Shall We Go to the Theatre ?
The Gentle Art of Theatre-Going. By John Drinkwater. (Robert Holden.. 6s. net.)
" SHALL we go to the theatre to-night ? "—or (in view of the difficulty of getting seats for any big success), this day week, or a month hence ?
It is that incalculable creature, the average playgoer, whom we overhear, uttering his familiar question. Let him go, with his family ! And let us—or much better, let Mr. John Drinkwater, well qualified, as personal conductor, by his own practice in playwriting and in the production of many plays— go with him. Perhaps he will hesitate a little. He may shrink from Mr. •Drinkwater's enveloping arm. He may fear that he will be forced to take his pleasure sadly, or compelled to pass a severely " highbrow " evening.
He need not be afraid. Mr. Drinkwater is indulgently human. He will take his friend the Philistine anywhere— either to The Ringer (here Mr. Drinkwater interpolates a specimen of his own dramatic criticism in the humorously descriptive style, with references to late-corners and chocolate- munching), or else to Juno and the Paycock—here another, graver specimen of analysis, summarizing the beauties of Mr. Sean O'Casey's play, which Mr. Drinkwater blames only for its turbid intermingling of comic and tragic elements.
This confusion he thinks, by the way, " was a practice wholly repudiated by the Greeks." One need not agree with him. He may remember that, at the end of the Symposium, Socrates was left explaining to Aristophanes and Agathon that " the genius of comedy was the same as that of tragedy." We do not know whether Socrates convinced them ; but we see that Mr. Drinkwater is not convinced, even by such a marked example of " intermingling " as the Alcestis, a play over which, for centuries, scholars have argued whether it be comedy or tragedy. The preservation of this really important dramatic " unity "—unity of impression or atmosphere— is much better exemplified by the French theatre of Corneille or Racine than by the Greeks"; for those seventeenth-century dramatists were more classical than the classics. But we have wandered from Juno and the Paycock, as indeed Mr. Drinkwater occasionally wanders, touching high themes of aesthetics, and then returning to the London or Birmingham playgoer.
What have we done with that theatre party ? We have given them, for their evening's amusement, perfect freedom of choice. We—or, certainly, Mr. Drinkwater—can enjoy with them the theatre " as a place of' popular entertainment." As such, it will compete with the cinema, the music-halls, football and the prize-ring. So competing, it will have to
earn its living. Its standard will be success. We need not quarrel over The Ringer. Only, we must make it plain to our playgoer that he is at an entertainment-theatre. We must
explain to him, and to his ladies munching their chocolates, that there is another sort of theatre—the " theatre of the imagination," which competes with nothing, which cannot
rely upon the lasting support of the great public, but which has endured, amidst commercial difficulties, so long now— ever since the beginning of this century—that " it may last a long time yet before passing into another period of eclipse." Who knows ? Perhaps, if we make this clear to our friends at the crook play, they will want to see Juno as well.
But what is this laxly named theatre of the imagination!
Enter, immediately, rows of dramatic critics, arguing, They disagree. Few of them, professional or amateur, would accept the odd list of good, bad and indifferent works jumbled together by Mr. Drinkwater in his effort to define the distinc- tion (pp. 74, 75). That is just the trouble : you cannot get well-intentioned playgoers to pursue an ideal about which tastes endlessly dispute. May one suggest—after glancing at that list—that Mr. Drinkwater's taste is lower than his ideal ? Still, there is no doubt a measure of common agree. merit that some plays are better than others ; and on this too vague admission we must try to work.
That the number of those who care for the theatre of the imagination—or the better sort of plays—may increase is the hope of all lovers of our drama. It is a doubtful hope; because, since the revival of which Mr. Drinkwater en• couragingly speaks, we have seen so many fine beginnings run to dead ends, so many noble schemes collapse ; mainly, we may suppose, because there is nobody to gather them up, to intervene at the critical moment, and to replace the loyal and ardent men and women who give their time and money to the theatre of the imagination, and then grow weary or poor ; or marry, or disappear, or die. Can nothing be done to prolong, to perpetuate, their efforts ? Like so many others, writing before him, Mr. Drinkwater sees that the ideal is " a repertory theatre, or a series of repertory theatres . strong enough economically to give constant employment to the best and most experienced actors who now spend most of their time in the commercial theatre." A National Theatre in London then—the old dream ? Mr. Drinkwater does not believe in it. And many of those who know the theatre will agree with him ; not perhaps for the reasons he gives, one of which is that "an attempt to focus the movement in a London building would be disastrous "—an objection that could be met, partly, by the practice of provincial tours undertaken by selected members of the national company—but because one fears, or one knows, that the sort of people officially appointed to run the National Theatre would be too like those already and often consulted in matters of taste, for war memorials and other public monuments—unconscious exponents of the worst of tastes ; namely, official taste, or dullness. No ; the time for endowment is not yet. It comes fitfully—it must be waited for, discerningly. It could—to take one example- have saved the Vedrenne-Barker management which popu- larized Shaw and Galsworthy in London. It could be offered tentatively and as a " grant in aid " in times of stress. It could help those who have shown that they can help themselves.
And so it could gradually fortify " the theatre of the imagina- tion " by creating a tradition and a habit in that playgoer
who, with his " Where shall we go to-night ? " turns for safety first to the latest big success, which is so often the mere sensation, or the latest dramatic pretext for the exhibition of the personalities of players who will never bother about Mt. Drinkwater's rule that the actor shall subordinate himself to the imaginative dramatist's intention. RICHARD JENNINGS.
Previous page
