THE question of the use of “scenery” on the stage is perpetually bobbing up, and as perpetually it remains an unsolved question. Specific instances of the dire harm that the decoration can do to a play may be observed in our theatres almost any week during the active season. To take an example, let us mention one of Mr. Sothern’s Shakespearean productions, which had already been cut to run within the time-limit, but which played from eight in the evening until midnight because the “elaborate” settings had to be changed frequently. The intermissions, as a result, occupied more of the spectators’ patience than the play. In another instance, a musical comedy went to pot on the first night because the stagehands could not handle the setting of the second act with enough expedition. As a result, they kept the curtain down for thirty minutes, a fatal length of time in a playhouse devoted to frivolity.
John Palmer, in that book, quotation from which is sheer delight, “The Future of the Theatre,” says that this is the age of the “naturalist” drama, and that as a result, when anyone tries to produce a “romantic” or “poetic” play, there is an attempt made to wrap up the shortcomings of the performance in elaborate upholstery.
“Why does the electrician or the costumier become so much more important in poetic than in naturalist drama? The electrician and costumier become more important as the author and actor become less competent of themselves to assert their intention. Naturalist authors and naturalist players are masters of their method. The poetic dramatists and players are not. Poetic drama has fallen upon evil times. The dramatist, being unequal to his burden, the artificers in light and hair and turpentine are invoked to help him sustain it. In the mid-twentieth-century outburst of poetic splendor, which will follow the foundation of our national theatre, it will soon be realized how the former degradation of the poetic drama was directly measured by the importance yielded thereby to the subordinate crafts. The quaint superstition of to-day that the limelight man is an important person in the raising of Cæsar’s ghost will disappear when poetic drama of the future is lifted to the level of the naturalist drama of to-day.
“Even to-day, when there comes an actor of genius who can present Shakespeare in the solid flesh, it is possible for the least reflective play-goer to realize how little it matters that the limelight is not of the latest and best quality, or that paint upon the scene is spread too thick. We have lately had opportunities, within a single year, of measuring Shakespeare as produced by Mr. Granville Barker against Shakespeare as acted by Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson. Compare for a moment Mr. Barker’s Twelfth Night with Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson’s Hamlet. Mr. Barker’s Twelfth Night had every advantage that a producer can bestow. Beautiful costumes against a decorative background, excellent music, an intelligent revival of the necessary apron, a very fair quality of acting, rising in a few instances to an extremely high level of accomplishment—all that the producer as fine-artist has been able to discover was tested and adapted for the occasion.
“‘Look here upon this picture, and on this.’
“Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson in his Hamlet of 1913 seemed bent upon showing once for all that production matters not at all when great acting is toward. The Drury Lane Hamlet of 1913 showed not only that the actor and his author require no artistic aid of theatrical haberdashers to make their effect, but also that the actor and his author, if they have as much genius between them as will cover a penny piece, can unite and play clean out of existence the ugliest daubs of the false cardboard naturalism of the late ‘nineties.’ In Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson’s Hamlet was no borrowed grace of the producing fine-artist. Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson had not even the advantage of the poetic conventions to which his play was originally fitted. He made his dramatic appeal in spite of his conditions, rather than with their assistance. Yet everyone open to the appeal of Shakespeare had to declare that the total æsthetic effect of Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson’s Hamlet infinitely outweighed the total æsthetic effect of Mr. Barker’s Hamlet.”
Now, this is the most specious kind of argument. Of course, genius, even unclothed genius, is at all times preferable to mediocrity decked in gauds, but genius properly caparisoned is only added to. If Forbes-Robertson’s interesting study of Hamlet had been properly set, its effect would have been even more vivid.
Let us take, for instance, the case of the Russian dancers. Anna Pavlowa is generally regarded as the greatest of living women dancers. A similar place is assigned Waslav Nijinsky among the male dancers. And yet it cannot be said that Mlle. Pavlowa, with her mediocre (in most instances) scenic and choreographic accompaniments, makes the effect that Nijinsky does surrounded by the Bakst scenery and the elemental spontaneity of the superb Russian ballet. Mlle. Pavlowa’s genius creates the utmost enthusiasm; it awakens admiration on every hand; but it would be more compelling were it encased in the beauty which it suggests.
To take another example, let us regard the production of Boris Godunow at the Metropolitan Opera House. Seldom, at this theatre, have more dramatic splendors been revealed than Adamo Didur showed us in the title part; and never has such adequate staging been seen there. The scenery and costumes, in fact, were all a part of the Russian equipment used in Paris a few seasons ago. Mme. Fremstad’s Brünnhilde in Götterdämmerung is an even more indisputable proof of genius than Mr. Didur’s Boris (taking into account the Russian’s close following of his model, Feodor Chaliapine), but the setting of Götterdämmerung at the Opera is so unimaginative, so unappealing, so unsuggestive, that one has to forget that before one can focus one’s attention on the compelling art of the singing actress.
Of late years the item of scenery has become more and more costly, more and more elaborate. What does it mean, after all, the kind of scenery we see? Who cares about the painted stumps of trees, the ridiculous apple blossoms and the pink drawing-rooms? A little simple staging would effect a much needed reform in the American Theatre, especially if it were coupled with a good play.