An excellent Parisian company from the Variétés has been playing "La
Veine" of M. Alfred Capus, and this week it is playing "Les Deux Ecoles"
of the same entertaining writer. The company is led by Mme. Jeanne
Granier, an actress who could not be better in her own way unless she
acquired a touch of genius, and she has no genius. She was thoroughly
and consistently good, she was lifelike, amusing, never out of key;
only, while she reminded one at times of Réjane, she had none of
Réjane's magnetism, none of Réjane's exciting naturalness.
The whole company is one of excellent quality, which goes together like
the different parts of a piece of machinery. There is Mme. Marie
Magnier, so admirable as an old lady of that good, easy-going,
intelligent, French type. There is Mlle. Lavallière, with her brilliant
eyes and her little canaille voice, vulgarly exquisite. There is M.
Numès, M. Guy, M. Guitry. M. Guitry is the French equivalent of Mr. Fred
Kerr, with all the difference that that change of nationality means. His
slow manner, his delaying pantomine, his hard, persistent eyes, his
uninflected voice, made up a type which I have never seen more
faithfully presented on the stage. And there is M. Brasseur. He is a
kind of French Arthur Roberts, but without any of that extravagant
energy which carries the English comedian triumphantly through all his
absurdities. M. Brasseur is preposterously natural, full of aplomb and
impertinence. He never flags, never hesitates; it is impossible to take
him seriously, as we say of delightful, mischievous people in real life.
I have been amused to see a discussion in the papers as to whether "La
Veine" is a fit play to be presented to the English public. "Max" has
defended it in his own way in the _Saturday Review_, and I hasten to say
that I quite agree with his defence. Above all, I agree with him when
he says: "Let our dramatic critics reserve their indignation for those
other plays in which the characters are self-conscious, winkers and
gigglers over their own misconduct, taking us into their confidence, and
inviting us to wink and giggle with them." There, certainly, is the
offence; there is a kind of vulgarity which seems native to the lower
English mind and to the lower English stage. M. Capus is not a moralist,
but it is not needful to be a moralist. He is a skilful writer for the
stage, who takes an amiable, somewhat superficial, quietly humorous view
of things, and he takes people as he finds them in a particular section
of the upper and lower middle classes in Paris, not going further than
the notion which they have of themselves, and presenting that simply,
without comment. We get a foolish young millionaire and a foolish young
person in a flower shop, who take up a collage together in the most
casual way possible, and they are presented as two very ordinary people,
neither better nor worse than a great many other ordinary people, who
do or do not do much the same thing. They at least do not "wink or
giggle"; they take things with the utmost simplicity, and they call upon
us to imitate their bland unconsciousness.
"La Veine" is a study of luck, in the person of a very ordinary man, not
more intelligent or more selfish or more attractive than the average,
but one who knows when to take the luck which comes his way. The few,
quite average, incidents of the play are put together with neatness and
probability, and without sensational effects, or astonishing curtains;
the people are very natural and probable, very amusing in their humours,
and they often say humorous things, not in so many set words, but by a
clever adjustment of natural and probable nothings. Throughout the play
there is an amiable and entertaining common sense which never becomes
stage convention; these people talk like real people, only much more
à-propos.
In "Les Deux Ecoles" the philosophy which could be discerned in "La
Veine," that of taking things as they are and taking them comfortably,
is carried to a still further development. I am prepared to be told that
the whole philosophy is horribly immoral; perhaps it is; but the play,
certainly, is not. It is vastly amusing, its naughtiness is so naïve, so
tactfully frank, that even the American daughter might take her mother
to see it, without fear of corrupting the innocence of age. "On peut
très bien vivre sans être la plus heureuse des femmes": that is one of
the morals of the piece; and, the more you think over questions of
conduct, the more you realise that you might just as well not have
thought about them at all, might be another. The incidents by which
these excellent morals are driven home are incidents of the same order
as those in "La Veine," and not less entertaining. The mounting, simple
as it was, was admirably planned; the stage-pictures full of explicit
drollery. And, as before, the whole company worked with the effortless
unanimity of a perfect piece of machinery.
A few days after seeing "La Veine" I went to Wyndham's Theatre to see a
revival of Sir Francis Burnand's "Betsy." "Betsy," of course, is adapted
from the French, though, by an accepted practice which seems to me
dishonest, in spite of its acceptance, that fact is not mentioned on the
play-bill. But the form is undoubtedly English, very English. What
vulgarity, what pointless joking, what pitiable attempts to serve up old
impromptus réchauffés! I found it impossible to stay to the end. Some
actors, capable of better things, worked hard; there was a terrible air
of effort in these attempts to be sprightly in fetters, and in rusty
fetters. Think of "La Veine" at its worst, and then think of "Betsy"! I
must not ask you to contrast the actors; it would be almost unfair. We
have not a company of comedians in England who can be compared for a
moment with Mme. Jeanne Granier's company. We have here and there a good
actor, a brilliant comic actor, in one kind or another of emphatic
comedy; but wherever two or three comedians meet on the English stage,
they immediately begin to checkmate, or to outbid, or to shout down one
another. No one is content, or no one is able, to take his place in an
orchestra in which it is not allotted to every one to play a solo.