THE PORTNIADOC PLAYERS.
IHAVE always regarded the Welsh as natural and 1- predestinated votaries of the drama. They have all the qualities required. They are comely and distin- guished, and slightly melancholic in appearance. They have about them the air of past sorrows and losses nobly endured. Their bearing is that of people of old family who have come down in the world—and so, perhaps, they have—but who are too well-bred to feature the fact. Then, they love eloquence for its own sake and are themselvei eloquent. Trifles by them are clothed in glowing phrases. They are, indeed, true wizards of words, and glory in their use. Mystics they are by nature, and make and tend secrets for their own sake and for their intrinsic beauty, as do the men and women of the drama. Music is a large part of their lives, and music is an unwritten language, like the gestures and the other inarticulate stimulants of stagecraft. Another fact of great import in this issue is that they are born conversers. They talk for the pure pleasure of it, not merely as eighty per cent. of the English do, in order to convey information— as to time-tables, the weather, the crops, and the condi- tion of South-Eastern Europe or Anatolia. But they are dialecticians quite as much as talkers, and enjoy the display and give-and-take of argument. Legends, Memories, Stories old and new are never distant from their minds, and they invest all things with an atmosphere of romance. Lastly, and this brings them instinctively- to the footlights, they love costume and colour, and so understand how to give appropriateness to dress. The- first thing you notice after Ruabon Junction is the delight and taste in colour shown in the women's dresses.
Knowing and feeling these things I was not surprised to hear that the drama is being developed in Wales by leaps and bounds. In North Wales, and 'I understand it is the same in the South, almost every village has its band of players and, what is more, an audience eager to see, and competent to discuss, the plays and the acting. Beyond this is growing up a movement for linking up the village players into district companies, formed out of the best actors and actresses in each parish. Out 'of the district companies, by a further process of selection, is to be formed a National Band of Players, who will repre- sent the Welsh Drama after the manner of the Irish Players.
I was lucky enough a fortnight ago to see the first performance by a body of District Players—those of Portnladoe—which has adopted the ideal just described, that of federalizing, first, the Village Players into District Companies and then the District Companies into a National Company. But the District Companies mean to do more than merely recruit the best players out of the parishes.. They mean to foster as well as federalize. They will get together a stock of dresses, scenery and other properties, which can be lent to the villagers for their performances.
So much for theory. The practice which I saw in the Public Hall at Portmadoc on Wednesday, April 4th, was excellent, and of real promise. We saw three plays. The first, The Man Born to be Hanged, was written by Mr. Richard Hughes, an able young man of letters, and a poet already known to the readers of the Spectator.- He acted the chief part in his own play, and is one of the' chief inspirers of the Portmadoc movement. His play, a tramp tragedy, has a note in it which recalled some of the most poignant and menacing of Goya's Capricios. In both the note of terror is not lowered, but heightened by' the abject squalors of the scene. What Aristotle would have thought of the play is a question well worth discussing had I time and space. As it is, I can only say that the: audience, like Felix, heard and trembled. One would. not have been the least surprised at a Grand Guignol audience being moved. That Portmadoc understood and appreciated the play is a proof of what I have said as to the instinct of the Welsh for the theatre.
The next play, The Poacher, by Mr. Francis, the well- known Welsh writer, was charmingly written and quite as charmingly acted. It was a true miniature. When once you had got the scale, it was seen to be no sketch but a finished work of art. The lady, Miss Gwladys Williams, who took the woman's part, though, of course, an amateur, was highly accomplished, in movement, gesture, voice, and articulation. It was not a- great part, but it is difficult to say how it could have been better played.
The third play, by a local writer, Mr. Roberts, was put into the programme at four days' notice. For that reason I do not propose to say anything of the acting, except that it was brave and public-spirited. The play, however, is in itself well worthy of comment. Like The Man Born to be Hanged, it is the work of "a University Pen "—to use the Elizabethan phrase. Mr. Roberts, like Mr. Richard Hughes, is an Oxford man, as well as a Welshman. His drama in little is practically a duologue between the spirit of evil " heard off," and an old Welsh woman, poor and unhappy, and tortured by the memories of old falls from -virtue. The Devil, like his counterpart in Arthur Hugh Clough's Dipsychus, taunts her with her sins and sorrows. Now, the essential spirit of malice, now the worst side of her old self revived, now remorse, now terror. stretch her on the rack. With poignant realism Satan laughs down her excuses, chuckles over her self-deceit, and mocks at her subterfuges. He has not the nobility and fine air of the -tempter in Job, but he has the authentic voice of Hell.
I do not know whether Mr. Roberts has read Renan's Preface to his Draws Philosophiques, but I am sure that if the greatest of all Celtic men of letters could have been called to the Town Hall at Portmadoc he would have been enchanted to find a brother in race illustrating so aptly his view that certain philosophical ideas can be best, nay, can only be expressed by means of the drama.
I must end by saying that I long to see Miss Sybil Thorndike as the woman in The Cloud Break, the not very happy name given to Mr. Roberts's play.
J. ST. LOE STRACHEY.
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