THE THEATRE
" Lady Julie." At the Chanticleer.
THE sporadic appearance of Little Theatres in the vicinity of London is a welcome sign of a lively interest in drama, but those who are responsible for the direction of such theatres do not always recognise clearly one fundamental principle essential to success, which is, that the plays produced by such theatres must be, as a general rule, those not likely to be seen in the West End. A city as vast as London, with an enormous outlying population for whom a visit to the West-End means, even in normal times, a rather long and difficult journey provides great opportunities for local enterprise. To put on a play in the centre of London means such an extremely heavy financial outlay that West-End managers are unwilling to take the risk of producing new, original work or plays not likely to have a wide popular appeal. This fact gives any Little Theatre situated in a suburb, such as the Chanticleer Theatre in Clareville Street, S.W.7—its real chance. The opportunity to see a play by so remarkable a dramatist as Strindberg is likely to draw a number of other lovers of the theatre as it did me this week. In choosing Lady Julie the Chanticleer management chose one of the best known and least original of Strindberg's plays and this was no doubt reasonable ; but it was unfortunate that the most important part of Miss Julie was played by an actress, Marcella Salzer, who was too greatly handicapped by her imperfect command of English for her other gifts to have much chance to make themselves felt. Even in this very small theatre I found that I could not understand one word in ten that she uttered and, as Strindberg's vital dialogue is always one of his chief virtues this play was, for me, robbed of its main interest. Mr. Peter Noble gave a good performance as the valet Jean but it did detract from the effect of the play that he conveyed the fatal impression that he was of more aristocratic
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