18 
LAND 6? WATER 
November 21, 1918 
THe JHeATRE 
By W. J. Turner 
^nr^^E Officers Mess, at the St. Martin's Theatre, is 
m one of those entertainments which are supposed to 
m be pecuHarly adapted to meet the requirements of 
m soldiers home on leave. That is to say, there is 
bright, cheerful music, bright, cheerful girls wear 
delightful frocks, such as one would like to see everybody 
wearing were it not for the mud and the fact that business 
men must not be troubled by too much beauty, and several 
comedians in various stages of humorous decay endeavour 
to invent new jokes. The mixture is, like plum-pudding, 
eternal, and will be served up when we are all under the sod ; 
vet it has never failed to pique my curiousity how it is that 
men on leave can choose to spend their evenings admiring 
pretty girls at a distance for hours, when the restaurants 
and homes and dances are full of pretty girls that may be 
talked to, flirted with, and kissed. Surely this appears odd— 
at least, I hope so, for I have gone to the trouble of remem- 
bering a theory that fits it. It is one example more of dis- 
illusion or, to put it in another way, of the superiority of the 
emotions obtained through the imagination to those got 
directly from the senses. It is a dreadful fact that when 
you kiss a girl, even when you speak to her, something of 
her charm vanishes for ever ; and though j'ou may be so 
annoyed that you marry her and spend the rest of your life 
trying to find it again, you never do, though, as somebody 
or other whom I never read says, "there are compensations." 
This absolute and immediate bankruptcy of what are called 
the physical senses is the source of all art. We are driven 
to the theatre, to literature, to music, to sculpture, to archi- 
tecture, and to painting because we can get no satisfaction 
whatever from our senses. Unhappy is the man who has 
never explored the pathway through the imagination to a 
new and richer world of emotions, but rushes for ever up 
and down that blind alley. Ybu might have seen him any 
day before the war in the promenade at the Alhambra, tryirg 
to satisfy the highly complex spirit of a man with the crude 
sensations of an animal. 
A show like The Officers' Mess, which is described — rather 
ambiguously — as a musical farce, depends, then, first of all 
on its cast and its dressing. The minor parts and the land 
girls and carnival girls are well, the dressing not quite so well, 
though there is an abundance of pyjamas. Personally, I 
have never thought pyjafnas a specially attractive costume ; 
for one thing, a pyjama is the same ail the world over ; it 
may certainly vary in colour — I prefer white, with black 
kangaroos jumping on the background — but it has no variety 
of design, and design is the essence of any appeal to 
the eye. 
Colour, without design, is only fit for niggers (to whom I 
apologise for this insult), and I prefer the design to be in the 
clothes : not the clothes a mere background on which to 
paint the design. No, the clothes are not extraordinary, 
and they, should be in a show like this. However, Miss 
Peggy Kurton looked marvellously attractive in her land- 
girl costume — a simple silk blouse, breeches, and boots — 
and she has a certain charm and a voice of very odd musical 
quality which adds to it ; but her last costume, in black 
velvet, was a " missfire," due, partly, to the hat, which did not 
suit her and which she should change. Miss Odette Myrtil 
looked well occasionally, and Miss Violet Gould, who had to 
look impossible, was extremely good as a lonely soldier's 
girl. Her dresses were remarkably effective ; one would 
have fled from her in horror. 
Next in importance after the girls and the dresses comes 
the comic element, which in this instance was fairly abundant 
and of more than average quality. Mr. Ralph Lynn is 
quite a discovery, he has a sense of humour, and even 
occasionally wit ; he is always amusing to watch, and keeps 
the ball rolling with success. The plot is elaborate and 
unintelligible to my brain ; but it produced during its tortuous 
course one or two really good jokes and a thoroughly funnj' 
scene in a room on a house-boat between Mr. Ralph 
Lynn and Miss Violet Gould. The weakest part of the 
play was the music, which is perfect in its lack of 
originality, and gave one the impression that some one 
had turned on the gramophone and gone through all his 
records. 
Why is it, I wonder, that we get no composers turning 
their attention to musical plays who are capable of taking 
advantage of the wealth of material offered ? If I were a 
young English composer I should not write symphonies or 
string quartets, or orchestral scenes, or preludes, but musical 
plays. The opportunity they give to a musician of imagina- 
tion to strike out in new directions is unlimited. I never 
hear a single song or chorus.at a musical play without realising 
the chances that have been missed. The best things of 
Sullivan are simple and childish compared with what could 
be done ; but you see one composer after another — Sydney 
Jones, Monckton, Caryll, Darewski, Novello — repeating the 
same old formula again and again, getting steadily worse, if 
anything ; their tunes scarcely distinguishable one from 
another, and capable of being turned out by the million. 
One reason, obviously, is that the lyrics are sent to them and 
are set in batches of half a dozen without any reference to 
the play or arty thought other than to get a catchy tune 
that will be so like every other popular tune that nobody 
will quite know which it resembles. If anybody would pay 
me four thousand pounds I would undertake in two j-ears to 
present them free with the best musical play since The 
Mikado, and one that would be no imitation of Sullivan or 
anybody else. I make this offer seriously and in sheer 
desperation at having heard nothing but hopeless rubbish 
for years. 
I can't possibly fill up a page of L.-vND & Water about 
a play like The Officers' Mess, so I shall have to say something 
about The Tempest, which I saw this week at the "Old Vic." 
I feel as if I don't want to mention the "Old Vic." again 
for months ; but, as The Tempest was played there and not 
at His Majesty's or the Haymarket, I cannot avoid it. It 
was not altogether well played ; in fact, Prospero, the most 
important part, was very badly done by Mr. George R. Foss, 
who produces the plays so well. Mr. Foss's memory is not 
reliable, and perhaps for that reason he seems to have no 
sense of the verse rhythm. Prospero being so bad, the 
effect of the play was pretty well ruined, although there 
was some good acting from Mr. Orlando Barnett (Stephano), 
Mr. Sequeira (Trinculo), and Mr. John Leslie (Caliban). Miss 
Kitty Carlton also produced the right atmosphere as Ariel. 
It is a most marvellous play, but one which calls for the 
keenest instinct of the theatre and of Shakespeare's purpose 
from the producer. I disagree completely from those who 
think it can never be a good acting play. Mr. Foss brought 
off many of the effects ; for instance, the scene in which 
Ariel mocks the King and his nobles with a table laid 
with food and drink and spirits it away. This and 
the spirit music are immensely effective on the stage, 
and show how great a dramatic craftsman Shakespeare 
was. 
The scenes between Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo were 
well done, and even those in the audience who did not feel 
the underlying bitter satire found them, at any rate, very 
amusing. As is well known. The Tempest abounds with 
magnificent passages, and it is remarkable that there is not 
one of them whose effect is not immensely greater on the 
stage than to read, thus showing what integral parts of the 
drama they are, and how far removed from being in any 
way rnere purple patches. It is a lesson that all modem 
poets who attempt to write for the stage should learn. Seme 
readers may remember a performance of Mr. Gordon 
Bottomley's King Lear's Wife given, I think, in 1916 by the 
Stage Society. The play is printed in the second volume of 
Georgian Poetry, and it contains some beautiful passages 
which fell absolutely flat on the stage because they were not 
dramatically relevant ; much longer passages of the wildest 
and most magnificent poetry in The Tempest, such as the 
one beginning : 
Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves ; 
And ye, that on the sands with printless foot 
Do chase the ebbing Neptune . . . 
are used by Shakespeare with extraordinary effect ; and 
even when a song is introduced, such as Ariel's 
Where the bee sucks, there suck I, 
its effect is so great because it seems dramatically inevitable. 
