The Secrets of a Savoyard

by Henry A. Lytton

6. Keep up a keen personal interest in the play. If you are in the chorus, your job is not solely to help in the singing and to show off a picturesque costume, but to assist in focussing the interest on the central incident. If, on the other hand, you are listless and stare about the theatre, it is bound to rob the whole performance of freshness and spontaneity.

7. The Gilbert and Sullivan atmosphere, as I have said several times elsewhere, is "repose." This is impossible if every member of the company—and even the leading principal himself—indulges in little mannerisms liable to take the audience's eye from the central point.

8. Never forget that a company, so far from being divided into principals and chorus, is really one big family, and success depends on one and all "pulling together." Still less should the principals forget what they owe to the chorus for loyally backing them up, and a little kindly appreciation, a word of encouragement from themselves, as the more experienced players, to those who are anxious to learn, goes a mighty long way.

Now that the old stock companies have become almost things of the past, our amateur operatic societies should be recognised as one of the best recruiting fields for theatrical talent, and it is a fact that from their ranks many great artistes have sprung. I myself have seen numbers of these amateur shows, and in most of them there have been two or three performers who, with work and experience, could take a creditable place on the professional stage. For this reason I am anxious to give them all the advice it is in my power to give. First and foremost, therefore, I should insist that before any words are memorised the part itself must be thoroughly studied, so that one knows exactly what the author intends and just what sort of figure one has to depict. Especially have I made it my aim, on my first entrance in any part, to let the audience see just what the character is, whether a comedian, a tragedian, a lover, a fool, or a "fop." Feel that you are actually one of these, and especially when you make your first entry, and the battle is half won already. You will then have something of what people variously call "magnetism" or "personality" or "atmosphere." This feeling of your part at the first entrance is of vital importance, and as far as you can, you must try to keep it up right through the play.

Take the case of Jack Point. From the moment he enters the audience should know the manner of man that he is and he must win their sympathy immediately. He is a poor strolling player who has been dragged from pillar to post. Footsore and weary though he is, Jack Point is anxious to please the crowd who have roughly chased him and Elsie Maynard in, for if he fails them have they not threatened to duck him in the nearest pond? Jack and Elsie are no ordinary players. In Elizabethan times the street dancer was a familiar character. The Merry-man and his maid, however, tell us that they can sing and dance too, a wonderful accomplishment. All this and more is made clear on their first entry. It should be the same in the interpretation of all the other parts.

When the Duke of Plaza-Toro arrives, he must at once impress the audience that, although impecunious, he still expects the deference due to birth and breeding. Ko-Ko, on the other hand, is a cheap tailor suddenly exalted to the rank of Lord High Executioner, and from his first entrance it is obvious that he was never brought up in the dignified ways of a Court. He tells the gentlemen of Japan that he is "much touched by this reception." Somehow one feels that that speech was written out for him when he received his appointment, that he has since recited it forty times a day, and that now the upstart is trying to make believe it is entirely extempore! Then there is Sir Joseph Porter. Whenever I play this rôle I do my best to cultivate a sense of immense self-importance. I do this, of course, whilst waiting my cue, but the effect of it should be seen on the stage. Bunthorne's first appearance should be done in such a way as to stamp him definitely for what he is—an affected "poseur." The exaggeration may be relaxed a little afterwards—but it must be there at the beginning.

So long as one has studied one's part beforehand, particularly in regard to the nature of the first entry, the memorisation of the words becomes more or less easy. And amateurs ought to realise what a tremendous help to them it would be to practice their own facial "make-up." Generally they leave that to an expert, but if they practised it themselves, they would find it a very fascinating, and certainly an important, branch of the actor's profession. Many and many a time have I taken my pencils and colours, retired to some quiet room at home, and spent an afternoon experimenting in make-up. Notwithstanding that I have never played any Shakespearian characters, I have made up privately for dozens of them, and the practice has helped me in innumerable ways.

For instance, I used to be fond of making up as the hunchback Richard the Third, and I turned these experiments to account when I had to play the rôle of King Gama. Shakespeare's Touchstone also appealed to me, and having made up as this clown so often, I had many useful ideas when I came to do Jack Point. The deathly pallor of the poor jester at the end was contrived from many similar experiments. Setting photographs before me, I would make myself resemble the late Lord Roberts and the late Sir Evelyn Wood, and these were used as a model when I had to be Major-General Stanley. Several visits to the Law Courts gave me valuable hints for the Lord Chancellor. The Duke of Plaza-Toro was studied from an old print of a grandee. Ko-Ko's make up, which was bound to be a difficult one, was the outcome of a good deal of sketching on paper, particularly in regard to the treatment of the lines round the eyes. When Mrs. D'Oyly Carte first saw me as Bunthorne, she exclaimed "How you do remind me of Whistler!" That was a compliment. It was from Whistler, of course, that this rôle was understood to be drawn, and so I was not loath to copy the poet's photograph, even to the white lock in his ample jet-black hair!

Yes, make-up well rewards one for all the time one spends in practising it, and many brother professionals agree with me that the great past-masters of the art were the late Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and the late Wilson Barrett. With them, of course, make-up concerned not merely the face but the figure, and it was wonderful how Tree, to instance only two of his great parts, could adapt himself either to the portly and blustering Falstaff or to the lean and haggard Svengali. And Barrett, though ordinarily stocky of build, could appear at times as a towering, dominating personality. Seeing that these men were big theatrical figures, they were not compelled to sink their identities in the parts they were playing, and yet they were such great artistes that they always did so completely.

I close this book with a simple story of the different operas. This will, I am sure, be read with interest both by those who know them already and by those, the younger generation, who are growing up to know and love them too for what they are—a heritage of pure humour and song of which the nation may well be proud, and to which it will remain faithful as long as the spirit of laughter abides in its heart.