Children to help them in
their need, to satisfy the hunger of their souls, this faith, born
by the Sea of Galilee, has spread the farthest over the world, and
struck its note the deepest into human life. Not by his doctrines,
not even by his promises, has Christ laid hold upon the hearts of
men, but by the story of his life."
TUESDAY, THE 27TH - CONTINUED
We Discuss the Performance. - A Marvellous Piece of Workmanship. -
The Adam Family. - Some Living Groups. - The Chief Performers. - A Good
Man, but a Bad Judas. - Where the Histrionic Artist Grows Wild. - An
Alarm!
"And what do you think of the performance AS a performance?" asks B.
"Oh, as to that," I reply, "I think what everyone who has seen the
play must think, that it is a marvellous piece of workmanship.
"Experienced professional stage-managers, with all the tricks and
methods of the theatre at their fingers' ends, find it impossible,
out of a body of men and women born and bred in the atmosphere of
the playhouse, to construct a crowd that looks like anything else
except a nervous group of broken-down paupers waiting for soup.
"At Ober-Ammergau a few village priests and representative
householders, who have probably never, any one of them, been inside
the walls of a theatre in their lives, dealing with peasants who
have walked straight upon the stage from their carving benches and
milking-stools, produce swaying multitudes and clamouring mobs and
dignified assemblages, so natural and truthful, so realistic of the
originals they represent, that you feel you want to leap upon the
stage and strangle them.
