THE THEATRE.
" THE RACE WITH THE SHADOW " AT THE EVERY- MAN THEATRE—AND AN EXHIBITION MANQUE. THE International Season at the Everyman Theatre is under the patronage of the League of Nations' Union, but I feel by
no means sure that the German play by Herr Wilhelm von Scholz is likely to increase national amity. It is not in the least that the play makes us dislike Germans, but just that, like all bad plays, and especially all pretentious bad plays, it makes us generally dislike all our fellow-creatures. It is a play with two quite good ideas in it, both badly worked out; it is inadequately translated and very badly acted.
As for the two ideas. A novelist has given a reading at a literary society from a novel on which he is at work. The next evening a card is brought up; the caller proves to be one of the characters out of the incomplete novel. Not, however, in the sense of the Stevenson fable or the 0. Henry story, in which characters come out and confront their creators ; Dr. Scholz is a real man whose past Dr. Hans Martins has somehow contrived to tap with uncanny accuracy, and the wretched man has a foreboding that his future will be shaped in the remainder of the tale. Which way has Dr. Martins decided his fate ? This is a good theme, offering several excellent alternative possibilities in the working-out and giving scope for careful psychological studies and for a telling touch-and-go introduction of the uncanny. The second good point in the play is the character of the novelist, whom, unlike most stage authors, one would believe quite capable of producing a good work of fiction. His maker has further convinced us that living in an imaginative world he reacts very slowly to real events. Upon this fact an important element in the plot depends. But this is all. Alas ! the play contrives, otherwise, to be both dull and melodramatic.
The gloom induced by witnessing The .Race with the Shadow makes my second otherwise distasteful task of this week seem almost congenial. Readers will perhaps remember that some time ago an article appeared in these columns commenting on the theatrical designs on view at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The show was and is housed in a small top room and proied to contain, con- sidering the publicity given to it by the Museum authorities, a strangely inadequate little collection. It was suggested that the Museum authorities underestimated their power of bringing together the right material. To increase this little show and to give the public a great treat should not be a very difficult matter. We said that we believed that the Museum would only have to express their willingness to arrange a small loan exhibition of theatrical models and designs for the owners of such designs and models to come forward with offers of help.
Although the Museum authorities took no steps in the matter, so willing seemed the owners of these things to let the public share their possessions that Mr. Gordon Craig, Mr. Nigel Playfair and Mrs. Lovat Fraser almost immediately wrote with suggestions and offers of help. Mr. Edmund Duke was also good enough to tell me privately that he, too, would certainly lend. Of the public pleasure in such an exhibition I think there can be no doubt. Quite a new interest has arisen in the question of stage decoration, and a large public would, I feel confident, very much welcome an opportunity of comparing the works of various living designers with each other and with the ideals and achievements of the past. Here, then, were lenders willing to lend and a public who showed interest even in the meagre fare already provided for them. There seemed nothing to do but for the Museum authorities to join the hands of the parties by lending them a room and arranging the show.
After making sure that the correspondence had caught the eye of the Museum officials, and after waiting some time for a pronouncement from them, I at last went to see the " competent authority." " The authority " seemed entirely to agree with me that a loan exhibition of theatrical scenes and models would be a show that would attract the public very much and that a great deal of interesting material was to be had close at hand in London for the asking, or at most for the taxi fare to bring it to the Museum. At the same time, he made it perfectly clear that the Museum did not propose to take any steps in the matter. It was difficult to find a room in the Museum, the stetf was inadequate for dealing with the " enormous correspondence" it would involve, he for his part didn't approve of loan exhibitions, the function of the Museum was to acquire works of art for the nation. I ventured to ask whether they did not find in practice that a good many exhibits stuck to the Museum's hands after a loan exhibition ? He agreed that this was always the case, but did not waver in his determination that there should be no exhibition.
I left the Museum with a great respect for a tradition which enables a man to perform the difficult feat of cordially agreeing with all the arguments for taking a given step and, without putting forward any arguments of his own—except in parentheses that the step would be a great deal of trouble—contriving to convey a polite but absolute refusal even to consider the line of action suggested.
Fortunately, the Victoria and Albert Museum may not prove to possess a monopoly of the power of holding exhibitions. TARN.
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