Our Stage and Its Critics | Page 8

tendency to adopt the idea contained in a phrase of Mr Gordon Craig's to the effect that the players are "performers in an orchestra," and since a play is not like a piece of chamber-music, where the performers are treated individually, but rather resembles a work performed by a full band, there is an almost valid excuse for paying comparatively little attention to the acting. Sometimes one makes desperate endeavours to avoid dealing with the company in a lump at the end by referring in the descriptive account (which is the journalistic contribution to the criticism) to the individual performers; but it is not easy to do so without interfering with the course of the description.
There are many difficulties in treating the work of the actors and actresses briefly, but to handle it at length and in proportion would require a space which editors are unable to give. No doubt the first of the difficulties is the one already indicated. Wrongly or rightly, it is felt (even by journalists who do not accept the traditions of _The Daily Telegraph_) that there is a poverty-stricken air about the use of the same adjective in consecutive sentences, and though we try to be honest in opinion, we have a workman's vanity in our efforts which asserts itself strongly and causes us, at some sacrifice of accuracy, to vary the epithets.
Moreover, single adjectives tell very little.
To say that Mr X. acted admirably, Miss Y. gave a capital performance, Mr Z. played in excellent style, gives little information, and when there are half-a-dozen to be named it is almost impossible to ring the changes. Furthermore, perhaps unconsciously, we are moved, fatuously no doubt, by the feeling that the earlier part of the article is intensely interesting to all the world, but that no one save the players and their personal friends and enemies will even glance at these concluding sentences. Yet one knows that they are of serious importance to the persons actually concerned, though some of them say that they never read them.
The fact that so many theatres are in the hands of actor-managers is one reason why these phrases are important, for the actor-manager is compelled very often to choose or refuse a player on the strength of hearsay testimony: ours is hearsay evidence in the most accessible form, and even the managers have some belief in the soundness of the judgment of several of us. They all recognise the fact that we tend to create public opinion, and that an actor or actress much spoken of admiringly in the papers excites the curiosity of playgoers, and is a useful addition to a cast. Consequently we feel that in speaking of or ignoring individual performers we are affecting them to some extent in earning their livelihood.
There is a story concerning a critic upon whose death half the stage went into quarter-mourning. If it be true, it showed that he was very short-sighted in his amiability, for when dealing with an overcrowded profession one must remember that ill-earned praise of A may keep B, who is more worthy, from getting A's place, to which, of course, he has a better title. It is very hard to act upon this proposition, although it involves a duty, for it is much easier to imagine the positive hurt to A than the negative injury to B; the critic in question probably shut his eyes to this, if he ever thought of it, and died comfortably unaware of the fact that his indiscriminating praise had kept many meritorious people out of their rights.
Even supposing one masters the illogical feeling of the lamented critic, difficulties arise. We have grown very velvet-tongued in these days. There was no nonsense about our predecessors; if the leading lady was plain, they said so, whilst if one of us were to suggest that the heroine, whose beauty is talked of tiresomely during the play, in real life might sit in unflattering safety under mistletoe till the berries shrivelled he would be regarded as an ungentle manlike brute. This is rather awkward.
There is an injustice in being forced into a conspiracy of silence about the figure or face of a lady who would catch cold at kiss-in-the-ring, yet is supposed at first sight to set Romeo's pulses throbbing madly, and when the dear creatures whom we loved a quarter of a century ago appear to us unsuitable for ingenue parts we feel that it is a terrible breach of duty not to say so, yet it is painful to be candid.
Now and again the matter becomes ridiculous, and we venture to make oblique suggestions; but even this is a poor accomplishment of our task. Yet it seems appallingly rude and direct to say that Miss X. showed intelligence and technical skill, but is