VII
THEATRES AND AMUSEMENTS
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson’s learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, fancy’s child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.
Australians are fond of the drama, but have no drama of their own. Even those people who talk occasionally of an Australian literature have nothing to say on the subject of an Australian stage. Not only the masterpieces, but the hack-pieces are borrowed; the star actors and actresses are borrowed also. In nothing is the population more imitative than in what pertains to theatres and theatre-going. It is only the buildings that can be described as the country’s own, and even here the great borrowing habit is illustrated by the names that are blazoned on the outside of them. “His Majesty’s,” and “Her Majesty’s,” and “The Princess,” and “The Royal” repeat themselves with monotonous iteration. The appearance of the majority of these theatres is fine and large, in the literal acceptation of the words. There are not many things that impress the visitor more than the size and the configuration and artistic finish of the places of amusement in Australia.
So far as the audiences are concerned, they are in a transition stage—the stage of development between being delighted with everything and being satisfied with nothing. It is still comparatively easy to attract a crowd to a performance that can boast of novel features, or of moderately good credentials from abroad. In fact, the Australian is willing, at the outset, to take a great deal on trust, even though he is quick to resent what looks like an imposition on his good nature. An indifferent company may have one successful tour of the continent, but it will scarcely have a second. It is the failure to recognise this fact that causes stranded actors to be plentiful as blackberries. The local theatre-goer is good-natured up to a certain point; beyond that point, it is impossible to move him.
Speaking generally, the country is not kind to its own theatrical children. The actor, like the prophet, has to look for his honours abroad. His fellow-countrymen find a difficulty in recognising him, or at least in approving him, until he has broken in upon them from over-seas. The stage in Australia is looked at, not through opera-glasses, but through a telescope; the thing near at hand is not clarified, but distorted. The man of purely local experience is in no danger of being spoilt by adulation. However tolerated or even admired he may have been, he is expected to seek the shades of a graceful retirement the moment that Brown, of Jones’s English theatre, is announced. There is not an Australian-born actor or actress who could not testify to this fact; many of them resent it, but others have come to accept it as a matter of course.
It is true, that there are among the four million people who inhabit Australia, a certain number possessed of discernment. In the exercise of this faculty they now and again perceive that an individual playing a comparatively small part is endowed with special ability. Then, if they are sufficiently interested, they may take steps to secure his acquaintance; or disdaining this formality, they may buttonhole him, remark that they have been impressed by his performances, and invite him to discuss the situation over a glass of wine. An invitation of this kind is seldom refused. The supporters of local talent remark to the Thespian that he is being wasted in Australia; that there is no scope for him in Australia; that he really ought to remove himself from Australia at the first opportunity. It is then discovered that this is the advice his friends and relatives have been tendering him for months past. If he declines to go, or suggests that his own country is quite good enough for him, he is set down as a man of no ambition, and probably of very little soul. More often than not, he is persuaded to go. The favourable opinion entertained of him is found, by a curious chance, to coincide with his opinion of himself. He goes. Perhaps he will be given a few small parts in London and return to Australia a hero. Possibly he will be swallowed out of sight in the world’s vortex, and that will be the end of him. More probably, he will return disgusted and disillusioned, not with his own abilities, but with the blasts of indifference and the chevaux-de-frise of cosmopolitan neglect that have met him abroad.
If the actor of purely local experience finds it hard to make a living, the task is quite beyond the capacity of the local dramatic author. One or two men born at the Antipodes have made their mark in England as writers of plays. But that has only been after leaving the country of their birth, and after surviving years of hard work and discouragement. Where is the rising school of Australian dramatists? Where are even the faint beginnings of it? And where are the supporters of such a school? Echo answers to these questions. It is curious that there should be such a blankness of enterprise and of inspiration in this domain. The country is out of its literary swaddling clothes; it can support any number of theatres; it can find minor parts for any number of Australian actors and actresses; but it is incapable—in its present frame of mind, it is totally incapable—of supporting a single Australian dramatist. The idea that it might be asked to do so seems never to have been seriously considered. There have, indeed, been a few performances, mostly by third-rate, barn-storming companies, of plays dealing with the Kelly Gang. And that excellent comedian and manager, Mr Bland Holt, has given us a few stage pictures representing Sydney and Port Philip harbours, and a few melodramatic incidents supposed to have taken place in Australia. But if an audience, on being invited to witness high-class comedy or tragedy of the more intellectual sort, were to find itself confronted with Circular Quay and Darlinghurst, or with Collins Street and Toorak, or with the people inhabiting them, it would receive such a shock that it would not recover until it had got outside the theatre door—and possibly not then. It would feel at first amazed, and then insulted. The recognised understanding is, that nothing worth looking at in the theatrical sense, and nothing worthy of presentation to an enlightened public, can by any chance take place unless it takes place in England, or on the continent of Europe, or in America, or in Japan.
For the reasons mentioned, English actors usually do well in this part of the world. The old country imposes now and then on the inexperience of the new one. It has a habit of sending here, not merely its second and third best, but its dead-beats and its derelicts. The celebrated English actor of the play-bills is, as often as not, celebrated only in the lively imagination of the entrepreneur who brings him out. He comes, however, with a certain flourish of trumpets and glamour of romance. The very fact that he hails from a distance of 12,000 miles is an aureole round his head. He can be sure of a good reception, of an interested, expectant audience. If he has any colourable qualities, they will be loudly, even rapturously, applauded. If he is very indifferent, or if he is unspeakably bad, he will scarcely be told so—at least not at first. The worst he will receive from the critics of the great “dailies” will be a kind of faint questioning, a troubled note of uncertainty, a dim reminder of some one else who played the part differently. They may damn him with faint praise; but they will be loth, at the outset, to do more. The fact that the actor is understood to have won applause in England goes for a good deal, and the commercial and social instincts of the big papers go for rather more. A few of the week-end journals may bark out vituperation, but they do not really count. It is well known that they are just as likely to attack the supremely good as the atrociously bad. In the long run, it may be—and perhaps before very long—audiences will fall away from the imported actor who is manifestly fourth and fifth rate; for Australian play-goers are not naturally dull. They are, however, under the spell of foreign associations; they are influenced, to a greater or less extent, by newspaper criticism; and they have unquestionably given a number of well-boomed and press-belauded visitors better support than, on their merits and by comparison with the local substitute, they deserved.
So far there has been no American invasion. The plays and the topical allusions in vogue south of the Line are either English in origin, or filter through an English channel. Productions hailing from the United States have made their appearance and have fretted their hour, but they have not succeeded in leaving a lasting mark. One reason is, that the associations and atmosphere of the land of the dollar are not sufficiently familiar. What do we know in Australia of the Bowery? What do we know of Fifth Avenue? What do we know, or care, for the Waldorf, or the Astoria? The local colour of Fleet Street, of Westminster, of Petticoat Lane, and of Kensington, is, owing to numerous stage acquaintanceships, something with which every audience feels at home. But to talk to the average Melbourne or Sydney man of the streets and hotels and public buildings of Boston and New York and Philadelphia, is to talk to him in a foreign language. In the majority of cases he does not know, and when he does know, he does not care.
Another reason is, that the typical American production lacks depth and height. It catches something of what is flitting on the surface of America; but it forgets that America, though topographically a large place, is only a fraction of the intellectual and artistic world. The country has not yet its Sardou, or its Sudermann, or its Ibsen, nor yet its D’Annunzio, or its Pinero, or even its Henry Arthur Jones. A dramatist spoken of as the American Sardou made his bow in Melbourne a year or two ago, with a tragedy named Nadjezda. It was soon made manifest that he had not come to stay. Neither have such productions as A Trip to Chinatown or The Belle of New York, or Leah Kleschna, been responsible for much genuine success. The Yankee playwright is clever with words and indifferent with ideas. As to emotions, he has heard that they exist.
Yet there is one important, non-English product that has won a great welcome from Australian audiences. This is the American actress. She has not been able to acclimatise the works of her own countrymen; she has usually refrained from attempting to do so. Clothing her individuality in the language of Shakespeare and Sheridan, of Ibsen and Bjornsten, of Sudermann and Maeterlinck, of Sardou and Rostand and the Younger Dumas; heralded always by a tremendous flourish of trumpets, and accompanied usually by an astute stage manager; restraining her national prejudices and reducing her American accent to a few pretty words and phrases, she has been enabled to accomplish a great deal. The lady from the United States brings with her youth as a foremost asset. She knows that it is difficult to “star” through a continent without this ally. She has it proclaimed—loudly proclaimed—as part of her equipment. Everywhere she plays the Young American Actress. It is the first and the most effective piece in her repertoire. For the rest, she finds it advisable to cultivate a manner, and a certain distinction of style, when off the stage. Sometimes she is effusive, even demonstrative, and inclined to be gracious to interviewers. Sometimes she is magnificently cold and distant, with a coldness that is only comparable to the fierce warmth of the characters in which she revels behind the footlights. But always in Australia—whether she is on the stage or off it—she is acting, acting, acting. Stage-struck people send her flowers; infatuated people write her verses. She accepts them all and welcomes them all as tributes to her artistic success. She is brilliantly clever, with a cleverness that is all of the head. She gets a great deal, and she deserves what she gets.
To come back to Australian audiences, it requires very little argument to show there is only one kind of play that really appeals to them. It is the kind of play that hovers about the confines of a socially fashionable, and morally unorthodox, world. It is edged round with impropriety; it is coloured, permeated, enlivened with what the immortal author of Bab Ballads calls “guilty splendour.” In the background are the lilies and languors of virtue, but in the foreground, placed there for the people to smile at and to condemn, are the raptures and roses of vice. The theme, no doubt, has endless variants: sometimes the end is tragic, and sometimes it is amusing; sometimes a majority of the commandments suffer, and sometimes only one. It is advisable that there should be a kind of supposed moral purpose running through the production. It is an advantage to have one or two high-minded characters as foils to the others; and as a concession to custom, or as a salve to the uneasy British conscience, it is always a wise policy to bring the immoral people to grief in the last act. But no one can pretend to deny that it is these latter—these fashionable rakes and brilliantly attired courtesans—who constitute the real attraction of the Australian stage to-day. If any one doubts this, let him attempt to run a theatrical season without them, and let him put on the boards a drama dealing only with conventional or with virtuous people. His downfall will be swift and convincing and sure.
For psychology, the typical Australian audience cares little. For poetry on the stage, it cares less. For blank verse it has no inclination. For sustained dignity it has no time. With intellectual fireworks it is but indifferently and partially amused.
Comedy that lies hid in delicate shades and nuances, comedy that is chiefly a matter of scintillating words and phrases, is not asked for by the multitude. Even the brilliancy of Mr Bernard Shaw at his best can command but a limited circle of admirers. Even the problem, considered merely as a problem, is devoid of drawing power. When it attracts, it attracts because of its dazzling pictures of luxury and licentiousness.
Tragedy requires to be carefully handled. It is only when it is decked out in certain robes, only when embroidered with certain trappings, only when set to certain music, that it will crowd the benches. The merely sordid themes have lost their hold, if they ever had one. An immoral play that persists in showing its characters in a garb of sackcloth and ashes has little chance of gaining an extended hearing.
One play that has had a marvellously successful run in Australia is entitled Woman and Wine. The name might just as appropriately have been given to nine out of every ten productions that have held, for any length of time, the local stage. Whether it is Camille, or The Second Mrs Tanqueray, or The Gay Lord Quex, or Dolores, or Zaza, or Quo Vadis, or Sweet Nell of Old Drury, or The Country Mouse, or The Marriage of Kitty, or The White Heather, or any other melodrama of the unfailing Bland Holt and Anderson pattern, the title might, with equal appropriateness, have been that of the popular piece of work already mentioned. A theatre-going public—any theatre-going public—is reached less easily through its intellect than through its senses. What wonder, therefore, that a management should find it advisable to stage Woman and Wine?
Caring only for one kind of play, Australian audiences are quite willing, in their restless desire for novelty, to coquet with others. That last expression of national boredom and ineptitude, musical comedy, has its following at the Antipodes. This form of amusement, like the others, is borrowed. It is doubtful whether Australian audiences would ever have taken to it, had they not been assured that it was regarded in England as the correct thing. Now that it has obtained a footing, it is found to have a certain attractiveness. It has become almost a rage. The reason is to be found in the circumstance that it relieves the onlooker from the necessity of having to think. This is a consideration that cannot well be over-estimated. For the rest, it boasts a number of shapely-looking chorus girls, and a funny man, whose business it is to be as mirthfully suggestive, and as suggestively mirthful as possible. There is also some music, but this scarcely counts. The comedy that is dubbed musical is not seriously vicious, but then it has nothing to do with virtue. The latter circumstance, combined with its gaudy colours, its short skirts, and its chorus girls, helps it joyously on its way.
The claim is occasionally made, that one part of the continent is more favourable to high dramatic art than another. Melbourne, which is always endeavouring to be superior to every other city in Australia, is accustomed to delude itself with the idea that it is fond of intellectual plays. It makes a decent pretence, now and again, of attending a revival of Shakespeare. If the brief season proves a failure, as it usually does, the critics unkindly tell the performers that it is they, and not the Bard of Avon, or the taste of the Melbourne public, that are at fault. Sydney, to do it justice, is given over to no such unnecessary make-believe. Shakespeare has been expurgated so much that there is no risk, and consequently no excitement, in going to see him, and Sydney stays away.
Outside the drama there are amusements which, between them, take up most of the thought and most of the spare time of the people. But little requires to be said of them, because, while they resemble the drama in that they are borrowed from abroad, they give much less scope for the play of individual taste and temper and sensibility. Racing is the national recreation, just as gambling is the national vice. The two insensibly melt into each other. It is a great sporting continent. When the word “sport” is used—when a certain individual is called a sportsman, and another individual is referred to as a follower of “the game”—the reference is invariably to the game in which the horse and the bookmaker play the leading parts. No writer, however admirable his intentions, and however lurid his language, has been able to exaggerate the hold which racing has over the whole population from Port Darwin to Cape Otway, and from Brisbane round to Perth. The office boy reads his racing intelligence in the papers with as much zest, and usually with as much critical discernment, as does the man of wealth and leisure. The man who never goes to horse races and never talks horse, is to be met with, but he is distinctly uncommon. He stands apart from the rest of the community. He is a modern Isaac Newton, given to voyaging through strange social seas alone.
The assertion that racing is a noble and improving pastime—improving to the breed of horses and incidentally to the people who look on—is continually being made by writers who should know something of the subject. A few delusions of the respectable sort are considered necessary in the life of a people, and the decent efforts of sporting authorities to keep these delusions alive are not treated with disrespect. But any one who wishes to discover the real facts can easily do so. The public who support racing care as much for improving the breed of horses, as they do for civilising the Solomon Islanders, or for christianising the Chinese—as much and no more. The horse is emphatically not the thing; he is not the end; he can hardly be called the means to the end; he is merely a useful pawn in the great and insidious gambling game. In this game there are certain rules which have to be observed. That is to say, they must not be broken in too open, or too defiant, or too glaring a manner. But under cover of these rules, and under pretext of observing them, every one does his best to swindle every one else. The owner begins by deceiving the public; the trainer, if it is sufficiently worth his while, misleads the owner; the jockey scores repeatedly off the trainer; the bookmaker does his best to make a profit out of the other three. The people who pay in the last resort are the public. It is all very interesting, and very expensive. The atmosphere of speculation is buoyant and breezy, and, for the time being, exhilarating. Yet for all except those who have learned how to move about in it—for all except the owners, and, trainers, and jockeys, and bookmakers, and a few others—it is decidedly unhealthy. While it is possibly advisable to have national amusements, it is an advantage to understand what we are doing. The man in Mrs Thurston’s novel, who keeps talking about “nerves,” when he means opium, becomes, after a time, an infliction. And the individual who is always referring to “sport,” when he means horse-racing, is in danger of growing tedious.
The continent has its athletic games, although none of these can be called national in the sense that racing is national. Not even cricket. The Englishman sees more of Australian cricketers than he does of Australian horses, and may be inclined to think that a country which has beaten him at Lords, while it has been unable to raise a decent gallop at Epsom, must perforce pay more attention to cricket than it does to horse-racing. The idea, if it exists, is amusingly erroneous. How do the attendances at Club cricket compare with the attendances at local race meetings? How does the sprinkling of enthusiasts at the one fixture look beside the tens of thousands, who, week in and week out, follow the racing game in every centre of population in the Commonwealth? An international cricket match will always draw a crowd; but international cricket matches are few and far between. The truth is that the speculation fever, the gambling fever, the fever to which the horse acts as the main irritant, runs in the blood of the people. The other excitements are transitory, and merely endemic.
In the realm of sport, to use the generic word, there is nothing that the people will not attempt, nothing on which they have not turned a roving eye. They play football, golf, tennis, croquet, hockey, lacrosse, bridge, ping-pong, and a great deal else. They indulge in skating on artificial ice, and, in the middle of a tropic summer, struggle with dumplings and roast beef. They seek amusement everywhere. In the mass, they are far more impressed by skill at some kind of game than by any intellectual achievements. The hero-worship goes out, in the first place, to the successful cricketer, and in the next place, to the leading jockey, with the politician an indifferent third, and the local poet or litterateur entirely out of the running. It is an undeniable fact that his countrymen were more proud of that amiable and pleasant youth, Mr Victor Trumper, after his English season of 1902, than they have ever been of any Prime Minister, actor, author, singer, poet, or professor of metaphysics in the land.
In the world of sport and of recreation, just as in the world of the stage, there is the tendency to borrow, and to borrow again. The games that are played in England are played here, just as the kind of drama that is acted in England is acted here. It matters little whether the climate and temperament and other conditions are suitable, or the reverse. The initiative faculty is stronger than its surroundings. To watch a game of Rugby football in progress at Charters Towers, or at Brisbane, is to wonder whether a new race of Salamanders, gifted with tireless energy and some marvellous kind of asbestos physique, has struck the earth. There is only one thing that may in the end kill the initiative faculty, and that is the national dislike for too much exertion. There are not wanting faint indications that Australia is beginning to find the strain of these more strenuous pastimes too severe, that it is slowly but surely coming to the conclusion that training for football and for sculling matches necessitates more sustained effort than the result is worth. It may be all very well for the Englishman to keep himself warm by vigorous exercise. His climate requires heroic treatment. The Australian, though still ready to abase himself before the successful athlete, is slowly working round to the conviction that certain pursuits are better adapted for the Northern Hemisphere than for his own. The day is coming, and may not be far distant, when the Australian people will revolt from their Christmas dumplings, and abandon their Rugby football; when they will be content, from North to South, with backing unreliable steeds on a race-course, with playing poker in a shady room, and with watching from the stalls of a theatre, the swaying forms of lightly clad heroines, and the graceful movements of dancing feet.