22 JUNE 1861, Page 17

LONDON THEATRES.

T""Alhambra," "Oxford," "Canterbury," and other music-halls which are springing up so rapidly in London, whatever their other

effects, will produce at least one unexpected result. They are teach- ing us how to build places of amusement. Except a London parish church there is no place in the world which taxes our powers of physical endurance so sharply as a London theatre or a London lecture-room. In the church the blunder, however annoying, is, perhaps, intelligible. The builders obviously believe that physical discomfort tends to earnestness in prayer, and that a gentle spirit of resignation to unavoidable miseries is the preparation best adapted to secure benefit from theological instruction. It is doubtless for

this reason that pews are always constructed so as to cramp the knees, that pew seats always incline downwards, that churches are so wretchedly ventilated, and that locomotion should be denounced as so nearly akin to a crime. But theatres and concert-rooms are in- tended to amuse, and their proprietors have at least no avowed desire to increase their attractions by a modicum of torture. Yet there arc few situations in life where the mind is not in bet ter humour for ap- preciation than in a crowded concert-room, or half-crowded theatre. In the former the arrangements are bad almost without exception. In every portion of the space the discomfort is equalized impartially. Hard benches placed so close together that lounging is impossible are intersected by passages so narrow that locomotion requires the skill of M. Blonclin ; and so infrequent that the unhappy victim, however weary, or incommoded by draughts, or bored by the whispers of his next neighbour, can no more exchange hisquarters than he could leave his pew for the cooler bench in the middle aisle. In most concert-rooms a visitor who shifted his seat, or tried to stretch his legs during a two hours' performance, or even turned in weariness on his chair, would be observed as angrily as if lie were deliberately interrupting the musicians. The common excuse for this imprisonment that moving interrupts the performance, is the merest subterfuge. A hundred firms in London will provide soft coloured felts, quite cheap and pretty enough to use, and which would effectually deaden sound. The cause of the evil is simply the attempt to cram as many people into a room as the badly-built. edifice can be made to hold. The smaller the accommodation the lower the rent, and the hundreds who are kept away by disgust and discomfort never enter into the short-sighted calculation. The theatres are just as bad. With the partial exception of the stuffy little rooms called private boxes, supposed to hold six, and really accommodating two, every part of a genuine British theatre is a marvel of discomfort. The box tier is always, in a properly filled house, so overcrowded, that the visitors breathing an atmosphere which the gas soon raises to eighty-five degrees, are compelled to sit in an attitude which no sane being ever chose of his own accord. The weary legs bent vio- lently under the seat, the tired back either unsupported, as in the Haymarket, or rested against a sharp rib of wood about as comfort- able as the rail of an omnibus, the eyes filled with dust, and bleared with the cross lights, all bear testimony to the severity of the even- mg's "enjoyment." The pit is in one respect better, for as the fumes of gas rise upwards, it does not always give the visitor a head- ache, or tempt him to expatiate on the odorous advantages of a fish- market or a bone-boiler's refuse-yard. But even in the pit the visitor must clamber to his seat with the agility of an acrobat, keep it for hours at a stretch under penalty of exile to the back benches, and sit during the period in the attitude, and with some of the probable feelings, of a man who has been impaled. That a lady cannot enter the pit of a London theatre without the loss of raiment as well as of caste is a fact which may be profitable, but is certainly not credit- able, to the managers. They will reply that the cause of all this dis- comfort is the absolute necessity of finding room for a paying audience, but the argument is altogether unsound. A constantly full house, even if it contained only half its present number, would pay them much better than the present buildings, as empty as high prices, bad accommodation, and tiresome exhibitions all combine to keep them. The talk about the decline of the drama is talk merely. The Colleen Baum has been acted to a crowded house two hundred and ten times, and a play people care to see attracts audiences as crowded as of old. The real drawback to success is the fact that nothing but a play which it is a discredit not to have seen will tempt Londoners to undergo the expense and annoyance a visit to the theatre now entails. Let any manager devote tne tier to reasonable accommodation, knock down the ridiculous row of red bulkheads he now calls private boxes, level the floor, fill the space with easy-chairs arranged in threes, the third occupying the angle left vacant between the other two, divide each three by a silvered iron network, so as to permit a free circulation of air, and charge seven-and-sixpence if he pleases per chair—and if the entertainment is worth seeing lie will find the tier fill rapidly enough. We suggest this simply as a compromise, but radical improvement is impossible with existing theatres, with their traditionary pit and rows of boxes exactly above each other. The plan of the new music-halls—a vast floor with chairs and small tables, surrounded by broad galleries—is better than this, but it is unsuited to to the English mania for exclusiveness. The true principle on which to secure the largest amount of accommodation with the least physical discomfort, is the old idea of the amphitheatre modified by a Northern climate and modern ideas of comfort. The interior of a theatre should consist, in principle, of rows of easy-chairs ascending directly from the