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The Spike or Victoria College Review June 1930

"Kyd"

page 43

"Kyd"

The first thing to be said about this year's Extravaganza is that, as usual, the dresses were very good and that the few spectacular scenes—regarded simply as still life—were capital. The pirates were the most picturesque pirates we have seen for a long time. The second thing to be said is that (What is not at all usual) the choruses, at any rate so far as the men were concerned, were sung heartily, and that several of the speakers of parts had excellent voices, and used them to good effect. There were some good individual performances. Mr. Priestley was self-possessed—a little inclined to bully the orchestra, which was doing its best, but still self-possessed—and spoke and sang with a certain amount of ginger. We liked him. Miss Henderson looked very handsome and dashing, and spoke up with spirit; Miss Nielson looked quite charming and spoke very clearly; and Miss Davidson and Miss Purdie were also quite audible in the more expensive seats. And we can't leave out Mr. Read, who, in spite of the fact that the floor had a fatal fascination for his eyes, was a thoroughly good pirate, with a proper pirate voice. The third thing to be said is that some of Mr. Smith's jokes were good and were lucky enough to get over the footlights. His repertoire of pirate jargon betrayed a long and close study of the best models, from Captain Johnson to R.L.S. and the B.O.P., and were appreciated. The songs, on the other hand, were thin.

Now, what was it all about?

We were warned at some length (for we read and admired the preface—Mr. Smith is good at that sort of thing) that we mustn't expect an underlying philosophy and all that. Very well-but is it just a fairy tale? It's nice to see pirates, and even fairies—even quite plain fairies—so long as they don't try to dance—and to hear lots of puns and oaths and see a certain amount of rough and tumble; but three hours is a devilish long time on a cold, frosty night, in a great draughty barn of a place like the Town Hall, to sit still and watch just one thing after another. The show must be short (not more than two hours), or we begin to be conscious of the gaps between the stunts. We think it should hang together more and be shorter.

But we have a more serious grouch than that. We expect to hear something of the College and the Old Clay Patch, and the Professors and the caretaker, and the Registrar and Examinations and the graduates, God bless them! The thing is a College show—it used to be in honour of the graduates. But they have been long ago forgotten. We don't blame the authors, producers, designers; we blame the Students' Association. It seems to us that they have got to make up their minds which they want of two things: either to make money, i.e., three nights in the big Town Hall, with jokes for the general public, or a Varsity jollification, i.e., a simple night in a smaller hall at a show designed for the students, especially the graduates, and their friends. Why not give the second a try? To our mind, the best show since the war was the half-pie page 44 affair held in the Gym. in 1918, called "The Profs' Progress, or Degrees by Degrees." The hall was small; the jokes were Varsity jokes; the allusions were plain to everybody; everybody could hear, and they weren't afraid to be caught laughing. The thing was terribly crude, but somehow it gee-ed. We should like to see a return to that tradition. Never mind about philosophical ideas and such things, they will crop up if they are handy; but let's have a regular Varsity show.

There's a dreadful snare about this taste for the merely spectacular. Our women are so good at getting it up, and it is so good in itself, that it isn't easy to pitch it overboard; but heroic measures are needed. It seems to me that the proper place for the spectacular is the Capping procession. Why not make our procession a really big thing? Half the trouble put into the Extravaganza would do it, and it would serve better than the Extravaganza to keep up our communications with the public at large. Why not a two-day programme? First, a tip-top procession at mid-day—picturesque costumes and well-thought-out stunts, with some carefully rehearsed speeches at the end, culminating at night in a mere explosion of wit and high spirits (without the beauty chorus), the Extravaganza, with some rousing choruses, Capping songs, with a couple of hundred men singing, and everybody thoroughly at home. The processionists might keep on their mid-day war-paint and, deposited among the audience, would help them to feel that they were not a mere audience, but co-revellers. Second day: Capping ceremony in the early evening, with a certain amount of dignity and hearty singing; and, finally, the Ball! The animal spirits will have been worked off on the first day, and it will be much easier to be quiet during the speeches; and at the Ball the women appear in all their glory.

But to return—Kyd confirmed us in our dislike of masses of women on the stage. In the first place, the beauty choruses invite comparison with the movies, and we suffer therein; in the second place, the art of stage dancing is a very difficult one—in Kyd the dancing was simply rotten; in the third place, untrained women may excel in comedy one by one, but they find it hard to appear ridiculous en masse—which is what an Extravanganza requires—and the audience finds the attempt embarrassing. On the other hand, one of the two real hits of the evening—the thing that produced a burst of spontaneous laughter—was the dance of the he-houris. (The other was the operatic wind-up of the first act.) If you gather together every year the oddest males in sight and dress them up as females, you can be sure of one big hit.

To wind up, our impressions of Kyd were chiefly these: First, the raw material was more promising than any we have seen for years, both men and women (and we should be sorry to exclude women altogether from future shows), the leaders showed that they had the right stuff in them. Second, the male choruses did two or three capital things; third, the dialogue had real fun in it; but the whole thing didn't hang together, e.g., Holmes and Watson, although they made a gallant effort, were simply a curse, and it was much too long. And, finally, it wasn't a Varsity show, much less a Capping show, at all.