TWO PLAYS.* Touch and Go' is unfortunately just what Mr.
D. H. Lawrence's Play for a People's Theatre is not. His dramatic style is as yet very different from his poetic style, and he has in the present instance shown himself to be possessed of an extraordinarily heavy hand. The only thing amusing in -the little volume is the preface, which is entertaining enough. Mr. Lawrence seen the State irrevocably divided into two parties, Labour and Capital. They axe, he holds, like two dogs, each holding an end of the same-bone, or like hostile parties on board ship who want to scuttle the vessel so as to sink the other faction- " Down goes the ship with the belly lot on board." One eideis, he holds, as bad as the other, and Touch and Go is a sort -of tract in which this central idea is set out with greater length than clarity. The principle of A People's Theatre, as expressed inhispreface, is admirable. "The plays of a people's theatreare people's plays. The plays of a people's theatre are plays about people. . . . Not the-people--i.e., Plebs, nor yet the Upper Ten. People. . . . Not lords nor proletariats, nor bishops nor hus- bands nor corespondents. . . . Men who are somebody, not men who are something." What can the reader do but applaud ? But when we turn and• come to the play itself we know itis a sort of performance (I will not say entertainment) through which none but The Earnest could sit.
Mr..Lawrence must excuse my vehemence, but I feel strongly on the subject. The worst foes of ideas which are right and just are not those who oppose them, but those that set out such ideas in an unattractive way. The ordinary manager will turn over such a play as Mr. Lawrence's and he -will say, " Here you are. I am driven to the average musical or straight' comedy because this is the sort of stuff you highbrows • (1) Tough and Go. By D. H. Lawrence. London : C. W. Daniel. [8a. 6d. net.1—(21 Masks. BY (ltorn Middleton. London : Bell and Bons. 6d.) give me. Here is a black-and-white proof of what we managers have always said. It is impossible to have ideas without being dreary." Now, Mr. Lawrence does not make this mistake of open didacticism when he writes poetry. Why, oh ! why, does he write drama like this ?
No one will accuse Mr. George Middleton of being unduly highbrow or of preaching. His book Masks 2 consists of five one- act plays. Perhaps the first is the most satisfactory, in which use is made of Stevenson's theme of the persons of the story who come to life. This time they do not so much discuss ethics with each other as quarrel with the author of their being, who " catches it hot " for having softened and prettified them in the later acting version of his one-time masterpiece. It is an unpreten- tious but quite entertaining little piece. It has only four characters in it, and could very well be done by amateurs. Reason, a rather grim little study, is the other play in the book which has come off. The rest are a little nebulous, especially perhaps the playlet a in Sir James Barrie at the end.
TARN.
Previous page
