has loyally supported plays like these and The Whiteheaded Boy and If and the Quality Street revival? Why, if a manager is going to lose, should he not lose over something that gives him credit rather than discredit?

Mr. MacDermott, Mr. Basil Dean, Mr. Nigel Playfair, have all shown admirably consistent personalities, but they are always changing their actors and actresses, cannot often run their theatres, without desperate appeals for money, and are suffered rather than supported by the theatre in general.

The Need for New Managers

HAS it come to this, that Ave are many of us actually lamenting the old actor-manager who was cursed so bitterly by all of us during his lifetime? I don't know, but it was a comfort in the old days to know that you Avould get English comedy and Mr. Cyril Maude at the Haymarket, that you could have your fantasy, were you so inclined, at His Majesty's, and that you could find Shaw and Hauptmann and Galsworthy and Barker any night at The Court.

Out of the present state of flux, what is coming? Why do John Drinkwater and St. John Ervine and Lennox Robinson givhe us plays so seldom?

Why are Ave baffled and confused by a succession of revues that change, not only their programmes, but their personalities every week or so? Why are Mr. Cochran and others compelled to scour the Continent for Spanish beauties, Peruvian comedians, Chinese acrobats? Personality has for the moment, at any rate, gone out of our theatre, and I for one believe that it will not really come back to it again until we have people running our theatres commercially, as well as artistically and dramatically; WHO know something about the art of the theatre as well as about the returns of the box office.