Submitted by
Lou Volpe
Supplied by David Gale
New York and London
By: Ursula Jeans and Roger Livesey
From: The Old Vic and Sadler's Wells Magazine, 1939
You ask us for our impressions of New York.
Well New York is a very strange place. But
you all know that already, and photographs of
it will give you a better idea of its outward appearance
then we ever could by description.
The audiences in New York are markedly
different from English audiences. The American
is very critical and has a much keener love of
satire than the Englishman, but he does
not always appreciate humour to the same
extent.
This curious difference we can only attribute
to the immigration from other European
countries, especially the large proportion of
people over there who are descended from the
Latin races. They still keep certain national
traits, and their sense of humour is certainly
one of them.
Now in tragedy the response of the New York
audience is whole-hearted and homogeneous.
That is, if they approve of the play and
of the acting, because, as we have already
remarked, they are a very critical lot, and if they
don't like a show they just walk out.
There are plenty of things to interest you in
New York. Some things seem a little strange,
but from seeing Americanlife on the films, they
do not strike one so much nowadays as they
would have done, say, twenty years or more ago.
We are afraid that our impressions of New
York are dominated or overwhelmed by one
important event in our lives which happened there.
We were, as usual, nearly late for that event,
but not quite too late, and we got married. Our
sole witness was Ruth Gordon, who, you will
proably always remember, was so captivating
in Tyrone guthrie's brilliant production of
"The Country Wife" at the beginning of last season.
But in our haste we had set out for this
important ceremony quite unprovided with the
American wherewithal for the celebration afterwards.
When we took Ruth Gordon to have lunch
this sorry state of affairs was discovered,
and we had to borrow the money from her.
Well, you can imagine it is very wonderful
for us to find ourselves playing together at the
Old Vic again, under the circumstances, back
again with the most enthusiastic and sensitive
audiences in the world. Only, if we might say
so, we did rather wish that "An Enemy of
the People" had been more generally popular,
although those who came to see it loved it as
much as we did ourselves.
Still, when we get back to Shakespeare, with
"The Taming of the Shrew", we do hope all
that will be altered, and that we shall see the
packed houses we used to have. We roar with
laughter ourselves at rehearsals, but of course
there is a tradition that if the cast does that,
nobody else will think it funny. But that can't
happen in a theatre like the Old Vic surely.
We saw the Lunts do "The Shrew" in New
York, so we have a high standard before us,
but we shall enjoy ourselves so much more if we
hear all our old friends having a good time too.
And bring your friends, and your friends'
friends with you.
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