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.