The San Francisco Dramatic Review (1908)

THE SAN FRANQSCO DRAMATIC REVIEW May 16 J Today's Attractions "Frivol Theatre next week, "Hamlet,' in a way unique. With a new 'Soliloquy,' Dealin.cf in a manner free With things sexological. Educational to all; And a new eugenics scene 'Twixt I'olonius and the Queen!" 'At the Guff, new play by Barric, 'Why Blonde Women Shouldn't Marry'; Heroine a spinster cynic; Plot all hinges on a clinic Public flocking in a swarm (Bring your own iodoform!)" "Join the rush and soon procure Tickets for 'The Open Sewer'! Realistic odors fill All the house, your minds to thrill! Nastiest drama of them all; Hence, most educational! I'inc for children under seven ( Ambulance calls for half-past 'leven.)" " 'Peter Pan,' rewrit to show Just why Peter couldn't grow! Proving that his parents' shame Was entirely to blame. Orchestra (this is immense) ; All play surgeon's instruments! 'Tis a tiling kids shouldn't miss. Next week Rostand's 'Paresis'." Moving pictures at the Grand, Pictures all should understand! Ulcers, pretty running sores, Which the public just adores. Tetanus scenes, three reels of rabies, Special matinee for babies." —By Paul West, Boston Post. Illusion in Stagecraft "But. look, the morn, in lusset mantle clad, Walks o'er tlie dew of yon high east- ward hill." Belasco, with all his manipulation of electric light levers and shadings of gauzes, never succeeded with his mechanical sunrises in entering the magic imaginative world that Shake- speare conjured up in these two lines. Only within the past five years have we ceased to laugh at the leg- endary signs of the Shakespeare stjvge, with their information that "this is the forest of Arden," or the "seashore of Illyria." Now we are beginning to see that Shakespeare was not the primitive creature in this respect that used to be lau.ghed at so indulgently in the eighth gram- mar grade. Shakespeare put his scenery into the lines of his plays and wrou.ght convincingly and beau- tifully. It is curious that the last half century should have thought him so simple in this one respect and so marvelous in every other way. Samuel Phelps, over half a century ago, be.gan the era of stage over- decoration which has reached such an absurd extreme in the theatre of today. Applying the principles of easel painting upon a flat surface to a medium that has depth of 10 to 50 feet, these scenery makers painted Hamlet's castle all on a single sheet of- canvas, with dozens of battle- ments which waved and bellied un - der the gusts of the draughty stage. And so fond of the accurate imita- tion of the graining of the rocks and the fine perspective was the produ- cer that he turned on a calcium moon, which allowed the audience to see not only the perfectly unreal reality of it all, but also revealed every wrinkle and sagging seam in the big "drop." Just how much illusion was here? Or how much to the funny moon, when the manager was so indiscreet as to have it appear on the scene held up by a drowsy stage hand l)erched on -a ladder behind the scenes? Calamitous was it when the fond i^layWright required the moon to move during the scftie. IIow jerky was the course of Luna in her orb'it that night, and how her light paled and waxed as the carbon burned through porous spots! Then crowning ingenuity, we had driving nocturnal clouds, nicely pho- tographed upon a two-foot disk, highly colored and slowly revolved through a shaft of light projected from a stereopticon. The little boy in the next row discovers that as .«oon as a cloud has crossed the sky it hurries around behind the screens and drifts across the moon again, just as he is able to identify the same man a dozen times in the regiment .going South in the good old war plays. E. II. Sothern first attracted attention at the Boston Museum by his imrecognized repeating in "Ours" by means of his large reper- toire of shoulder attitudes and whis- kers. IIow many stage sunrises we have seen spoiled on the stage by the i,g- norance of fundamental human trait that we do not like to have any one try to present a concrete image of something we have imagined. W^e resent the substitution of .somebody else's wood and canvas idea of the thing for our intangibly beautiful idea of it. The manager spoiled all in trying to do too much. Having all the powers of an artistic Joshua, he failed to have the sun stand still, , or at least rise on the lowest .gear. Instead, the sun mounts and mounts, with the hopes of the l)eleaguercd .garrison for rescue, until the climatic arrival of the boys in blue, the full white glare of every light in the show window was turned on, and the mystical sky was seen to be a wrinkled sheet of canvas painted pink, and the murky forest stood forth in all its silhouette poverty. Dawns may be managed very well on the stage, but the sun should not be suffered to rise. As we laughed at Shakespeare, so some of us as mistakenly laughed at the Irish players for the settings of their comedies and dramas. Some of the exteriors must have cost as much as $3.50, outside the value of the necessary canvas and lumber used. When the curtain rose on the second act of The Well of the Saints there was only a blacksmith's hut set against the shoulder of a misty blue hill. A hut and a hill, that is all, with a spot on the stage, where all the important scenes were to be played, sufficiently illuminated to watch the play of emotions on the actors' faces. We suspected for a few moments that the hillside was a huge daub, but the light was never strong enough to confirm the sus- picion and we soon a,greed with the rapturous beggar that it was a fine windy hill. This was the Shakespeare idea, plus the possibilities of canvas, wood, paint and electricity used to pique the imagination instead of an attempt to gratify it, such as we find in present-day productions. The more elaborate the attempt, the more it falls short of that artistic reality which is the only realism that is consistent with the convention of the stage. Belasco, undoubtedly the greatest realistic producer in stage history, has had his ear to the ground, and now his next productions show re- sults of his experiments in lighting ])lays without footlights, and excur- sions into the other realms of imag- inative stage decoration in which such progress has been made in Ger- many. Having made the hopelessly unnatural foothghts seem as natural as possible, Belasco now abandons them. P'ootlights are the absurdest of all theatrical conventions, merely a relic of a medieval time when of necessity there was no other way to illuminate the acting space save with a row of candles. We have learned to cast light upon the stage from any de- sired angle, yet cling to that inherit- ed row of candles, with its light shed from the ground instead of from the sky. When a thing goes to seed it is in the last stage of all, and theatrical realism has now reached the seedy stage. In The Concert, Belasco, soli- citous for the complete verismili- tude, had a glass cabinet in the pi- anist's room, containing original mu- sic manuscripts by Liszt and W'ag- ner. These w-ere not for the audi- ence, to which they were illegible and almost wholly unnoticed, but for the benefit of the players, "to keep them in the atmosphere of their mimic environment." Here by real- istic means Belasco sought to invoke imaginative reaction in the players who w^ere to appeal to the imagina- tion of the audience. Here is putting effects before causes, seeking to invoke the imag- inative j)hysically. Luckily the play- ers had vigorous ima.ginations of their own, proved amid productions with tawdry scenery, and thus their characterizations were not percep- tibly dulled by the props mistakenly introduced to help them. It is a relief to turn from this sort of mystical tonimyrot to tales of the old-time actor, who as the banished duke in As You Like It, could trans- form a shabby line of wings into a glorious forest by his eloquent reci- tal of the joys of sylvan life. When the indefatible Belasco does some- thing to .surpass the new Germans, as he will if he tries, we shall no longer remember against him the perverted ingenuity with which he made the kitten in Hearts of Oak stretch herself, cross to the fireplace and drink a saucer of milk by keep- ing the animal all day on short ra- tions in a box too short for it, down in a cold cellar. The stage scenery of today is mod- eled upon the easel painting school of the pre-Constable period. Ever since then makers of stage scenery have attempted to paint sunlight and shade upon the mimic houses, and splotches of sunshine on the tree trunks, with the result of not the slightest illusion. Failing to follow the development of easel painting, the makers of stage scenery are working in the methods of 80 years ago. Modern painters do not attei t \ii paint sunlight. No paint hast, - produced brilliant enough to )r sent sunlight, yet your conven.n stage painter even tries to repr u( it. Manet and Monet and le many followers have started 1 new theory, c^ight from Cons)], and have soug^ to paint the ec of light. At once they hit on j^, vention that enables them arb'ai i- ily to choose a plausible sea 0 ^ values which permits the indict m i at one end of all qualities of m light and at the other end i al qualities of shade. Starting on the convention o)|| i resentation instead of the absuraj lacy of reproduction, the Ger have worked out some notabl fects. A sample of these we h; Reinhardt's production oT Sam in the larger American cities season. This drama was prod for the most part in a convcnti( poster decoration. Other plays I hardt has produced accordin other conventions, but along lines of representation, not nj duction of nature. Many of the smaller German ct^ -rt have done fine things along t v - ' lines, and so have the Russians. Artistic Theatre, I\Ioscow, was r first to give carte-blanche to Com Craig, who with all his curi ii- shoot fads, is working ' along the lines of the newer . idea. Perhaps all his ideas arc gd, London has stopped laughing at e eccentric son of Ellen Terry sit Sir Herbert Tree has utilized sevj of his methods and designs inajl*(l2 cent revival of Macbeth. ■ r|! The theory is simply that e ' ■ mood of every scene should be ■ produced in the setting and tt . nothing on the stage should 'm\t m that mood. This means castinjj Lfe| all the trumpery "atniosphfcfjsa projis which are so fondly thottt • to contribute to the illusion and, • ginning with a bare stage and lif, 1)ringing in what else is needed. Light—that is the greatest itlj«» in the new stage craft, the most:"" l)ortant element. W'hat an opp- tunity is here! It takes a genius: a painter to represent the effect . canvas, yet the stage producer li light itself at hand to do w ith as : will, simply needing to imagine 1; nature of the draperies and C(f structions to be transformed by tl light into forests, castles and ban plains, having nothing on the sta that does not contribute to the cff of the theme as revealed in this p. ticular scene. To be logical the realists oug to paint every leaf of a tree and u a bit of flattened excelsior for eve blade of grass. Given a lot of fol ing screens, a half dozen stereop con lanterns and a few draped Gordon Craig can give you a Nc man or Scottish castle, an assoi nient of ancestral halls or humb cottages and any desired variety wood scene, all in the short time takes to push a lot of the screei about. \Vhether we would ever 1 content with such simple austc methods or not does not alter tl fact that there is not the slighte reality about the so-called realist. settingsof the present stage. Scenei can't act.—Christian Science Moi itor. i