Sunday Theatres We think that the House of Commons Committee
did wisely in rejecting an amendment which would have brought stage plays within the scope of the Sunday Performances (Regulation) Bill. Apart from our desire to see the sanctity of Sunday upheld, actors and actresses need a day's rest after the week's work at least as much as the stockbroker, who gets two. But as Mr. Harley Granville-Barker, who has served the English theatre long and brilliantly, points out in a letter to The Times, one of the effects of the Bill is to give capital invested in the cinema, a largely foreign industry, a fourteen and a half per cent. advantage over capital invested in the theatre, whieh is a national industry. We -might think twice about approving this anomalous state of affairs if the British public showed a sustained and intelligent demand for really good plays. Provided they both get one day's rest a week we see no justice in withholding from the tragedian a supposed advantage which now legally belongs to the cloakroom attendant in any Picturedrome. As things stand now the demand for plays of any kind is too slender to make Sunday opening a moon worth the tears of theatrical magnates, particularly in the summer season.
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