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
The other piece which made Saturday evening interesting was a version of
"Au Téléphone," one of Antoine's recent successes at his theatre in
Paris. It was brutal and realistic, it made just the appeal of an
accident really seen, and, so far as success in horrifying one is
concerned, it was successful. A husband hearing the voice of his wife
through the telephone, at the moment when some murderous ruffians are
breaking into the house, hearing her last cry, and helpless to aid her,
is as ingeniously unpleasant a situation as can well be imagined. It is
brought before us with unquestionable skill; it makes us as
uncomfortable as it wishes to make us. But such a situation has
absolutely no artistic value, because terror without beauty and without
significance is not worth causing. When the husband, with his ear at
the telephone, hears his wife tell him that some one is forcing the
window-shutters with a crowbar, we feel, it is true, a certain
sympathetic suspense; but compare this crude onslaught on the nerves
with the profound and delicious terror that we experience when, in "La
Mort de Tintagiles" of Maeterlinck, an invisible force pushes the door
softly open, a force intangible and irresistible as death. In his acting
Mr. Charles Warner was powerful, thrilling; it would be difficult to
say, under the circumstances, that he was extravagant, for what
extravagance, under the circumstances, would be improbable? He had not,
no doubt, what I see described as "le jeu simple et terrible" of
Antoine, a dry, hard, intellectual grip on horror; he had the ready
abandonment to emotion of the average emotional man. Mr. Warner has an
irritating voice and manner, but he has emotional power, not fine nor
subtle, but genuine; he feels and he makes you feel. He has the quality,
in short, of the play itself, but a quality more tolerable in the
actor, who is concerned only with the rendering of a given emotion, than
in the playwright, whose business it is to choose, heighten, and dignify
the emotion which he gives to him to render.
DRAMA
PROFESSIONAL AND UNPROFESSIONAL
Last week gave one an amusing opportunity of contrasting the merits and
the defects of the professional and the unprofessional kind of play.
"The Gay Lord Quex" was revived at the Duke of York's Theatre, and Mr.
Alexander produced at the St. James's Theatre a play called "The Finding
of Nancy," which had been chosen by the committee of the Playgoers' Club
out of a large number of plays sent in for competition. The writer, Miss
Netta Syrett, has published one or two novels or collections of stories;
but this, as far as I am aware, is her first attempt at a play. Both
plays were unusually well acted, and therefore may be contrasted without
the necessity of making allowances for the way in which each was
interpreted on the stage.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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