[_8 June '11_]
At last, thanks to the Stage Society, we have had a good representative
play of Anton Tchehkoff on the London stage. Needless to say, Tchehkoff
was done in the provinces long ago. "The Cherry Orchard," I have been
told, is Tchehkoff's dramatic masterpiece, and I can well believe it. But
it is a dangerous thing to present foreign masterpieces to a West End
audience, and the directors of the Stage Society discovered, or
rediscovered, this fact on Sunday night last. The reception of "The Cherry
Orchard" was something like what the reception of Ibsen's plays used to be
twenty years ago. It was scarcely even a mixed reception. There could be
no mistake about the failure of the play to please the vast majority of
the members of the Society. At the end of the second act signs of
disapproval were very manifest indeed, and the exodus from the theatre
began. A competent authority informed me that at the end of the third act
half the audience had departed; but in the narrative fever of the moment
the competent authority may have slightly exaggerated. Certain it is that
multitudes preferred Aldwych and the restaurant concerts, or even their
own homes, to Tchehkoff's play. And as the evening was the Sabbath you may
judge the extreme degree of their detestation of the play.
* * * * *
A director of the Stage Society said to me on the Monday: "If our people
won't stand it, it has no chance, because we have the pick here." I didn't
contradict him, but I by no means agreed that he had the pick there. The
managing committee of the Society is a very enlightened body; but the mass
of the members is just as stupid as any other mass. Its virtue is that it
pays subscriptions, thus enabling the committee to make experiments and to
place before the forty or fifty persons in London who really can judge a
play the sort of play which is worthy of curiosity.
* * * * *
In spite of the antipathy which is aroused, "The Cherry Orchard" is quite
inoffensive. For example, there is nothing in it to which the Censor could
possibly object. It does not deal specially with sex. It presents an
average picture of Russian society. But it presents the picture with such
exact, uncompromising truthfulness that the members of the Stage Society
mistook nearly all the portraits for caricatures, and tedious
caricatures. In naturalism the play is assuredly an advance on any other
play that I have seen or that has been seen in England. Its naturalism is
positively daring. The author never hesitates to make his personages as
ridiculous as in life they would be. In this he differs from every other
playwright that I know of. Ibsen, for instance; and Henri Becque. He has
carried an artistic convention much nearer to reality, and achieved
another step in the evolution of the drama. The consequence is that he is
accused of untruth and exaggeration, as Becque was, as Ibsen was. His
truthfulness frightens, and causes resentment.
* * * * *
People say: "No such persons exist, or at any rate such persons are too
exceptional to form proper material for a work of art." No such persons, I
admit, exist in England; but then this play happens to be concerned with
Russia, and even the men's costumes in it are appalling. Moreover, persons
equally ridiculous and futile do exist in England, and by the hundred
thousand; only they are ridiculous and futile in ways familiar to us. I
guarantee that if any ten average members of the august Stage Society
itself were faithfully portrayed on the stage, with all their mannerisms,
absurdities, and futilities, the resulting picture would be damned as a
gross and offensive caricature. People never look properly at people;
people take people for granted; they remain blind to the facts; and when
an artist comes along and discloses more of these facts than it is usual
to disclose, of course there is a row. This row is a fine thing; it means
that something has been done. And I hope that the directors of the Stage
Society are proud of the reception of "The Cherry Orchard." They ought to
be.