1961-10-25 — Page 6

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SUMMER

• Diane Cilento and Basil

Sydney in a scene from

Sartre's 'Altona'.

THE CHINA MAIL, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1061.

ENGLAND

by

LUFF

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THE OLD ORDER PASSES

THE

THE theatres are probably having the

leanest time in their history, at least, since Oliver Cromwell closed them all down.

Various reasons are given; Bingo, TV, and the latest excuse ... a fine summer. These excuses cannot be held to be valid, for theatre has been on the decline for a long time.

Not only in London, but in the provinces, is this fall-oft nojeit. The latest theatre to close up being 201 Leicester. such There was

Lutery when the property the players used was subd, that a business. estas arguired a disuser theatre for the towIL The people re- warded his generosily by stay- ing away.

Obviously, any up and con- in playwrights are going to use their talents where They will and a market, and as far en 3 can see, that play'nmarket Is to be found in writing scenes for the TV.

Morons

True they are only 60 second scenes, but they pay off. Buy and a girl walking up on Eng- 1sh country lane; he pulls out a packet of cigarettes with a Durish. The dialogue is good. All heaven is in that cigarette. Meanwhile the writers of musleal comedies now compose

tutes for the TV. "All the family loves to ent .. Co... Cu...

Chocolate!"

The old order passes away. Not all our ruges, tears, threats,

or anything else can alter that.

We might deplore, insult

(And the playwrights

write 'ads'

for the Television)

the public, call them In and Lyceum singing TV. Yet there is dedication, moron, but if they don't which demanded realism

want to go to the theatre, then nothing will make thent.

on and hope is seen in sa actor the stage; real waterfalls; real of the quality of Albert Finney. horses, something like a real

75

train complete with steam in Noel Coward's Cavalcade,

Meanwhile what is happen- bus gone.

Ing?

sve

Well, obviously when In London, if you are interested in theatre, you want to what is real theatre, and not waste your time on commercini stuff which our local people can do so well if they their minds to it.

give

While I had heard a grent deal about him, had seen bim only In the film, "Satur- day Night and Sunday Morn-

In its place are the actors ing." and their lines.

Dedication

The sets are merely hints. The Indifferent actor has "business" save that completely

no

but the little there is can be

So what is left? Not much, associated with his lines. He has to carry his part himself, very good at times. Modern und if he is unable to do so, trends have driven the theatre then he has to go and smoke back upon itself. The Drury cigarettes or eat chocolate on

TRISTAN DA CUNHA

LU

IFE on Tristan da Cunha was always an unceasing struggle against the elements- even before the volcano erupted the other day. And yet the island held peculiar fascination for its settlers.

WIN

What else could make them stay there! It lonely, wet, windy, and sur- rounded by the heaving seas of the Roaring Forties.

AS THE VOLCANO

Inarressable, the two

neighbouring lands," said Me Hardun, who lives at Thorpe

Bay, Kent.

"The seas teemed But to cztch the

with fsh. the people Tian only primitive boats made of Wengh covered bv canvas and the seas were always AUTY COACH.

"Taz

Bartering

painted

ERUPTS

By

DONALD CAMERON

was

Put people

plores and they mud Trustam da

WON in currency administered The Island for the Cit

They

healthy on the Island. went

We bartered a Colonlal Office from 1957 to happy, God fearing.

newspaper for Virve potatoes or 1959, said; "Lle there two cigarettes."

xnod.** Tu settlers of Tristan da Conha have always been poor, but they manager to feet and clothe themselves and that was till they wanted. They ved at with each other:

JACK Was 16 C751)

There

Daitik 1817 there was a Brikh Harrison on the site. On of William the soldiers, Corporal Glass, vented to stay behind When the island was evacuated.

He had an African wife and two lulf-African chuldren. And he eclet it would be wher not to take them back to his home in Kelso,

They stayed

uthers

J

Glasz persuaded stry with hum American Dutchmen, Italians, Negroes. 11 was the dese rulants of these people who were forced to fee.

Rev. Phtig, Bell, the island's ebaplain unt February is year, described what life on the island was like:--

"The Ren contes pounding in at the foot of 2.000ft, elifs ull round the stand until you get to the mile-wide plutvai" on the north alde.

The settlement is there, about 70 feet above the sea. Just 05 stone-walled, thatch-rnofed crofts nestling; Intu the hillskie.

Then there are the wooden huts left over by the Navy In which all the outsiders 11: myself eve-the clusior, the nurse, a handful of Britons and Butelimen and South Africans, mostly in their 30's with young children, sinring a fine social

the

e with the inlinlers,"

After the Second World War

Royal Navy But Up

a weather and radio station theres.

"The falanders standard of living was appallingly low," re- membered former radiu opera- for John Harding,

"They lived on potatoes and fish and any birds eggs they could gather from Nightingale

But Mr Harding, who is now a civil servant, said: "I was fas- einated by both the place and its people think everyone was."

One of her three children, Caroline, was born on The i- land. Said Mrs Harris, who lives at Orpington, Ket: "It

was Mr Harding was not the only particularly wonderful for the outsider to be impressed by the children. Nu cars ta worry people of the island. Mrs Jean about. Everyone on the Island Harris, whose husband Francis so devent and friendly.

"1 enn see Patrick and Mar- gare! now: dressed like the is- ind children in jumpers and long socks shorts and tong. made from white wool.

"They gut un so well with the athers at school. The only trouble was that Tristan was so healthy that every time a ship came in the whole island would be laid low by unaccustomed cold germs.

"I don't think any of the islanders wanted to leave: why should they want to come into a world of erime and taxation?”

But Mrs Harrbs was lucky. The island at that time was en- joying prosperity. A canning factory had been set up after the war to exploit the crayfish which swarmed around the shores.

An income

The Islanders had a source of income for the first time. A school was started. Sanitation

and running water enine to the crotis; electricity to some of them. A currency was intro- duced.

As I reached home, the press of America were raving about hlm, and as was to be ex-

Hollywood were pected,

after him.

I was told that he had turn- ed down fabulous offers, and his decision was to act in a new play by John Osborne called "Luther."

The theatre critics did not know what to make of this. After all, these are days specialisation, and as Osborne is the Angry Young Man, such a play seemed to them an act of treachery.

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Relief

one nit-wit

Kenneth Tynan of "The out certain aspects of life in Ire- Observer" read the play as land which are no doubt due to the intuences not unconnected with being an attack on

the Church. Roman Catholic Church. It makes one almost despaly that a crilie of Tynan's standing could MIA- understand a play.

for

на

After all, sixty thou- sand young Irish people left Ireland in 1960, moat of them landing in Eng. land, others hurrying off to Australia, America. and Canada, probably for ever, something is radically wrong.

Only a foo! ог д fanatic would attempt to deny the corruption that bad crept into the Church ut this stage, but even so, John Osborne's play is not an attack. It is ub-

Scan O'Casey reckons he puts solutely objective. With Luther as the central theme, we have his Anger on the sore point. He the Knight as a kind of com has said himself of Ireland (thera the intelligent is) "the terrible fear of the sight mentator observer of the times. What of the lover and his lass among denying all tradition and the bracken, in a dance at the cross the play does show is, Luther, the rye or half hidden in the writers of the early Church, roads, or walking together down interprets from Holy Scripture a coutry road of lope. A land alone.

where Chastity has become one of the worst vices, the mar- ringe rate the lowest in the world and the birth rate too...."

But his interpretation is his own, and when he sees others (The Pessants Revalt) doing a littic interpretation of their own, he turns on them with a Well....well....said a speaker savage fury. This is made plain over the Irish radio: "The place by The Knight's speech, as he of least enjoyment is the place of addresses the dead body of a Then

lenst engagements towards max- get peasant: "It only one could riage. If galety and enjoyment. their minds at ease. After understand him, (Luther} He are, hidden from the young, the all, what was Luther but baffles me. I just can't make young will go where they are to an Angry Young Man of him out, Anyway, it

never be found,” ali (Ta corpse) Dia his time? They heaved a worked out

it, my friend?" And NO ON,

in the play, O'Casey · has a sigh of rellef, John Os then later, addressing Luther Buucy loss, an open minded, sad, borne had been true to "All righ, my friend. Slay but sensible priest, and a g himself.

with your nun then.

spirited Irish workingman. and stew with your nun. Most of the others have. Stew with her, like a shuddering infant In her bed. You think you'll

The play was put on at the Royal Court, Sloane Square. It was sold out before I arrived home but a friend was kind manage?" enough to pass me on a lieket,

While we were waiting for them to open up at the Royal Court, the cast went to Paris, and Finney us Luther was male performance. awarded the prize for the best 1t secined obvious to me that Osborne had chosen two sources for

of Luther and Luther's Table Talk.

Marry

They are set in contrast with a town councillor, a bishop, and a Ins who imagines that the best way in which she can serve God is to deny him those gifts with- which he endowed her.

Golden age greatest dramatists in the Eng

What Osborne is doing is to show the fallibility of man, but Osborne's anger is, or so it seems to as

I consider O'Casey one of the

lish language, and what he has to say, he says well. Certainly this play is a challenge to certain aspects of Irish life, and if not now, then later, this challenge will have to be met.

the fact that men promise his play. A good standard life

the Kingdom of Heaven, or na he might put it, the Golden Age, hút tomorrow morning, the world, it is the old world yet.

Bul the islanders had It is known that Luther de- to leave. Their life of hard spised the mincing courtly talk work and happiacas thwarted of his time and spoke in the by the one forer of nature lusty Saxon dialect. Finney which they could not defeat. used his own Lancashire dis- -(London Express Service), Icet, and very effective it was.

ARTHIEN HAUTODAIN

OPERATION "SPEARPOINT" DURING EXERCISE-ALL RANKS WILL RESPECT GERMAN PROPERTY AND GERMANS. NO HUNING, FISHING, ALOOTING. CLOSE ALL GATES

"Conscientious little baa lamb, aren't you 7"

WD

The play has a robust appeal, earthy, yet with a remarkable flow of language, clear and expressive.

Finney achieves a perform- ance which had the audience in thrall. The play went on to Edinburgh and then to Lon- don's West End. There, the counter attractions of Soho striptease, Bingo, and "Lady Chatterley's Lover," seem too much for it.

The other hopeful sign of theatre Is The Mermaid Theatre at Puddic Dock, Black Frlar». Taking its name from the old tavern where the Elizabethan playwrights and players carous- it is a genuine workshop theatre where the young hope- fuls perform any job just to be nasociated with it.

ied.

Bars

It is also a home for the older

actors who remain loyal to the

It in real theatre.

weit ap-

Escape

For in spite of getting rid of the English, Ireland has not achieved anything she declared she would. All she has lost is an ablibi for her backwardness among the pallons,

Her emigrants are not now escaping the bloody English rule, they are escaping from Ireland.

Woll, the Mermaid players picked their theatre twice night ly with this play, Sean O'Casor Hod sent along a lot of his trifles to decorate the place with. ald playbills from Dublin and Gire many. Portraits of himself, and comments on his work. Th theatre was filed with tourists, the Shakespearean settings op- pealing immensely to the Ameri cans, added to which was the fact that somewhere noor, at any rato, strutted the English drama- lists of old.

But what shools me was to And that the cost could play twice nightly with such vigour, and then turn un the next day for more punishment,

pointed with a restaurant ox-

It shows a dedication to their tending over the Thames, and it ari. Who has two splendid bars denoted by Harry Hutchinson for one, who are they? Well, iwe famous brewing houses, and first appeared at the Abbey. in addition a fine bookstall do- Dublin in 1911. A younger

member. Colin Salkeld from Dublin; Annette Crosbie from the They put on the play "The Bristol Old Vie; Howard Goor-

nated by W. 11. Smith*.

of Theatre Work-'

Bishop's Bonfire" at the same time as the Royal Court pro- mey from Manchester, a foun

der momber duced "Luther,'

shop. The Dishop's Bonfire is not a

And above all, Bernard new play, as a matter of fact is Milos who has thrown away was first performed at the Galty, big money and popular parts

Theatre,

1933.

Dublin, in February.

Chastity

The London erlilen did not know what to make of it, so they coupled # with Luther" and said that the Poplate were get- ting a double barrelled blast in ong week.

Bean O'Casey 'wrote the pla and his intention is not so much London Express dernier to blast the Paplate as to point

to make the Mermaid Theatro possible, ・・

TOMORROW Plush Tin-Pan

Alley

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