A Theatre Morning

By J. P. W. MALLALIEU, M.P.

THE other morning I went to the theatre. Leaving the June glare of the Strand, I passed through the cool vestibule of the Adelphi and sat alone in the darkened stalls. Or nearly alone. In the very first row there sat a girl and, three roves behind her, sat a man. Just as I came in this man shouted, " Articulate, please. ' The tel-e-phone, the tel-e-phone, the tel-e-phone has come to stay.' Emphasise ' tel-e-phone.' That's all the audience need to know." At that a man in shirt-sleeves beat a tune on the piano while some men and women sang a song' over again for the tenth time that morning. The tel-e-phone, I distinctly heard, had come to stay.

This was my first sight of a professional stage rehearsal—a great

British musical running into the third and last week before Opening Night. At first, I could take little notice of-the actors and actresses. They seemed unimportant. The people 1 watched were the shirt- sleeved musical director, Philip Green, with his piano at one corner of the stage, and the two people in the stalls, one, Michael Benthall, the producer, and the other the girl in the front row, the dance director, who that morning was deputising for the great Robert Helpmann. Helpmann, I had been told, could make logs of wood dance ; it was an experience to watch him work. But his deputy was good enough for me. After a time we put the telephone away and went up to Mabel's sal-oo-oon, another big number sung by an American and the male chorus. In Mabel's sal-oo-oon, I gathered,

" .. Lots of things are pretty nice, But my goodness, what a price! "

But the actors did not point this clearly enough. The girl in the front row silenced them opened-mouthed., She wanted the last line pointed by a gesture. She stood up, slapped the palm of her hand on her forehead and then let the open hand fly up and outwards. The two movements epitomised consternation. Even the actors got the idea almost at once and the song was on again.

But not for long. After a few bars there was a staccato shout.

from the piano. The musical director had detected a B flat. " That should be a B natural. If you can't get B natural, you can try B sharp. But not B flat. I believe it's you who are singing B flat," he said, rising from his stool like a prosecuting attorney and point- ing a finger at a man near him. But this man had a water-tight defence. He was, he said, a dancer, not a singer. He was Just mouthing the words. " Are you sure ? " said the musical director, very doubtfully. But at this point one of the genuine singers said that perhaps the B flat came from him, so the musical director sung B natural at him. It was at once clear that whereas the dance director was at least as good an actress as anyone on the stage, the musical director sang with the voice of an ageing crow. This caused him no self-consciousness whatsoever ; and it caused the off-key singer to hit the target in one.

It was not long before another voice burst on the theatre. It was no crow's voice this, but the voice of an infuriated bull. Suddenly, in the middle of a very soft song by the two principals, chatter from someone sitting where the wings would be had caught the producer's ear. His roar was shattering. It silenced the chatter at once. I thought it would i.lso bring down the plaster, but, when its echoes had subsided, there were the two principals still singing softly to each other. I felt they would continue singing right to the end of their song even if a London Tube train missed its way and roared across the stage.

In fact, I would not have been surprised to see a Tube train. Something unconnected with the immediate matter on hand always seemed to be happening on the stage. A stage manager would walk across carrying a sieve, and came back carrying a walking- stick. Then he would cross again with an empty barrel. A group of men in aprons were stacking at one side what looked like electric towel-rails, but probably were not. As I watched them I saw a door open on the other side, swing open, and there, bless me! was a real London back-street with a milk dray standing at the kerb, and ordinary, real life men and women sauntering past or stopping for a moment to look at the make-believe below them. To this door there backed a removal van, and from the van men began to unload huge pieces• of scenery and lower them to the stage. Meanwhile, the singers continued to sing, with every appearance of conviction, that they were in the middle of the African veldt. They actually said veldt and they had to be told by the Rhodesian author, John Tord, that " veldt," in fact, is " felt."

By now I had come to realise that the actors and actresses in rehearsal were not, after all, so unimportant. They must know the basic technique of their job and how, quickly, to adapt that tech- nique to deal with a giveg situation or a given producer's ungiven requirements. They must be able to do this against the background of continuous and irrelevant interruption from stage hands, stage managers, their own colleagues and the fairly general public. They must be able to do this in the face of invective ranging from " You

ladies and gentlemen singers and dancers " to " You (words that the Editor of the Spectator does not expect one to know)." Sometimes, perhaps, best of all, they must do it in the face of being addressed as " children."

For it was as " children " that I really saw them. It was not just that at the end of rehearsal the wardrobe-mistress called, " Hands up those who still have not been fitted for their shoes. It's no use complaining if your feet hurt you on The Night "—though that took me back thirty years in one sentence. What really made me think of " children " was the apparent spontaneity, even at the twentieth repetition, and the genuine eagerness of everything the actors and actresses did.

Where did this eagerness come from ? Not, of course, from the novelty and inexperience which excites children. Muriel Brunskill, for example, though new to musicals, has long, varied and satisfying experience of concert and opera ; and even her least-famous col- league is no longer in the stage-struck class. I thought it came from three things.

First (but not most important), something which must be common to all shows in rehearsal—the knowledge that Opening Night drew near and that if Opening Night was a failure, bread and butter and fame may recede.

Second, something that, I understand, is by no means common— the knowledge that everyone is in it together. I do not merely mean that everyone realises that his or her livelihood is concerned. I do mean that this show is a joint-production in a way that is quite unusual. You might think that a rehearsal bossed by the producer, the musical director and the dance director, all at the same time, smacked of too many cooks. But, in fact, these three dovetailed perfectly. These three ? They brought in the whole cast. If something was wrong, they did not put all right with a dictatorial sweep of the hand. They asked the cast—no matter whether principals or chorus—why it was that Joan just could not get to her position at the end of the row by the fourth bar. They were told at once: " She's got to elbow Norman to the front and then nip round the back to her place." Norman was there- after left to make his own way to the front, the girl at the end was there at the fourth bar and the entrance was perfect.

Third and, I think, most important of all, the whole cast really liked the show. British musicals in the past have been all Edwardian parasols, blazers and boaters. This musical has body. It is called Golden City. Its background is the South African gold rush. It has songs which I still cannot get out of my head, it has fun, it has continuous movement, it has, no doubt, colour—though in rehearsals there are men in braces and girls in slacks. But, above all, it has a real story. When you read this article you will know how Thursday's First Night has gone I, writing on Tuesday, can only wish it well.