Experiment in the Theatre

Irish Jesuit Province

Experiment in the TheatreReview by: Gabriel FallonThe Irish Monthly, Vol. 65, No. 768 (Jun., 1937), pp. 406-411Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20514141 .

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406

Sitting at the Play.

Experiinent in the Theatre

By GABRIEL FALLON.

Y ;r ES, experiment by all means. The theatre is the place for it. It is, at the moment, a wide empty place, in which experimenters can experiment to their heart's desire.

They may succeed or fail. Their experiments may be born from a recollection of theatre first principles or from a forgetting of them. Experiment may improve the theatre of to-day; it can hardly leave the theatre much worse than it finds it.

Shall we take down that outworn, artificial barrier, the proscenium arch? Very well, then, down with it. Experimenter Robert Atkins has taken his Shakespearei to a boxing ring in order to get away from the proscenium arch and out into his audience with the play. A wholesome ambition surely. His experiment seems to be succeeding.

What shall we do with the rising Roscius? Experimenter

Stanislavsky would put him in a chair, tie his arms and legs, blind fold him, gag him, talk to him, taunt him, until the fellow is

finally driven to a realisation of the real value of each one of his organs of communication. Truly a strange experiment, but an experiment devoutly to be wished. Farewell, then, the blank, expressionless eye, the immobile face and brow, the dull voice, the speech without inflection, the stiff body, the wooden arms, hands, fingers, legs, the slouchy gait and all the painful

mannerisms that make up modern acting. Yes, experiment by all means, but don't forget the first prin



SITTING AT THE PLAY 407

ciples. Don't forget the theatre. Your experiment may be leading you back at the very moment when you feel that it is leading you forward. That is not so strange. Many of the good new things which we seek in the theatre lie neglected and for gotten among the good old things in the theatre. After all, the Greeks did know something about the theatre; so did the Elizabethans.

* **

On Monday, April 5, 1937, the Abbey Experimental Theatre sounded its preminere gong before an audience of one hundred and several (they had to put in extra chairs) in the now-faded blueness of its Peacock premises. In spite of its tarnished wall paper the Peacock is a comfortable place. The admission prices are reasonable. The auditorium is small. There is a clear (almost a close-up) view of the stage. The place puts no strain

on the speaking actor or the listening audience. One may sit in comparative ease. The pluish tip-ups can be occupied without payment of that dreadful cramping-tax which is extorted by the Abbey's purgatorial pit, withouit performance of that painful

back-bending, neck-stretching exercise wvhich is demanded by the Abbey's balcony. One big disadvantage is, perhaps, that

Dublin's four hundred cannot get there on the first night (the place couldn't possibly hold any more than ninety-seven and the Press critics), with the result that the remaining three huindred are scattered throughout the week and to the right and the left of the quiet peaceful play-goer. The Peacock is intimate, so inti

mate sometimes that it calls for a great Christian fortitude as well as a wide love of one's neighbour.

Many years ago, about ten or fifteen, Miss Ria Mooney tells us, " there was much talk in Abbey Theatre circles about the establishing of an Experimental Theatre for the production of plays by Irish aulthors whose work was considered not suitable or



408 THE IRISH MONTHL Y

not sufficiently advanced technically for prodtuction on the Abbey stage, and yet was of sufficiently high standard to merit public presentation." Yes, there was much talk then, more since; but nothing came of it. Now, thanks to Miss Mooney's vision, Mr. Hugh Hunt's production class, the Abbey directors' kind permission, and the hard work and co-operation of the pupils of the Abbey School of Acting, the Experimental Theatre has come. Forecasting from its first experiment, I would say that it has come to stay.

We may expect, of course, from now on, a great improvement in the suiitability for produiction and in the technical advancement

of the plays presented to us at the mother theatre. In face of this Peacock experiment we might even expect that the Abbey

directorate will return to its primal avowal to be interested only "in plays that are literature '

The play chosen for the new theatre's first experimernt was Mervyn Wall's Alarm Among the Clerks, a play which possesses a technical advancement which is far (very far) above many (very

many) of the plays which the Abbey has given to Us during the last ten or fifteen years. Mervyn Wall has a skill in characterisa tion, in dialogue, in situation, in dramatic tempo (not always faithfully observed by his experimental producer) which should stand him well in his second play and much better in his third and fourth. His theme (in this, his first) is weak, but his technical handling of it is excellent. " After all, when men are feeling desperate, they can go to a public-house," declares one of his women characters. In Mr. Wall's play, they do-and that is all. The value of Mr. Wall's play lies in the craft with which he etches the " system " that goads his characters to the despera tion they feel, the clear cut lines of the characters themselves, and (in one short act) his skilful dramatisation of our whole office scene. All clerks may see themselves in Mr. Wall's clerks, all



SITTING AT THE PLA Y 409

offices may be glimpsed in that room in Slattery's Bank, a tribute to Mr. Wall's dramatic craftsmanship. But not all clerks go to public-houses, to drink dismally, to talk impotently, to meditate on murder, to escape " the system ". One clerk (a member of the audience) did do something, I understand, oni seeing Mr.

Wall's play. He resigned his office post and joined the army, flying to another" system " that he knew not of. With stronger conviction and a deeper sounding of his philosophy Mr. Wall will find a better theme. And we will have found a brilliant new playwright.

* * *

Mr. Wall was well served in his producer and in his players. Fully-fledged professionals could not have played him better. The credit for this must go to Miss Ria Mooney and Mr. Hugh Hunt. The pupils themselves gave much evidence of discipline and team-work. For all that, the producer'(Mr. Cecil Ford) left no finger-marks on the play. His work never obtruded itself. The play was xvell cast-rather type-cast. It was impossible to say from Mr. Wall's play (and from the slight curtain-raiser

which preceded it) whether the Abbey School has made dis coveries or not, but there are two pupils in it whose development will be worth watching-Mr. Brian Carey and Mr. Frank

Carney. Mr. Carey's work as Dr. Theaken Wilder in The Phoenix and as Mr. Finn in Alarm Among the Clerks marks him out as a young man with an actor's vocation and considerable acting technique.

* * *

A week or so following this pleasant experience of "experi ment " I had the experience of watching these pupil-actors in an experiment of a different kind. Lady Gregory's Dervorgilla is something more than an ordinary curtain-raiser, and the experi



410 THE IRISH MONTHLY

ment of casting the play with pupil-actors (they filled every part in it but three) should never have been attempted in the full grown professional Abbey Theatre. Certainly nothing can justify the putting of a pupil-actress into the difficult lead'ing part of Dervorgilla. It was unfair to the play to the audience and

to the pupil-in this instance a young lady with talent and charm but without that experience of playing which is so necessary for the exacting portrayal of Dervorgilla.

The production was uneven and hardly gained anything from

the old trick of grouping the actors face-on to audience with a suitable bit of eye and neck work calculated to suggest the passing of the English soldiery. This old trick (which might be effec tive enough on the apron stage) looks ludicrous when placed behind the proscenium arch. To break through that impene trable " fourth wall " may be an excellent thing to do, but it can be done only by the removal of the proscenium arch or by the use of the apron stage. Anyway the trick is a gauche trick, old and outworn; and the use of it never fails to bring reminis

cences of the horse-race in The Arcadians. The setting used for Dervorgilla was of the realistic variety

and bad, very bad; making one feel how much is to be said for the judicious use of Gordon Craig screens. These and the tragic genius and the glorious voice of Sara Allgood were what one

missed most in this very " experimental " revival of Lady Gregory's play at Lady Gregory's theatre. The only consola tion to be found showed itself in the splendid performance given by thc pupil-actor, Frank Carney, in the part of A Wandering Song Maker.

* **

Dervorgilla was followed by the production of a Lennox Robinson new play, Killycreggs in Twilight. In this Mr. Robin son is himself again, and all his old dramatic skill, which seemed



SITTING AT THE PLA Y 411

to have foundered in When Lovely Woman, returned to help him with his " big house " theme.

In rnany respects Killycreggs in Twilight is even a better play than The Big House. It has a greater unity and a greater speed. It moves inevitably to its climax, and there is little dallying by

the way. One cannot help wondering, however, if the charming de Lurys ever existed in any country this side of Heaven. They are so cleverly and, Oh! so pleasingly drawn that one cannot help

murmuring: " Who would not be a de Lury and live so charm ingly, so generously, so honourably, so out of the common?"

Even the Yis, your honour, hat-in-hand natives who serve in the de Lury household manage to reflect a little of its resplendent charm. Mr. Robinson makes it impossible for us to feel annoyed with them or with their mendacious habits or with their Haffigan like cupidity and cunning. Perhaps Mr. Robinson has even succeeded in leaving us with the reflection that the type may linger

with us still. The fact that our native strength endured as long as our people held their owvn ancient noble characteristic culture in respect has been pointed out to us again and again. There are still people amongst us who think alien things to be better than their own; people who, through cupidity and cunning, succumb to the de LurY charm and fawn cap in hand on the threshold of the last " big houses " of the stranger. The de

Lurys are welcome to such servitude. Mr. Robinson's play was well set, badly cast, and, on the whole,

well acted, with good performances by Miss Ria Mooney and Mr. Arthur Shields, and an excellent portrayal of the last of the de Lurys by that very capable actor, Mr. Cvril Cusack.



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Experiment in the Theatre