Our Stage and Its Critics / By "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

by Edward Fordham Spence

The innovation might at least have one advantage—it would force the managers to be intelligent enough to make a really audible noise a few minutes before the end of each entr'acte, so as to give people the chance of settling down in their places before the curtain rises. Of the many incomprehensible things connected with the theatre one of the most puzzling is the fact that quite conscientious playgoers get caught outside the auditorium after the curtain is up. The management is anxious that as many people as possible should go to the bars, yet they render it very difficult to get there; they desire that those who have gone should return to their seats before the curtain rises, lest friction should be caused, but all they do as a rule is to ring some inaudible bell, and cause the attendant to whisper, as if delicately announcing bad news, "Curtain just going up, gentlemen," and neither curtain nor whisper gives long enough time to enable people to settle down comfortably.

It is to be feared that this sort of club idea would not really work, for reasons some of them quite obvious. The fact remains that paterfamilias, still a person of some importance, is invited to patronize the theatre, and not only asked to pay a good deal of money in order to do so but forced to make a number of physical sacrifices; and at the end is offered, as a rule, the kind of piece not intended to please him, but designed for the taste of his womenfolk.

Here we see one of the reasons for the popularity of the musical comedy. The householder is not required to trouble himself to understand a plot which hardly exists; he may go to sleep if he pleases, or think over his affairs in between the tit-bits without losing the thread; there are simple tunes, which certainly aid his digestion, and broad elementary humours that appeal to his sense of fun; and, if he is in a sentimental vein, whatever love-making there may be in the piece has no subtlety to exasperate him.

Despite these things, let us hope that the West End managers will be hostile to the smoking; for, after all, far too much of our drama at present is intended to please the comfortable Philistine and his appropriate womenfolk; and the people keenly interested in drama as a branch of art are prepared even to sacrifice a pipe or a cigar in the pursuit of their peculiar and hardly popular pleasure. Moreover, it is likely the theatres would exhibit the snobbishness of the fashionable halls and restaurants and taboo the pipe which every wise man prefers to the cigar or cigarette for serious smoking.

[Conduct of the Audience ]

When Mr Joseph Holbrooke was conducting the overture to Pierrot and Pierrette at His Majesty's Theatre he interrupted the orchestra in order to request some members of the audience to stop talking. These speakers were people in the stalls, and the composer-conductor could hear that their conversation was about shopping—not Chopin, which, alas! is sometimes pronounced as if the name rhymed with "popping."

No one can feel surprised that a composer finds it impossible to do his work adequately as conductor when there is audible conversation among members of the audience. Mr Holbrooke drew attention to what happens very often in our playhouses: people come apparently entertaining the idea that if they have paid for their seats they owe no duty towards their neighbours or the author, composer or players. This idea, unfortunately, is not confined to those who have paid for their seats, since some of the dramatic critics, and also several of the ordinary "deadheads," set a bad example.

The most noisome offenders are those who come late on purpose, because they are anxious to draw public attention to their existence. They, of course, are snobs of the worst water, whatever their social status or the cost of their clothes, furs and jewellery; you see them bustling in a quarter of an hour after the curtain has risen, shoving their way along past people who rise reluctantly, and hear them chattering whilst they take off cloaks and wraps before settling down in their seats. Very little less detestable are those who, arriving late unwillingly, behave otherwise in the same fashion. One of these brawlers defended herself by alleging that there ought to be a gangway down the middle of the stalls, and that her conduct was a protest.

Of course there ought to be a gangway, and some day the County Council will insist upon the formation of one in every theatre, or else force the manager to put the rows of stalls so far apart that people can pass along them in comfort. We know that on the whole managers do not care much about the comfort of their patrons; they seem to act on the supposition that plays are of only two classes, those so attractive that you cannot keep the public away and those so unattractive that you cannot get it to come.

The London théâtre de luxe is still a dream of the future, though undoubtedly some playhouses are vastly more comfortable than others. The authorities are lax in this matter, as in the matter of exits; the crush in getting out of most of the playhouses is abominable. No doubt there are extra exits which might be used in case of peril; people ought to be compelled to use them every night, so that a habit would be established on the part of audiences and also of the attendants.