THE THEATRE.
MR. GRANVILLE BARKER.
THE conclusion of the series of " Vedrenne-Barker " per- formances at the Savoy Theatre, accompanied by Mr. Barker's own withdrawal—let us hope it is only a temporary one—from the English stage, brings to a close a memorable incident in the theatrical history of the last few years. It is hardly too much to say that the companies which, under Mr. Barker's leadership, drew such crowded and enthusiastic audiences to the Court and the Savoy accomplished some- thing like a revolution in the art of dramatic production in England. Perhaps the most striking feature of Mr. Barker's management was its continuity. Though his companies were not always identical, they were imbued with a single spirit, and worked for the same ends. English play- goers began to understand for the first time what a school of acting means ; they began to realise that the system of stars and actor-managers is not without its drawbacks, and that the subordination of individual aims to the interests of art might be not only meritorious but successful. Mr. Barker founded a tradition, and justified it by success; nor can there be any doubt that the example of his school will exercise a potent influence on the development of English acting.
But of no less importance than the establishment of such a tradition was the nature of the ideals underlying it. Mr. Barker and his colleagues set out to make an appeal to a side of the average playgoer which most actors—and especially English actors—are in the habit of disregarding altogether : they appealed to his intellect. Their most successful and most characteristic productions were presenta- tions of Mr. Shaw's comedies,—works in which the brilliant dialogue and the paradoxical wit are for the most part the expression of a high originality and vivacity of thought. And they were, besides, the means of introducing to the public a number of serious and thoughtful plays by new writers, such as Mr. Galswortby and 3/r. Barker himself. But their intel- lectual quality showed itself no less clearly in their style of acting than in the nature of the plays which they performed. It was here that Mr. Barker's management made its most unmistakable mark. The least observant spectator felt that in the acting which flourished under Mr. Barker's auspices there was a reality and a vitality which could not be found else- where. The stage seemed for once no longer stagy, and what passed there took on, in a surprising and delightful fashion, the complexion of actual life. For the first time the players appeared to have thoroughly understood "the purpose of playing" as Hamlet defined it,—" whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature ; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." There can be no doubt that this result could never have been achieved without a high degree of technical skill, a remarkable capacity for collective effort, and a rare power of observation. But these qualities would have availed little without the aid of another and a more fundamental one,—intellectual ability. Mr. Barker tried the bold experiment of treating his audience as if it were composed of rational human beings who knew the difference between rant and eloquence, who were more interested in people than in puppets, and who had their wits about them. The majority of actors look upon an audience very much as a general looks upon an army,—as a body that can only move at the speed of its slowest member. They advance with such patient emphasis, such careful underliningS of every point, and such explanatory exaggerations of every sentiment that the effect produced is curiously remote from the "form and pressure" of the bustling time we live in. . Mr. Barker, it is plain, realised that these were antiquated metds, and that the one indispensable ingredient for a truly natural style of acting was quickness. His great elocutionary powers enable him, when be wishes, to make use of a delivery which is at once remarkably rapid and absolutely clear ; but this, of course, is merely a subsidiary detail in his general treatment of his art. The main principle by which he is guided is, obviously enough, the Heracleitean one,—that the world is a flux, a succession of delicately graduated phases which melt into one another with almost imperceptible subtlety, instead of being—as the old-fashioned actor would make it—a collection of startlingly articulated "points." Thus, in order to "hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature," it is the actor's business to practise not only a physical quickness in fluency of voice and subtlety of gesture, but a quickness of mind, an alertness and adroitness of intellect, which can pass easily from thought to thought, from emotion to emotion, which understands the art of hinting and of taking things for granted, and knows how to be expressive by skill rather than by force. This was the kind of art with which Mr. Barker, assisted by a brilliant group of actors and actresses who shared his ideals, appealed to the public ; and, as might have been foretold, the appeal was not made in vain. Audiences, called upon to use their wits, were delighted by the unexpected compliment ; the most lethargic began to enjoy the exercise ; and Mr. Barker was able to set the pace.
It would, however, be very far from the truth to describe Mr. Barker as an intellectual actor, and nothing more. One of the principal causes of his artistic success is that he can mingle intellect with fancy, and his acting is often at its sprightliest when it is most significant. He possesses in a high degree the indefinable quality of charm,—a quality which he displays at its fullest perhaps in his rendering of Valentine in You Never Can Tell, and in the delightful third act of The Doctor's Dilemma. More than any other English actor, he can "put a spirit of youth in everything," so that the whole scene becomes charged with airy gaiety and irresponsible high spirits. Thus he avoids the fault which besets the actor who is primarily intellectual,—that of a too persistent seriousness. When he is on the stage one never feels—as one sometimes does at the Paris Theltre Antoine, for instance—that the artistic effort is too obvious, the ingenuity too complete, and the whole effect worked out with such consummate skill as to verge on the pedantic. With Mr. Barker the art and the ingenuity are there, but they are softened and etherealised by a perpetual flow of English humour and English imagination. Here he is aided by his voice, with its haunting, half-mocking intonations, and its power of suggesting unutterable things: Indeed—if we might hazard the fancy—it is in his voice that Mr. Barker's spirit has its habitation. There lies the central essence of his individuality, the subtle secret of his charm. There, too, lies the gravest danger for the future of Mr. Barker's art. It is no uncommon thing for an actor to become obsessed by his own personality, and to grow at last into something little better than a parody of himself. Mr. Barker's voice, with its intensely personal flavour, is an instrument precisely fitted to work such a catastrophe, Unless it be most jealously controlled. There have been signs in -Some of his later appearances that Mr. Barker was beginning -to be mastered by his own voice; he seemed once o twice to be speaking rather for the sake of his voice than for the sake of his part. Let us hope that these ap'parent affectations were nothing more than accidents, and that Mr.- Barker will long continue to •delight -us by .beizig-Lwhat; after: all, he has no 'need to be afraid of being --simply himself; . IGNOTII8. i
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