Plays, Acting and Music: A Book Of TheorySymons, Arthur
Philosophy
Plays, Acting and Music: A Book Of Theory
Symons, Arthur
Actors; Music -- History and criticism; Theater
"La Veine" is a study of luck, in the person of a very ordinary man, not
more intelligent or more selfish or more attractive than the average,
but one who knows when to take the luck which comes his way. The few,
quite average, incidents of the play are put together with neatness and
probability, and without sensational effects, or astonishing curtains;
the people are very natural and probable, very amusing in their humours,
and they often say humorous things, not in so many set words, but by a
clever adjustment of natural and probable nothings. Throughout the play
there is an amiable and entertaining common sense which never becomes
stage convention; these people talk like real people, only much more
à-propos.
In "Les Deux Ecoles" the philosophy which could be discerned in "La
Veine," that of taking things as they are and taking them comfortably,
is carried to a still further development. I am prepared to be told that
the whole philosophy is horribly immoral; perhaps it is; but the play,
certainly, is not. It is vastly amusing, its naughtiness is so naïve, so
tactfully frank, that even the American daughter might take her mother
to see it, without fear of corrupting the innocence of age. "On peut
très bien vivre sans être la plus heureuse des femmes": that is one of
the morals of the piece; and, the more you think over questions of
conduct, the more you realise that you might just as well not have
thought about them at all, might be another. The incidents by which
these excellent morals are driven home are incidents of the same order
as those in "La Veine," and not less entertaining. The mounting, simple
as it was, was admirably planned; the stage-pictures full of explicit
drollery. And, as before, the whole company worked with the effortless
unanimity of a perfect piece of machinery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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