B) Start reading the passage and pay special attention to the relation between Julia and Michael.

UNIT 6

THEATRE

Art is long and time is fleeting.

H. Fellow

LEAD-IN

Match the lines to complete quotations about art. Do it in figures and letters.

1. “All art is … 2. Many excellent cooks are spoiled by … 3. “Art, as far as it can, follows nature, as a pupil … 4. “Art has its fanatics and even … 5. “There is no substitute for … 6. “Art is a jealous mistress, and if a man has a genius for …

a) … going into the arts” (Gauguin, Paul) b) … its monomaniacs” (Hugo, Victor Marie) c) … but imitation of nature” (Seneca) d) … painting, poetry, music, architecture, or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider” (Emerson, Ralph Waldo). e) … imitates his master; thus your art must be, as it were, God’s grandchild” (Dante, Alighieri) f) … talent. Industry and all the virtues are of no avail” (Huxley, Aldous)

READING COMPREHENSION

2. a) You are going to read a passage from the novel “Theatre” by S. Maugham. Before you start reading make sure you can read and understand the following:

* Jimmie Langton – a person who runs a repertory theatre at Middlepool

* Monte Vernon – an actor

* Repertory theatre – a theatre that presents several different plays, operas, or pieces usually alternately in the course of a season

* Sarah Siddons – one of the greatest English tragic actresses who was successful because she was able to concentrate upon the character whom she played, identifying herself with a role as if she was possessed by it

* Siddons Theatre – a theatre named after Sarah Siddons

* The domestic note was worked for all it was worth – when someone tries to get everything he could from using his family subject

b) Start reading the passage and pay special attention to the relation between Julia and Michael.

MICHAEL got himself demobbed the moment the war was finished and stepped straight into a part. He returned to the stage a much better actor than he left it. The breeziness he had acquired in the army was effective. He was a well set-up, normal, high-spirited fellow, with a ready smile and a hearty laugh. He was well suited to drawing-room comedy His light voice gave a peculiar effect to a flippant line, and though he never managed to make love convincingly he could carry off a chaffing love-scene, making a proposal as if it were rather a joke, or a declaration as though he were laughing at himself, in a manner that the audience found engaging. He never attempted to play anyone but himself He specialized in men about town, gentlemanly gamblers, guardsmen and young scamps with a good side to them. Managers liked him. He worked hard and was amenable to direction. So long as he could get work he didn't mind much what sort of part it was. He stuck out for the salary he thought he was worth, but if he couldn't get it was prepared to take less rather than be idle.

He was making his plans carefully. During the winter that followed the end of the war there was an epidemic of influenza. His father and mother died. He inherited nearly four thousand pounds and this with his own savings and Julia's brought up their joint capital to seven thousand. But the rent of theatres had gone up enormously, the salaries of actors and the wages of stage-hands had increased, so that the expense of running a theatre was very much greater than it had been before the war. A sum that would then have been amply sufficient to start management on was now inadequate. The only thing was to find some rich man to go in with them so that a failure or two to begin with would not drive them from the field. It was said that you could always find a mug in the city to write a fat cheque for the production of a play, but when you came down to business you discovered that the main condition was that the leading-part should be played by some pretty lady in whom he was interested. Years before, Michael and Julia had often joked about the rich old woman who would fall in love with him and set him up in management. He had long since learnt that no rich old woman was to be found to set up in management a young actor whose wife was an actress to whom he was perfectly faithful. In the end the money was found by a rich woman, and not an old one either, but who was interested not in him but in Julia.

Mrs de Vries was a widow. She was a short stout woman with a fine Jewish nose and fine Jewish eyes, a great deal of energy, a manner at once effusive and timid, and a somewhat virile air. She had a passion for the stage. When Julia and Michael had decided to try their luck in London Jimmie Langton, to whose rescue she had sometimes come when it looked as though he would be forced to close his repertory theatre, had written to her asking her to do what she could for them. She had seen Julia act in Middlepool. She gave parties so that the young actors might get to know managers, and asked them to stay at her grand house near Guildford, where they enjoyed a luxury they had never dreamt of She did not much like Michael. Julia accepted the flowers with which Dolly de Vries filled her flat and her dressing-room, she was properly delighted with the presents she gave her, bags, vanity cases, strings of beads in semiprecious stones, brooches; but appeared to be unconscious that Dolly's generosity was due to anything but admiration for her talent. When Michael went away to the war Dolly pressed her to come and live in her house in Montagu Square, but Julia, with protestations of extravagant gratitude, refused in such a way that Dolly, with a sigh and a tear, could only admire her more. When Roger was born Julia asked her to be his godmother.

For some time Michael had been turning over in his mind the possibility that Dolly de Vries might put up the money they needed, but he was shrewd enough to know that while she might do it for Julia she would not do it for him. Julia refused to approach her.

‘She’s already been so kind to us I really couldn’t ask her, and it would be so humiliating if she refused.’

‘It’s a good gamble, and even if she lost the money she wouldn’t feel it. I’m sure you could get round her if you tried.’

Julia was pretty sure she could too.

***

As soon as the deed of partnership had been signed and Michael had got his theatre booked for the autumn he engaged a publicity agent. Para­graphs were sent to the papers announcing the new venture and Michael and the publicity agent prepared interviews for him and Julia to give to the Press. Photographs of them, singly and together, with and without Roger, appeared in the weeklies. The domestic note was worked for all it was worth'*. They could not quite make up their minds which of the three plays they had it would be best to start with. Then one afternoon when Julia was sitting in her bedroom reading a novel, Michael came in with a manuscript in his hand.

'Look here, I want you to read this play at once. It's just come in from an agent. I think it's a knockout. Only we've got to give an answer right away.'

Julia put down her novel.

'I'll read it now.'

'I shall be downstairs. Let me know when you've finished and I'll come up and talk it over with you. It's got a wonderful part for you.'

Julia read quickly, skimming over the scenes in which she was not con­cerned, but the principal woman's part, the part of course she would play, with concentration. When she had turned the last page she rang the bell and asked her maid (who was also her dresser) to tell Michael she was ready for him.

'Well, what d'you think?'

‘The play's all right. I don't see how it can fail to be a success.'

He caught something doubtful in her tone.

‘What’s wrong then? The part's wonderful. I mean, it's the sort of thing that you can do better than anyone in the world. There's a lot of comedy and all the emotion you want.'

'It's a wonderful part; I know that; it's the man's part.'

'Well, that's a damned good part too.'

'I know; but he's fifty, and if you make him younger you take all the point out of the play. You don't want to take the part of a middle-aged man.'

'But I wasn't thinking of playing that. There's only one man for that. Monte Vernon. And we can get him. I'll play George.'

'But it's a tiny part. You can't play that.'

'Why not?'

'But I thought the point of going into management was that we should both play leads.'

'Oh, I don't care a hang about that. As long as we can find plays with star parts for you I don't matter in the next play there'll be a good part for me too.'

***

THEY put on the play, and it was a success. After that they continued to produce plays year after year. Because Michael ran the theatre with the method and thrift with which he ran his home they lost little over the fail­ures, which of course they sometimes had, and made every possible penny out of their successes. Michael flattered himself that there was not a management in London where less money was spent on the production. He exercised great ingenuity in disguising old sets so that they looked new, and by ringing the changes on the furniture that he gradually collected in the store-room saved the expense of hiring. They gained the reputation of being an enterprising management because Michael in order not to pay the high royalties of well-known authors was always willing to give an un­known one a trial. He sought out actors who had never been given a chance and whose salaries were small. He thus made some very profitable discoveries.

When they had been in management for three years they were sufficiently well established for Michael to be able to borrow from the bank enough money to buy the lease of a theatre that had just been built. After much discussion they decided to call it the Siddons Theatre. They opened with a failure and this was succeeded by another. Julia was frightened and discouraged. She thought that the theatre was unlucky and that the public were getting sick of her. It was then that Michael showed himself at his best. He was unperturbed. 'In this business you have to take the rough with the smooth.’

The third play was a winner, and Michael did not hesitate to point out how right he had been. He spoke as though he was directly responsible for its success. Julia could almost have wished that it had failed like the others in order to take him down a peg or two. For his conceit was outrageous. Of course you had to admit that he had a sort of cleverness, shrewdness rather, but he was not nearly so clever as he thought himself. There was nothing in which he did not think that he knew better than anybody else.

As time went on he began to act less frequently. He found himself much more interested in management.

‘I want to run my theatre in as business-like a way as a city office,' he said.

And he felt that he could more profitably spend his evenings, when Julia was acting, by going to outlying theatres and trying to find talent. He kept a little book in which he made a note of every actor who seemed to show promise. Then he had taken to directing. It had always grizzled him that directors should ask so much money for rehearsing a play, and of late some of them had even insisted on a percentage on the gross. At last an occa­sion came when the two directors Julia liked best were engaged and the only other one she trusted was acting and thus could not give them all his time.

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