ABSTRACT

What is the matter with intellectual London? Or is there no intellectual London to have anything the matter with it? I ask these questions because of the rows of empty or almost empty stalls on Wednesday afternoon when the Moscow Art Theatre company gave their first performance of ‘The Cherry Orchard.’ One does not ask where the fashionables were who on the previous evening flocked to a play about a Pekinese dog. But where were the Dusolaters? The language was no excuse, for Duse's reputation in this country was made by and among people who would have been hard put to it to order a meal in Soho's native tongue. It is surely time somebody nailed to the counter that hypocritical and snobbish piece of cant about acting being so good as to make unnecessary any understanding of what it may be about. . . .