Theatre Production - The Christian

You ask me to tell you for purposes of publication in THE PLAY PICTORIAL the history of The Christian play, and, though I have been compelled by the pressure of many circumstances to speak on this subject before, I will try to meet your wish.

PRESS REVIEW

(The Gleaner [Kingston, Jamaica] - 10th September, 1907)
CONDEMN PLAY
"The Christian" said to be demoralizing - Sordid view of London - Matheson Lang's Mission as "John Storm"

LONDON, Sept. 7.

"Look at me" said Hall Caine to-day, when asked what he had to say about the severe criticisms on his new dramatic version of "The Christian." "Look at me. I am spoiling for a fight. The assaults upon 'The Christian' have put new life into me."

Ugly, depressing plays of the type of Olga Nethersole's "Sapho" have been placed on the London stage before this, but the general verdict of the critics is that this revised version of "The Christian" is the most stupid and sordid attempt to pander to a morbid section of the play-going public that has been seen in many years.

The first version of this play, taken from Caine's successful novel, was written before the author discovered that he "had a mission." In those days the play was merely a commonplace melodrama, and it had a profitable vogue among country audiences. In this new version playing at the Lyceum Theatre, Mr. Caine, who has been lately a close student of life in the Empire Music Hall promenade - that's the place where the demi-monde of London congregates - tries to show on the stage the awful results of the gay life.

A SORDID SCENE

He has introduced a scene showing the interior of a house of refuge for fallen women. He shows also a sprinkling of men who may be described as of the class that lives on the earnings of the women of the street. The reader's knowledge may supply the shorter and uglier word. There are also women who make the price of their diamonds out of other women's downfall. Then there are all the tawdry creatures of this world that one hesitates even to call up in one's mind when one is in decent society. This revolting crowd is brought into the action of the piece by John Storm, the hero, in the role of moral scavenger.

This part is being played by Matheson Lang, who went to Jamaica with the Benson Shakespearean company, and who played last year in "Tristram and Iseult" at the Adelphi. Mr. Caine has piled agony upon agony. He presented a livid scene, which he meant to he unexpressably tragic, but the affect is only sordid and not even comic. What puzzles London folk is: Why was this nasty mess passed by the Official Censor of Plays?

"Why the Lord Chamberlain gave this play a license when license has been refused to Bernard Shaw, we cannot-understand" says the Daily Graphic, "It must have found the censor in a Holiday mood" adds the Daily News. "Mr. Hall Caine uses social problems as factors in theatrical sensationalism in the crudest way."

CLERGYMAN DENOUNCES IT

Canon Horstley, an Evangelical clergyman of note, says in criticising the new version: "The chief dangers that I see in this play, are, first of all, that those who are living a life of sin should be encouraged to consider that there is nothing very unnatural or wrong in it after all; secondly, that those who strive to bring them back again to happiness and usefulness should forget this fact. Having erred from sentiment, it is reason first of all that needs to be developed in them. It is strengthening - almost the creation of back-bone that they want and not so much the application of maudlin sentiment."

Mr. Caine strikes a highly moral note in his reply to the critics. He declares that he will give all the profits of this play to found a refuge home for fallen women and adds: "I wrote 'The Christian' to express my deep conviction that the attitude ordinarily adopted toward women, is false and cruel, and in particular that the attitude adopted toward fallen women by society, religion and the law is utterly unchristian."

"I want the rich men of England to buy up the Coliseum and run it as a place of refuge for the women of the under world. Let it be open day and night"

The London public, which has a taste for lurid melodrama, is flocking to the Lyceum Theatre, and Mr. Hall Caine is raking in the cash.

I was writing The Christian novel in the summer of 1896, when I had a visit from Mr. Willard, who suggested that the story would make a play, and thereupon we concluded a conditionaI arrangement whereby he was to produce a drama on the subject in America during the following year and to pay me a modest fee on each performance. About the same time I had a visit from Miss Wakeman, who made a similar proposal on behalf of Mr. Wilson Barrett for the production of the play in Australia, but no definite arrangements were made in that connection.

When The Christian novel was published it provoked much adverse criticism, and feeling more disturbed by the outcry of the shrieking sisterhood, male and female, than was in accordance with common sense, I found my health disturbed and went to Rome to recruit. There, at the end of 1897 and the beginning of 1898, I wrote The Christian play, and in due course despatched it to Mr. Willard, who was then in Chicago. The result was a cablegram saying, "Don't wait for me." Whether Mr. Willard had changed his mind on seeing the written drama, or whether premonitory symptoms of a serious illness which soon afterward overtook him had prompted him to an act of friendship, I have never asked and never heard.

One day at Frascati an American gentleman who was interested in theatres in the western States suggested to me that a rising American actress, Miss Viola Allen, was exactly the proper person to play the part of the heroine in the play I had based upon my novel. The lady's name was quite unknown to me at the time, but by a coincidence sufficiently startling a cablegram from her was the first message I received on arriving at Charing Cross Station on the night of my return to England. Miss Allen asked for the play, and it was sent to her. Under the management of Messrs. Liebler and Co., The Christian was first performed at Albany in September 1898, and it was transferred immediately afterwards to New York. The newspapers, without a single exception, condemned it; the clergy without an exception welcomed it. It ran for twenty-two weeks in New York to very large business, and was then taken on "the road." It is still on "the road," and has been played in the United States several thousands of times.

Meanwhile Mr. Wilson Barrett, who had been on tour in Australia, brought back to London a version of The Christian made by himself, and tendered me half of an advance payment which he had received from an Australian manager on its behalf. I returned the payment and felt compelled to repudiate Mr. Barrett's version. The consequence was a painful lawsuit, Mr. Barrett took action against me on the ground that I had agreed to collaborate with him in the dramatisation of my novel. After prolonged legal proceedings Mr. Barrett withdrew his suit, paid my costs, and sent me a generous letter admitting his error. It has always been a matter of deep regret to me that, acting under legal advice, I was unable to do more than make formal acknowledgment of my old friend's expression of regret.

In the autumn of 1899 The Christian play was produced by Mr. Charles Frohman at the Duke of York's Theatre, London. It was damned by the critics and was a comparative failure with the public. There were many reasons for this failure apart from the shortcomings of the play. The piece was produced within a few days of the declaration of the South African War, when the public mind was entirely occupied with problems of the gravest national importance and when no other subject had power to produce so much as a ripple on the surface of public affairs.

Mr. Frohman had paid me a thousand pounds in advance of royalties on the English rights; I voluntarily surrendered half of this sum, took back the play, sent it into the country (in conjunction with my brother-in-law and Mr. Wentworth Croke), and recovered my loss in little more than a week. Since then the play has been continuously performed in the provinces by one, two, and sometimes three companies, and I do not think it has ever failed to draw a profitable audience.

During the next few years The Christian was produced in many foreign countries. I think it has now been played in all the countries of Europe. One day I received a telegram from a theatre of high standing in St. Petersburg asking for the script and a statement of my terms. I sent both forthwith but I heard no more on the subject for at least a year, when I learned by a side wind that the play was being performed by a popular actress in all parts of Russia. A month or two ago Maxim Gorky told me that The Christian was still one of the popular plays of the Russian stage. The Christian has been produced at the National Theatre in Finland both in Finnish and in Swedish. On the occasion of the first performance the President of the University of Helsingfors rose in his stall and proposed to the audience that an address should be sent by telegraph to me. This flattering tribute is, so far as I can remember, the only recompense I have yet received from foreign countries.

Passing through London at the beginning of the present year, I received a proposal from Mr. Croke and the management of the Lyceum Theatre that The Christian should be revived in London. I consented to the revival on condition that I should be at liberty to re-write the play in order to introduce without any kind of restraint a new social propaganda on which I had long felt deeply. My new version was produced 0n August 3rd of the present year, and it has already been performed to large audiences about 125 times. On December 12 it is to be transferred to the Shaftesbury Theatre. Such is the history of The Christian drama told in the driest of dry light. I have hardly ever read a good word that has been written about the play. I have hardly ever heard an ill word that has been spoken of it. It has been performed with my sanction something like five thousand times, and probably a thousand times more without my permission. It took two million dollars for the Liebler Company during the first four seasons of its touring in America, and it has found regular employment for about one hundred persons throughout the past nine years. Some of the money I have made by it myself has been spent in buying four hundred acres of land, some has been squandered in efforts to help unhelpable people, and some has heen saved up in charity. Before I wrote The Christian novel and play the newspapers were more kind to me than to almost any other writing man of my generation. Since then they have been less fair to me than to almost any scribbler of the century.