Is it extravagant to hope that some day a dress rehearsal will be a rehearsal of dresses at which some person of taste—everyone would accept Mr Wilhelm—will see all the frocks actually worn by the actresses upon the stage under the ordinary lighting conditions, against the scenery intended to be employed and then point out what is necessary to produce a real harmony of colour and also to take full advantage of, and in some cases enhance, the beauty of face and form possessed by the ladies who are to appear in the play?
One more point may be touched upon. Stage managers should pay more attention to suitability of costume and require actresses to make sacrifices repugnant to their natural and desirable instinct for coquettishness. One often sees a player in a costume utterly inconsistent with the poverty of the character misrepresented by her, particularly if she is acting the part of a peasant or poor shopgirl and the like, when her hair will show that it has been dressed by a coiffeur at a cost that would be unpayable by the character. Things like this destroy the illusion of the stage. It may be noted that in this respect the French and German actresses behave better than ours, and accept, doubtless with reluctance, a sacrifice of personal charm for sake of character too rarely seen upon our stage. A last matter—why is it supposed that almost all the characters in a play are wearing new clothes on a first night?
[Colour ]
Some time ago a musical comedy was produced the notices upon which were a little amazing. Several were impolite about the book, others unfriendly to the music; but almost all agreed that the scenery and costumes were of remarkable beauty. Now, in the first act an excellent opportunity for picturesque mounting had been wasted, and the setting of the second act was deplorable. It was a great blaze of gold and yellow, which endured for about an hour and a half, with, of course, some little relief here and there, and it fatigued some eyes and caused some headaches. No doubt we were in the minority.
It may be that most people are not sensitive to colour; any of our senses may be irresponsive. A friend of mine puts a lot of cayenne pepper and mustard and Worcester sauce on toasted cheese; obviously he has a dull palate. There are people to whom nothing in the way of music appeals except violent tunes. We know that colour-blindness in different degrees is the common lot; very possibly what to the sensitive seems a picture rich in tender colour, to the mass appears dull drab; and the scene whose shrieking gorgeousness oppresses the eye and brain of the artist is subtle to the Philistine—it is difficult to know. Who can imagine a picture gallery as seen by the person who suffers even mildly from colour-blindness? There are those who have a dull sense of smell, and the case has happened of a girl only stopped by accident from going to a ball decked in flowers that looked pretty and smelt abominably.
This raises rather a large question about stage-mounting; if the majority are not sensitive, then business instinct demands that the colour-scheme should be crude. Some time ago much admiration was expressed in the press at the beauty of a ballet designed by Mr Wilhelm, a real colourist, who is able not only to produce lovely delicate effects but to present pictures of vivid gorgeous colour so strong and subtle as to delight the artist and the Philistine. The same phrases that had been bestowed upon the Empire ballet were lavished by the same writers upon an entertainment at another house at which, in fact, there was a horrible debauch of crude, yelping, clashing colours.
The matter is difficult for the managers, or at least for those of them who have a sense of colour. In one way their position is easy enough; if they spend a lot of money on the dress and scenery, the press, with rare exceptions, will gush about the beauty of the setting, however vicious it may be. The Englishman who uses violent bottled sauces to destroy the delicate flavour of a sole or to add taste to toasted cheese rules the roast. People often proclaim that they like "colour"—by "colour" they mean bright, showy colours. Their taste is that of the negro; give him plenty of gaudy red and yellow and he is happy.
In modern comedies the difficulty might be avoided, since as a rule modern people in society do not employ violent colours, and the modern interiors in most instances exhibit agreeably the influence of the so-called aesthetic craze. Yet we have plenty of horrors. Ellen Terry in her interesting biography says that she never settled on her dresses without seeing whether they would harmonize with the scenery. This wisdom, alas! is rarely shown, and we very often see a charming interior ruined by gowns hostile to it in colour.
The question of form in the costumes is somewhat different; yet one cannot pass from it without expressing regret that the stage is so weak-minded as to permit itself to be the subject of the maddest experiments of milliners, and to accept tamely their rossignols. A few of our actresses know how to dress and to wear their gowns; nobody except the milliners seems to look after the others, and they form the majority. In many instances, no doubt, the ladies in the cast ought not to be blamed: they have a very restricted choice, if any. Lately there was a case where a handsome sum of money was put up by a syndicate for the ladies' costumes in a play, and nine-tenths of it was appropriated by the powerful leading lady, leaving for the others a ridiculous amount.
It is in romantic comedy we suffer most. To begin with, one may assert the general proposition that the sense of pictorial art on the stage is entirely conventional and academic; of course there are exceptional cases—rare, alas! The ideal seems to be to reach chromo-lithographic effects and the beauties of the old-fashioned valentine; for the suggestive, the mysterious, the imaginative little affection is shown. The real tub has developed into the real tree with real blossoms and real leaves wired on, not a thing regarded as a matter of form and colour, but as a realistic imitation of a natural object. Broad effects are frittered away by masses of irritating detail, the production of which costs a a great deal of money.