What I remember most about "The Gondoliers" was the simply uproarious laughter with which the audience greeted the line in the Grand Inquisitor's song, "And Dukes were three a penny." It was quite different to the smiles with which the phrase is received in England. The significance of their merriment was the fact that no fewer than seven men had taken the part of the Duke of Plaza-Toro! I myself was there as the seventh! A Press critic, having drawn attention to this rather prolific succession, proceeded to place the seven in the order of merit—at least, as it appeared to his judgment. He gave six of the names in his order of preference in ordinary type, and then came a wide gap of space, followed by the last name in the minutest type. While I do not remember where I stood I do know that mine was not the name in such conspicuous inconspicuousness!
Speaking of Press criticisms, which in this country are almost invariably fair and judicious, it was my curious experience once to go into a barber's shop in a small town in which we were playing and to find the wielder of the razor very keen about discussing the operas. He then urged me to be sure to buy a copy of the Mudford Gazette. "I've said something very nice about you," he said. I looked perplexed. "Oh! I'm the musical critic, you know," explained the worthy Figaro.
Our "properties" in the small towns were sometimes a little primitive. Once in "The Gondoliers" our gondola was made of an egg-box on a couple of rollers, and we had to wade ashore. This was at Queenstown, where there was a strike, and we could not get all our baggage from the liner that had brought us from America. But often the chief affliction was the orchestra. I remember one violinist whose efforts were woeful. "You can't play your instrument," the conductor told him at last in exasperation. "Neither would you if your hands were swollen with hard work like mine," was his retort. "This job doesn't pay me. I just come here in the evening." It transpired that he was a bricklayer. At another place the musicianship of one instrumentalist was truly appalling. "How long have you been playing?" asked the conductor. "Thirty years man and boy," was the response. "It is thirty years too long," was the retort.
From time to time I am asked where our best audiences are found. Really it is hard to say. Except for one big city—and why not there it is impossible to explain—the company has a wonderful reception everywhere. The Savoy audiences in the old days, of course, were like no other audiences, and it was something to remember to be at a "first night." Long before the orchestra was due to commence—with Sullivan there to conduct it, as he usually was also at the fiftieth, the hundredth and other "milestone" performances—it was customary for many of the songs and choruses from the older operas to be sung by the "gods." And wonderful singers they were.
The London audiences of to-day are also splendid. Our welcome in the 1920 season was a memorable experience. Gilbert and Sullivan operas depend for their freshness and their spirit far more on the audience than do any of the ordinary plays, and as it happens this enthusiasm on both sides is seldom wanting. Yet now and then we find an audience that is cold and quiet at the beginning and then works up to fever-heat as the opera proceeds, whereas on the other hand there is the audience that begins really too well and towards the end has simply worn itself out, being too exhausted to let itself go.
The North, if not so demonstrative as the South, is always wonderfully responsive to the spirit of the witty dialogue and the sparkling songs, and two cities in which it is always a pleasure to play are Manchester and Liverpool. And those who declare that the Scots cannot see a joke would be disabused if they were to be at the D'Oyly Carte seasons at Glasgow and Edinburgh. Our visits there are always successful. But if I had to decide this matter on a national basis I should certainly bestow the palm on Ireland.
Nowhere are there truer lovers of Gilbert and Sullivan than the Irish. It may be that Gilbert's fantastic wit is the wit they best understand, and it may be, too, that their hearts are warmed by the "plaintive song" of their fellow countryman, Sullivan. Whatever the cause, we have no better receptions anywhere. One feature of our Dublin and Belfast audiences is, oddly enough, shared with those at Oxford and Cambridge. They do not merely clap, but openly cheer again and again, throwing all conventional decorum away. And when the Irish are determined to have encores—no matter how many for a particular piece—there is no denying them.
What we have found in the Emerald Isle—even during the unhappy times during and after the war—was that they kept their pleasures and their politics in watertight compartments. Sinn Feiners they might be outside the theatre, but inside it they are determined to enjoy themselves, as an interrupter found on one of our latest visits, when he tried to protest against the song, "When Britain Really Ruled the Waves." "No politics here," shouted someone from the stalls, and the audience agreeing very heartily with this sentiment the protestor subsided into silence.
Looking back on the reference earlier in this chapter to fire brigades, I am reminded that I have more than once been on the stage at times when events have occurred which might have had terrible results, though my success as a panic-fighter is a distinction I would rather have foregone. One incident of this kind was at Eastbourne when we did "Haddon Hall." It will be remembered that in one part there are indications of an oncoming storm of thunder and lightning. Nowadays the authorities take care that effects of this kind are contrived with absolute safety to all concerned, but in those times the lightning was produced by a man in the wings taking pinches of explosive powder out of a canister, throwing these on a candle flame, and so securing a vivid flash over the darkening stage. Well, our man had done this so often that he had grown contemptuous of danger, and this time he took such an ample helping of the powder that the flash caught the canister, and there was a tremendous explosion. The canister went right through the stage and embedded itself in the ground.
In "Haddon Hall" I was McCrankie, dressed in a kilt and playing the bagpipes when the explosion occurred. It plunged both stage and auditorium into darkness. I could hear the injured stage-hand groaning near the wings. Somehow I managed to grope my way to the man, pick him up in my arms, and carry him to one of the exits from the stage. I remember that a number of the chorus ladies, who could not find the door in the darkness, were clawing the walls of the scenery, for in their panic that was the only way they thought they could make their escape. The strange thing was that the door was not a yard away.