Our Stage and Its Critics Part 12

Mr Bourchier and "Max" on English Acting

Mr Bourchier has written rather bitterly about some remarks of Mr Max Beerbohm concerning English acting. Apparently "Max" has a.s.serted that "the average level of acting is admittedly lower in England than in France, Germany or Italy." Hence Mr Bourchier's wrath, which obviously is unselfish, since remarks about the average level of acting have nothing to do with him, for no country is rich enough in histrionic talent to deny that Mr Bourchier is far above the average.

Is Mr Max Beerbohm's a.s.sertion well founded? The "admittedly" inspires distrust. Experience teaches the middle-aged that as a rule people allege that a proposition is admitted when they have no evidence to offer of its truth, and are aware that it will be disputed. Does anyone exist who knows really what is the average level of acting in the four countries named? Such knowledge could only be based upon a first-hand study of acting in all kinds of theatres in many towns of England, France, Germany and Italy. A music-hall agent is the only kind of person likely to have made such a study. Has Mr Max made it?

Probably the clever caricaturist and lively critic is really talking about the so-called West End theatres and the foreigners who come to us, and of occasional visits paid by him to selected pieces in important Continental cities. If so, his observations are based upon quite insufficient materials. Critics are wont to praise foreign acting unfairly at the expense of our own performers, and they receive the support of opinions expressed by some foreigners, notably French and Italians.

Members of gesticulative races are apt to think English players very wooden, because when representing British people our actors and actresses are much restrained in movement. A French or Italian critic can hardly appreciate some of the splendid "Stage Society" or Court Theatre performances, such, for instance, as that of _The Voysey Inheritance_, which could not have been surpa.s.sed in any theatre or country.

The offensive comparisons often, even generally, are based upon performances where our players are at a serious disadvantage. On what may be called neutral ground, such as Ibsen plays, we have held our own very well against any performances in London by Continental players; Miss Janet Achurch was a more characteristic Nora than Duse or Rejane; nor have we seen a Mrs Linden, Hedda Gabler or Hilda w.a.n.gle comparable with that of Miss Elizabeth Robins. There is no need to multiply instances.

English players do not represent certain foreign characters as well as do the foreigners. Is this surprising? They are handicapped, obviously.

How often have we seen a French, German or Italian performance of an English play concerning English people? Was the great Eleonora as painfully truthful as Mrs Patrick Campbell in _The Second Mrs Tanqueray_? No one can deny that her companions were almost ludicrous to us. Can one imagine any foreign company able to present _His House in Order_ without entirely destroying the stage illusion and losing the colour? There was a very fine performance at the St James's, with intense soberness of manner in important matters as a keynote.

It is largely a question of geography; the Englishman expresses rapture by the phrase "not half-bad" where the foreigner piles superlative on superlative of gush. It is our quality and our defect that we have a strange shyness, which prevents the exhibition of emotion for fear of ridicule. On our stage, as in our real life, the beloved son comes home from a long voyage, and, meeting his father, shakes hands a little warmly and says, "Hallo, governor!" or something poetic like that; whilst abroad the two men kiss one another and utter highly emotional phrases of rapture. Everyone knows that the feelings are equally deep in the two cases, but our cross-Channel critics doubt the depth of the English feeling, whilst our native players cannot do the kissing and hugging with an air of sincerity.

Now, when taking these facts into account we should be very careful in appraising the efforts of our own players. Not only ought we to avoid comparing select teams of foreign players with our own scratch companies, but also it is our duty to consider whether the strangers are appearing in plays better or worse than the average of our own, and we must take into account the fact that they are gaining from the advantage of novelty. Lastly, there remains the question how far they would appear to be better than ours if appearing on neutral ground.

It would be idle to a.s.sert that the average level of our acting is as good as it ought to be. Many theatres suffer severely from the lack of satisfactory stage-management; some from the determination of an actor-manager to be the central figure of every scene. Bitter complaints are uttered by young players about not receiving sufficient suggestions at rehearsal and finding that the stage-manager has so little authority that not only the leading players act as they chose, but even the smaller stars refuse successfully to obey him.

There is another point in Mr Bourchier's letter. He suggests that Mr Max Beerbohm is not competent to criticize actors because he is not a master of any branch of the difficult art of acting. This is a very foolish old fallacy. People who do work essentially ephemeral, such as acting, do it for those who are to witness it; and their merit is in direct proportion to their impression upon the audience, and they can have no effect upon anybody else. Actors, with trifling exceptions, do not form part of the audience. Critics do, and the actor seeks to affect the audience and the critics, and not the brother "pro." occasionally found in the auditorium.

The merit of his work lies entirely in affecting an audience _in the way intended by the author_. The technical devices adopted have nothing to do with the question. No doubt there is much technical knowledge involved in acting, but it must be remembered that it is all a means to an end. The cult of technique for itself is perilous to an art.

After all, the matter may be reduced to an absurdity. Would Mr Bourchier refuse to say that a man is well dressed, or a dinner ill cooked because he is (presumably) ignorant of the mysteries of the arts of tailoring and cooking? Moreover, some of us, perhaps even Mr Beerbohm, know a good deal about the technique of acting, even if we could not "make-up" Mr Bourchier to look like a costermonger. The actor must be very vain in his conceit who has not had valuable hints concerning his acting from the critics, unless he be one of those who, unlike Mr Bourchier, never read notices--yet often complain of an unfavourable one. The article called "Signor Borza on the English Theatre," which appears on page 252, should be considered in relation to these remarks.

The Sicilian Players

During many years our stage has seen nothing like the success of the Sicilians. They presented themselves at the Shaftesbury Theatre with little in the shape of preliminary paragraphs to "boom" them. Most of their repertoire consisted of works unknown to London playgoers. Several of their plays were performed in a puzzling dialect. Even the judicious step of offering a fairly full synopsis of the plays was neglected.

Notwithstanding all this, the theatre was well patronized during two seasons and the audiences have exhibited enthusiasm.

What is the meaning of all this; why should these village folk, playing what in the main seem to be simple peasant melodramas, have troubled the senses of Londoners? The obvious answer is that the affair is a triumph of pure acting. One pauses to inquire whether this is true. In the case of most of their plays the judgment of the audience concerning the acting must be very rough and ready--so far, at least, as the performance is fulfilling its true purpose of presenting in action the ideas of the author.

How are we to know, when watching a play in Sicilian dialect and provided with a printed "argument" comprised in about a couple of hundred words, whether the players are doing anything like their duty to the author? By-the-by the poor Censor had to admit that he pa.s.sed their plays on the strength of these inadequate synopses! Yet there was absolute conviction in most of us that their work was sincere and at times quite tremendous as a matter of pure acting. The word "tremendous"

must be confined to the efforts of Signora Mimi Aguglia Ferrau and Signor Gra.s.so. The others form a very good company, but it is only in respect of these two that one employs the word "genius," which cautious writers use very rarely, though there are journalists who lavish it upon everybody a thumb-nail's thickness above mediocrity.

Concerning the lady there is no doubt at all. She is a little woman, with a rather strongly featured, intelligent face, brilliant teeth and big eyes who has, to begin with, the rare gift of filling the stage.

There is a perceptible difference whenever she is present. She may be one of a crowd of twenty, and saying and doing nothing, but her presence is felt. At her command is a delightful roguish comedy and a horrible realistic tragedy. In _Malia_ she is a Phedre burnt up with unslakable pa.s.sion, a rustic Phedre, no doubt, but Bernhardt never gave more strongly the idea of "_Venus toute entiere a sa proie attachee_."

There are tricks in her work; she is fond of standing her profile parallel with the footlights, and of exhibiting the whites of her large eyes; she is conscious of the extraordinary eloquence of her shoulders and back, and likes to exhibit distress by the play of them. There is often excess in violent contrast of light and shade.

Yet no one can display subsiding emotion more finely than she does. Most of our players turn off emotion as one turns off the gas. In the Sicilian one notices a kind of aftermath; her fury may be succeeded by rapture; her grief by joy; but for a while underneath the rapture or joy one detects signs of the fact that physically she is recovering gradually from the effects of fury or grief. The voice is a little harsh, the gestures are not exactly elegant, she is always somewhat _peuple_, and always magnificent.

In some respects, Signor Gra.s.so is quite different; his appearance is unpleasant, he is an ugly man, often with a fatuous air, but his grace of movement is quite extraordinary; occasionally he gives s.n.a.t.c.hes of dance so exquisitely rhythmical that one longs for more. His pantomime is larger in movement than hers; his pa.s.sion less terrible. He too has tricks; he is over-fond of playing with the chairs; in _Malia_ one might say that he plays skittles with them.

There is rather an excess of gesture, of a naturalistic explanatory gesture, apparently borrowed from pantomime; one feels that some of it is deliberately used to aid the ignorant foreigner to understand; he does things which make the Briton squirm; has a habit of kissing the ugly, male members of his troupe with big, resounding smacks on both cheeks, and in a loving fashion pats them like a Graeco-Roman wrestler; but there is always the extraordinarily graceful, lithe movement and, with curious exceptions, a supreme unconsciousness of the audience; whilst the pa.s.sionate volubility and the almost brutal ferocity thrill the house.

They are a queer lot, these village players; supremely unself-conscious when actually acting, yet guilty of taking "calls" in the middle of a scene. If pressed, they probably would give an encore, and with a little urging Signora Mimi would yield to a cry of "bis" and give a repet.i.tion of her abominable, appalling, vastly clever fit in _Malia_, to please the friendly Britons.

At the end of a scene the players come forward, hand in hand, bobbing and bowing, grinning and smiling, in a way that suggests a troupe of acrobats after a successful turn. It is not difficult to overrate their work as a company, or rather--and this in a sense is the same thing--to underrate that of our own players by comparison.

There is one very noteworthy fact: from the point of view of a London manager the scenery and appointments were contemptible, and this apparently did not matter a rap. An audience, five-sixths of it British, was enthralled by these players, although the scenery and the furniture of the indoor sets had no pretension to magnificence, were sometimes almost absurdly squalid.

The venture at the Shaftesbury showed that if you give what the public deems good acting you need not bother about painted canvas and furniture; and what applies to good acting applies to good plays. The Sicilians taught us this, even if, perhaps, little else; for our players, unless they are to represent Sicilians, or such volcanic creatures, can learn comparatively little from them. Indeed, our delightful visitors could be taught something by our despised stage in the way of reticence, for there is little doubt that they love a horror for horror's sake and revel in the gory joys of the penny gaff. This may be said with full recognition of the fact that, according to their own standard, they are intensely sincere and superbly equipped in consequence of hard work and natural gifts.

Alleged Dearth of Great Actresses

Lately there have appeared some remarks by an unnamed "prominent dramatic author" alleging that "there is a dearth of great actresses just now," and stating that "several serious plays which it was hoped might be produced next autumn are in danger of being indefinitely postponed because of the inability of finding actresses capable of playing strongly emotional parts in drama of deep and complex interest."

These dramas of "deep and complex interest" are quite as rare in our theatre as great actresses and we only believe in their existence when we see them.

Of course there is a dearth of great actresses--there always was and always will be: "great" is only a relatively term. Thank goodness for this, seeing that they are sadly injurious to drama. On the other hand, to allege a lack of actresses competent to play strong emotional parts seems quite unjust.

The remarks of the "prominent dramatic author" were followed by a letter to the same effect by Mr George Rollit, known to fame as the author of a fairly good farce produced in 1904 at the Royalty. He appears to have allowed it to get known that a new play of his was to be produced in the West End, but he was unable to find "an adequate exponent for the leading role"--what a pretty phrase!--"which requires an emotional young actress, capable of portraying strong light and shade." He received many offers from actresses, none of whom were suitable.

These two complainants are making a mistake concerning the task of the dramatist, who fails in his labours if his plays cannot adequately be acted without the a.s.sistance of great actresses. They are foolishly pandering to the vanity of the players, who as a rule have a tendency to exaggerate their importance in relation to drama. The error is very common, and the idea that plays should be written primarily to exhibit the players and not the ideas of the author is the bane of our theatre.

Until our dramatists act firmly on the view that their duty is to write plays interesting when rendered by a good, starless company, they will only produce as a rule _bravura_ pieces of little artistic value. By all means let them write strongly emotional parts, if they can; but they are not worthy of their royalties if their characters do not generally lie within the range of a fair number of actresses. There is a grotesque mixture of vanity and modesty in the mind of an author who thinks his work worthy of performance by an actress of genius and at the same time believes it to be too weak to succeed without her help.

It will be answered, probably, that Shakespeare's plays demand players of genius and yet certainly are not mere _bravura_ pieces. There is truth und untruth in this--truth that our public will not patronize Shakespeare when acted by average performers; untruth in the proposition that they cannot adequately be represented by players without genius. We have unfortunately got into the very bad habit of going to see his works not for their intrinsic interest but for the sake of the acting and mounting. It is not _Hamlet_ but Mr Smith as the Prince of Denmark; not _Romeo and Juliet_ but Miss Brown and Mr Jones as the lovers of Verona, and so on, which form the attraction; and the works are cut and played out of balance in order to meet the demand.

The author would have resented a suggestion that his characters are so superhuman as to need marvellous performance: these remarks are without prejudice to the question whether even with the aid of great players Shakespeare's dramas reveal a fair proportion of their merits on the stage.

The outcry concerning the alleged dearth of good actresses is very commonly uttered and exceedingly ill-founded. It is wise to avoid the th.o.r.n.y question how far the recognized leading ladies of our first-cla.s.s theatres are satisfactory--yet it may be said that a successful playwright recently complained that as a body they were not, and that, despite his protests, he was compelled to have his works performed by the ladies in possession--and judicious to shirk the proposition, sometimes put forward, that some of these do not hold their positions by mere force of merit. Putting, then, aside the actresses enjoying grandeur in London, and leaving out of account a still more remarkable group which includes Mrs Kendal, Mrs Patrick Campbell and Miss Olga Nethersole--whom we too rarely see in town--and even ignoring what may be called "recognized leading ladies" who are "resting" reluctantly, there remains a powerful group of young actresses of experience and talent fully competent to satisfy the reasonable requirements of these gentlemen who are complaining of the "dearth." Since this was written a number of young ladies then on the boards but not accepted as leading ladies have made their way to the front.

Character Actresses

Several letters have been written lately, pathetic letters, from actresses unable to get engagements. All of the writers have enjoyed successes, have been referred to by important papers as "promising" or "coming leading ladies," each has had at least one engagement at a very handsome weekly salary, yet every one of them is in doleful dumps.

Here is a pa.s.sage from one: "In 1904 I did so well that I lived in luxury, and, I fear, somewhat extravagantly, and my performance as heroine in ---- was so highly praised that I had no doubt my future was well a.s.sured. Last year I earned 40, and I have to live on what I earn, and if I look dowdy when I go seeking an engagement I have little chance of getting it. Yet I am under thirty, and although not one of the little group of alleged beauties whose faces appear monotonously week after week in the ill.u.s.trated papers, I am well-enough-looking when made up, and have read in criticisms references to my 'charm of presence' and even to my 'beauty.' What is to become of me, I don't know. Of course I am particularly hopeless seeing that nine of the London theatres out of less than three times that number are now devoted to musical comedy and I am unable to sing, nor should I be enthusiastic about taking work sadly in contrast with my once high and hopeful ambition."

The last phrase deserves some consideration. To a great extent the reason why the stage causes so much unhappiness among actresses is that a large proportion enter the profession not in a simple straightforward way in the choice of a career, but because they dream of great triumphs.

Probably the career of Ellen Terry, and the exhibition of public affection shown upon the occasion of her jubilee, brought many recruits to the stage.

Putting aside the fact that Ellen Terry is unique, one may remark that very few actresses can hope to get close to the top of the tree, for obvious reasons. In the case of most careers and professions, nine men out of ten who join them know perfectly well that they will never do more than earn a decent living, and they shape their lives accordingly; but nearly every young actress expects to become a leading lady at a West End theatre, though there are few West End theatres devoted to real drama, and in some out of the small number there will always be a manager's wife or friend as an obstacle.

The misfortune is that few young actresses--if any--say to themselves deliberately that they will aim at character parts, or old-woman parts.

Nearly all the old-woman and _grande-dame_ characters are played by actresses who have been leading ladies and during some period have had the painful experience of failing, on account of their age, to get the engagements they have sought. The Juliet of one season is not the Nurse or the Lady Capulet of the next; a considerable time pa.s.ses before there is such a shift of characters, and she acts nothing at all during the interregnum, which is spent in vain attempts to get the Juliet parts, met with cruel rebuffs on the score of age.

Now, some of the old-man actors on the stage are quite young; they have chosen a particular line, conscious of the fact that nature has denied them the privilege of playing parts that will cause the stage-door-keeper to be deluged with amorous letters addressed to them, and aware, too, that the triumphs of the broad comedian will never be theirs. These young old-men are often quite as successful in old-man parts as those who have served most of a lifetime upon the stage.

It is not more difficult for a young woman to play the old-woman character or the _grande-dame_ part than for the young man to tackle the Sir Peter Teazle or the ordinary modern old-man; nor is this the only cla.s.s of work other than that of lovely heroine which lies open to the actress. When one hears discussion concerning the casting of plays there is often talk about the difficulty of finding an actress for a f.a.n.n.y Brough part, which, of course, is quite distinct from what may be considered specifically a _soubrette_ character. Complaints are uttered about the difficulty of finding a player to represent the comic mother-in-law; indeed, playwrights are sometimes affected in their work by the fear that if they write broad comedy for feminine parts the difficulty of casting them will be insurmountable.

Handsome salaries are paid to the few ladies who have a well-deserved reputation as actresses in the cla.s.s of character thus indicated, and there is a demand for them--a demand generally supplied by superannuated leading ladies and aged _soubrettes_. It may be offensive to a girl's vanity deliberately to choose a path in which her personal charms, or those which she believes herself to possess, must be of little service.

On the English stage it may be doubted if such a policy will ever be adopted, though on French there are instances which might be cited of actresses who have played dowager characters during the whole of a profitable, long and respected career.