The Theater Program in England

How It Endeavors to Be All Things to All Men, All Women, and Some Little Boys and Girls

MARC CONNELLY

NO one can say I am not the first to admit that the programs in our New York theaters are a valuable part of our civilization, and helpful little things generally. I am usually the first one out on the sidewalk, at the first intermission on an opening night, with a kind remark here and a word of approval there for the new advertisements in the program that have impressed me most during the first act. No one is quicker than I in calling attention to the dandy play on words which the Rogers Peet people made in using the title of the show at the top of their ad.

No one confesses more readily than I that Beau Nash's column has made a better dressed man of him. And I have always found it a delightful thing to learn, on the editorial page, exactly how many hundreds of thousands of New York program lovers go to the theater every week, Mr. National Advertiser.

I mean, that is the way I've felt about it in the past, and it may be that the present disturbance of my affection is only temporary. But, right now, when I've just got back to America from England, I am afraid that my viewpoint is going to change, if it hasn't changed already. I'm afraid that, during the long Winter evenings ahead, the programs over here aren't going to be so efficacious for me as they once were, in killing the long waits between intermissions; and that a little curly head is going to tire a bit of reading about Mr. Belais' White Gold and the scholarly translations of M. Kerkoff's messages from France to American women. And the tired little brain inside is going to muse longingly on the scope, the variety, the magazine features, the sublime completeness of the programs of the London theaters.

The Embarrassments of Program Buying

I HAVE neither the time nor the patience to tell you of how it feels, after having had an English theater program placed in your hand for the first time, to hear a clear young English voice ring through the auditorium with a definite, " Sixpence, sir! " You are probably in one of those quaint old English theaters that have no center aisle, and you're probably half-way along the row of thirty-six occupied seats when this merry cry strikes your ear.

There is considerable good-natured silence around as you pause in your progress along the aisle to wonder what's become of all your pockets. Then you borrow six clanking millstones from the lady you've brought along with you, and pass them back to the usher through the Spanish shawl of the lady sitting on your left, whom you've never seen before. Then you learn that sixpence buys only one program, and you start to call back the usher to get another, when the lady you're with says you've helped quite enough. As I said, I can't tell you here how all this feels; but you are going to hear a great deal about how soothing, how comforting, how interesting and how wildly exciting the program becomes during the evening, after your consort has rejected it for the third time.

Later, you'll go to other London theaters and have a shilling all ready for two programs, and have little chance to look at them until you get home. But take them home you will, for that first contact will have established a love and admiration for them that will never die.

Of course I'm talking about the thick laddies. Several London theaters have their own thin, anaemic affairs. But the one I am going to miss is the magazine program that you get at the great majority of theaters there.

There's a real program! It has a point of view. It has a lot of good reading matter that makes a man sit back and think. It has personality and it has a fight on its hands, too, right now. Or it had wffien I left London. Perhaps by this time the fearless mind that determines the editorial policy of the program has already won the battle. It should have.

England's Struggle for Freedom

NOT a weapon in its armory but was being used, and used skilfully a month ago. Gentle sally, plain statement of fact, devastating irony, all were being brought into play to do away with a new and horrible evil that menaced the freedom of Britons in general. It was a battle of one against many, with the editor apparently the only champion of the people's rights. Briefly, he wanted to know by what right any man, or body of men, could decree that you should not buy an ice, or a box of chocolates, in a theater after 9.30. The attack began on page 10, with those very words. Just a definite statement, above the advertisement of Italy's Best Vermouth. This was it: " You Cannot Buy an Ice or a Box of Chocolates in a Theater After 9.30!" That set people thinking. Every sinister influence affecting England must have felt the sting of the statement when it was repeated a few pages later on. And, over on page 18 came a barrage in which every gun spoke. I shouldn't like to be the man behind the Anti-Ice-and-Box-of-Chocolates-After-9.30-Movement with the following staring me in the face:

"YOU CANNOT BUY AN ICE

OR A Box OF CHOCOLATES

IN A THEATER AFTER 9.30!

"On the Dominions of King George V., the sun never sets.

" But in England you cannot buy an ice or a box of chocolates in a theater after 9.30!

"His Majesty's morning drum beats round the world, but you are beaten yourself if you ask for an ice or a box of chocolates in a theater after 9.30.

" When the foot of a slave touches the soil of Britain, he is free. But he is not free to buy an ice or a box of chocolates in a theater after 9.30.

Be England what she will,

With all her faults she is my country still—•

" But I cannot buy an ice or a box of chocolates in a theater after 9.30.

"England expects every man to do his duty. But England expects no man to require an ice or a box of chocolates in a theater after 9.30.

For this is England's greatest son,

He that gain'd a hundred fights,

And never lost an English gun—

"But England's greatest son would not be able today to buy an ice or a box of chocolates in a theater after 9.30.

'Tis a glorious charter, deny it who can,

The island home of an Englishman—

"But in that home the Englishman cannot buy an ice or a box of chocolates in a theater after'9.30.

Breathes there the man with sold so dead Who never to himself hath said 1'his is my own, my native land?—

"But however often he says it to himself or to the attendant, he cannot buy an ice or a box of chocolates in a theater after 9.30.

We must be free or die, who speak the tongue

That Shakespeare spoke—

"But when you listen in the theater to the tongue that Shakespeare spoke, you are not free to buy an ice or a box of chocolates in a theater after 9.30!

" GEORGE R. SIMS. "

I'll wager that, by this time, you can buy an ice in a London theater as you leave the door.

Conundrums, and Gossip of the Stars

BUT, whether the fight has been won or lost, it probably hasn't affected the other departments of the program. If the ice and chocolate problem has been solved, there's something else being fought, tooth and nail, and that's where the good old conundrum page is still a sort of neutral zone on page 19. Good old page 19! Drop in there any time and forget the cares of the day. Be a boy again; and, if possible, a moron. The last page 19 1 saw contained the results of the No. 12 Conundrum Competition. The questions, and the correct answers, guessed by Lady Holmes, 19, Pernbridge Gardens, W. 2, to whom two stalls had been sent for her ingenuity, were as folknvs:

1. Who is the noted actress whose surname suggests a lion? Clarice Mayne.

2. Which is the old ballad which suggests a teetotal toast? "Drink to me only with thine eyes. "

3. Which is the theater costumier whose surname suggests something with wings? Morris Angel.

After the conundrum cobwebs have been driven away, there are several pages of gay gossip about actors and actresses. 1 here are Stage Stories by Theatrical People. These stories contain many a good laugh and many a bit of interesting information about some of the English stars. I never knew, for instance, that Robert Courtneidge was ticklish. You could have teased me and teased me and I shouldn't have been able to say that Mr. C. V. France was fond of travel, had a thrifty disposition, welcomed encouragement, had green for a color and the diamond for a birthstone. There it was, however, in the Who's Who Behind the Footlights column.

In another column Miss Esme Beringer answered twenty questions about herself, and now I can tell you her favorite sport, her earliest recollection and greatest ambition, anytime you give me a ring. On the same page, Miss Henrietta Watson's hand wanting got a pretty severe analysis from somebody named Calligro. Calligro seemed to be ready to tell the whole truth about Miss Watson, cost what it might, and it w'as a lucky thing for his subject that her handwriting showed only high artistic perception, very marked originality, a sense of the beautiful both in art and in nature, fondness for home life, love of music, sympathy and kindness of heart, and few less ugly characteristics.

(Continued on page 106)

(Continued from page 54)

One page I'm going to miss terribly, That's page 13. That's the page with the bouquets on it. I suppose you really should call it just an honest confession of worth. It's called " The Magazine-Program. What Eminent People Think of It." What they think—what thirty of them think, as a matter of fact— is there before your eyes Apparently everyone, from B. Feldman, who says: "I read the Magazine-Program with the greatest possible interest—It is most valuable", to H. Chance Newton, who avers: "As an old playgoer I welcome the Magazine-Program with its fine literary features", every blessed one is wildly excited about it.

Of course it isn't so pretty a program as the ones we have in New York. There's no five-color reproduction of a fine old painting by an admirer of Greuze or by the Knickerbocker Painting Studios on the cover. But the inside has all those wonderful features I've mentioned and a lot of advertisements of wares happily no longer for sale in our own dear country, unless Ed, or someone, will get it for you.

I think I'll dig up an English program and take it to the theater to read between the acts tomorrow night. Just an advertisement or two, a cigarette, and then back to my seat. And then, dear old Beau Nash!