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MERELY PLAYERS

By C. J. PLOUVIEZ (University of Edinburgh)

IN its third year, the Edinburgh Festival has established itself so securely as an annual event that one might almost begin to speak of its " tradition." Edinburgh, one might fondly imagine, has always contained the promise of festival, though the promise was unrealised before 1947. It is the festival city incarnate, blending and contrasting the spiritual and the material, bright flower-beds and old brown rocks, the hubbub of modern town life and the grey tranquillity of the mediaeval.

But these are idle fancies. In fact, the International Festival of Music and Drama is a colossal undertaking, in which no one has time for suckspeculation. Early in August, producers and organiscrs start estimating their gains and losses, hotel proprietors and land- ladies revise their prices, workmen assail the statues of Sir Walter Scott and Alan Ramsey to smarten them up. Posters appear on theatres and hoardings, celebrity photographs gaze from the news- papers, and occasionally Mr. Tyrone Guthrie may be seen uncoiling his six-feet-four from a Corporation tram. It is all very impressive ; it is all very professional ; it is all a little disappointing.

Disappointing because Edinburgh, which for the rest of the year has nothing but a doubtful share in the Scottish Orchestra and a good repertory company which cannot afford to produce first-rate plays, procures at great expense and for three weeks operas, ballets, plays, soloists, and seven symphony orchestras, and invites the world to come and glut itself with "culture." Nevertheless, the world, or some of it, comes, and is liberally rewarded for its trouble, while its hosts begin to see that they must live up, as best they can, to the reputation they covet and the standard they set themselves year by year. It is good that Sir David Lyndsay's The Three Estates and Alan Ramsey's The Gentle Shepherd should be presented by mainly Scottish companies. It is less encouraging that for new plays the organisers have had to turn to T. S. Eliot and Peter Ustinov, and that in music Scotland can contribute only one orchestra and the Glasgow Orpheus Choir.

Fortunately there are more hopeful signs. One is that this year for the first time some of the leading amateur dramatic companies arc presenting Festival plays. Being outside the Festival organisa- tion, these societies differ from their professional brethren in having to cover their expenses at the box-office with, if possible, a little to spare, and therefore have to pay entertainment tax. Paradoxically, while the commercial theatre is subsidised, the amateurs are taxed.

Of these amateurs, I can speak with knowledge only of the University Dramatic Society. After a very successful year, achiev- ing productions of Othello and Oedipus Rex, and the election of Alastair Sim as Lord Rector of the University, a group of its members is staking its reputation and its financial stability on an open-stage presentation of Peer Gynt. Success in this venture will, it is hoped, make the occasion an annual one, and enhance the Society's reputation outside the University precincts. Lacking the close contacts with the London theatre which are possible for the O.U.D.S., and employing no professionals, the Society has gradually grown in stature and accomplishment since the war ended, and is seeking fresh fields to conquer. Consequently, after finding a cast, a hall and the money, and after compromising over the vexed question of Grieg's music, Peer Gym went into production.

At the rehearsal stage, there is from the actor's view-point a quite

mysterious similarity among plays. Whatever the words one has to learn, there are always the dusty boards, the unpainted sets, one's fellows in slacks and sweaters, khaki drill and corduroy, sitting endlessly poring over their scripts, mumbling their lines, waiting for their cues, and smoking, smoking, smoking. . . . There is that extra rehearsal when one has made a " date " for coffee, the late rehearsals which always end just after closing time, the girl (why is it ?) who is late every time, and the man who, after sitting patiently for hours, disappears just before his cue. Somewhere discreetly out of sight, lest the mere actors should be shamed by their skill, set-builders and costume designers wield hammer and

needle. And, incredibly, over all this melde of technicians and craftsmen and artists and humble walkers-on the producer rules more or less undisputed. The producer, with his canary yellow sweater and his pages of illegible notes, saying, "That was very nice, Charles, but . . ." criticising, cajoling, demonstrating, pleading, loved and hated by all in turns, somehow converts this gaggle of students into a cry of players, and still finds time to inquire how the tickets are selling.

First we read our parts, flat, expressionless and fluent, moving stiffly about the stage like toy soldiers, and pausing to make cryptic notes against our text. After a few days, racking our brains and snapping our fingers, we stumble through the lines with the help of a prompter. Soon the prompter becomes largely unnecessary and we stand alone, acting after a fashion, but still with too much conscious effort, lacking that quality which only the hackneyed word " rhythm" can express. Many amateur productions never pass this phase, and very few fully attain the pitch where the words come " trippingly upon the tongue " and the actions become almost conditioned reflexes, so that the play seems to acquire a life and movement of its own apart from, though depending on, individual performances.

Long before this the actor has ceased to be fit for human society. He shuts himself up in his room and talks to himself ; he plays love scenes at breakfast and dies pathetically over supper. He can- not just sit down or stand up : he must sit down with emphasis and stand up with effect. His conversation consists entirely of phrases from the play. He gesticulates while shaving and strikes poses while fastening his tic. He gargles three times a day. Relatives and friends, who have to endure these outbreaks of Thespian fever spasmodically throughotit the year, can never understand why they should suffer for his art, vow never to see the play, and dutifully buy tickets for the first night.

Yes, it is always the same. The same mounting tension as the performance draws nearer. Costume and lighting rehearsals raise new problems and settle old doubts. For weeks the wardrobe mistress has been appearing at odd moments with odder queries: " Has anyone got a Merchant Navy hat, size seven and a quarter ? " Somebody always has, and now we find everything there—real swords instead of rolled-up newspapers, real bottles and glasses filled with (last and most unpleasant of theatrical realities) real cold tea. We stand about the dressing-rooms in costume and make- up, still smoking, and waiting a little apprehensively for the dress rehearsal to begin.

This time, however, it is not quite the same. Not merely are we running for twelve performances, in a hall with twice the seating capacity we arc accustomed to. Nor is it just that this is the most ambitious production we have attempted, or that we are performing on a platform stage instead of behind the usual protective proscenium arch. Least of all arc we perturbed at the company we shall be keeping, here in Edinburgh in the last two weeks of Festival. These things are no more than mild incentives to effort. There is some- thing else which gives importance to the occasion, which raises the tension a little higher than usual, which makes each rehearsal just a little more vital, and gives to each performer the urge to excel. It is, I think, the sense of being a part of something bigger, bigger even than the Festival, bigger perhaps than we can realise.

Scotland has always had, and still has, actors and playwrights and producers. Most of them have had to seek their fortune in London or even farther afield, because there is virtually no theatre in Scot- land. Amongst the younger generation, the need for a flourishing theatre is becoming keenly felt, and we, together with the other amateur and professional companies in Edinburgh, believe that this gesture now will do something to supply that need. If we succeed in this venture, we do more than contribute to the success of the third Festival ; ,we help to establish the foundation for a true Scottish theatre.

And if we fail ? Our producer was recently quoted in the

Scottish Press as saying: "I don't know what we shall do." He is not, fortunately, a modest man: I doubt if the prospect of failure has seriously troubled him. Like Peer, we must journey on un- defeated and undismayed to the last cross-roads, and then see what the Button Moulder has in store for us.