Rehearsal blues

Friday, January 17th., London.

Another rehearsal of "Cupid and Commonsense" at Terry's Theatre.

Terry's Theatre was a West End theatre on the Strand, in the City of Westminster, London. Built in 1887, it became a cinema in 1910 before being demolished in 1923. Edward O'Connor Terry, as owner-manager, opened the theatre on 17 October 1887, with the farce The Churchwarden, followed by The Woman Hater. Terry had been the leading comedian of the Royal Strand Theatre and then starred in John Hollingshead's company at the Gaiety before entering theatre management.

I saw all the play. It exhausted and depressed me very much. nothing seemed to get over the footlights. The players now played too quickly instead of too slowly. Local accent all wrong, and certainly incurable. But the other people seemed to be quite cheerful and optimistic. All the surroundings - the manufactory of amusement repelled me. Women cleaning and whispering, etc. Cold. Oil lamps to warm. Smallness of theatre. (See also 'Cupid and Commonsense', August 30th., and 'Authorial Anxieties', Sept. 22nd.)
Proceeding regularly with the "Case of Leek". Today I rewrote what I wrote yesterday. Tomorrow I shall have finished a quarter of the whole. I am deliberately losing sight of the serial, and writing it solely as a book.