An Encounter with Talbot O’Farrell: The Suspension of Disbelief

Of course it’s not me: the man’s been dead for longer than I’ve been alive.

But I refer you to James Agate, who, in a piece written for the Daily Chronicle and published in 1924 in the collection On an English Screen, recalls an encounter with the tenor of somewhat disputed origin.

Agate is writing about the suspension of disbelief in the theatre, and how he considers himself quite accomplished at it, when he is silenced by an encounter with “a grave, untheatrical figure” at a rehearsal at the Alhambra Theatre:

““YOU two ought to know each other,” said the manager. And it was signified to me that I was in the presence of Mr. Talbot O’Farrell. But where were the check trousers and the blue, double-breasted pea-jacket, the grey topper, the single eyeglass, the white gloves, the stick?

After a time I recovered my presence of mind, and we talked learnedly of many things—golf and Japan, sailing ships and sealing-wax, cabbages and kings. I confessed to a nasty habit of writing about plays and actors.
    “Have a cigar?” said the genial one, promptly.
    “Bribery?” I asked.
    “No, sir! Corruption!”
    And the real man, the comedian, came to birth in a merry twinkle.

[Two hours later, Agate takes his seat in the auditorium.]

    The curtains parted to disclose a grand piano, a modest young gentleman played the opening bars of “When The Sun Goes Down”, and to the plaintive melody there wlaked on a pair of check trousers, a blue reefer jacket, a grey topper. It was Mr. O’Farrell all complete. And I forgot about our solemn talk and listened again to that voice which goes so very near to unbinding the sweet influences of Pleiades and loosing the bands of Orion. This, and not my friend of two hours earlier, was the real person. And, the better to applaud him, I threw away the stump of my cigar.”

Agate neatly and effectively inverts the cliches of disillusionment and captures something credible in expressing the idea that the performer is most themselves when they are performing.

The book, by the way, is rather interesting: a confection of amusing (that, I think, is the mot juste) essays. Imagine an English Robert Benchley, or a less prodigious S J Perelman.

All of the above will be in vain if you do not visit the O’Farrell recordings available on the site, which you will find here. Only then will you be able to judge if you agree with Mr. Agate that O’Farrell’s is a “voice which goes so very near to unbinding the sweet influences of Pleiades and loosing the bands of Orion”. I certainly do.