Continental stagecraft

by Kenneth Macgowan

a spotlight concealed in the prompter’s box is suddenly turned on and his shadow looms up, huge and sinister.

Jessner has his players under unusual control, and he permits very little of the accidental expression of feeling which Gordon Craig inveighs against in the actor. He even forbids the little shiftings and motions of the hands which are natural to anybody, actor or layman, while listening to a long speech from another. Jessner’s actors, if they are not speaking, and if their emotions are not being very markedly played upon, are held motionless. They do not move a limb. I have heard that, in a ball room scene, Jessner kept dozens of players absolutely immobile in the poses of the dance while the two principals talked.

Jessner’s company, as it appears in Richard III, Napoleon, and Othello, displays no extraordinary talent. The director has instilled a vitality as sharp as the silence and immobility which he frequently demands; and they play with that drive and that sharpness of accent which are inherently German. But there is no genius here, no Moissi.

Fritz Kortner, who plays Richard and Othello, is the outstanding figure, but he seems a player of limited vision and not very great technical range. He plays both parts on the same two notes: a soft, precise, and almost whispering voice, and another that rasps and all but squalls. Both are a little monotonous in tempo and accent. He uses the voice of the dove a great deal in Othello, both to establish the Moor’s kind and noble nature, and also as a base upon which to rear the contrast of his anger. The dove is a serpent in Richard.

Physically, Kortner’s Richard is odd and striking. The actor is not very tall, and he is decidedly thick in figure. His attitudes, the apelike swing of his arms, his pudgy face, twisted by an evil grin, give him an odd appearance that constantly suggests other images than Richard himself. A humped toad, a fat, cross monkey, a grinning Japanese mask, the mask of a Greek comedian—finally the truth strikes home: it is the Balzac of Rodin.

Richard III: Gloucester becomes King. Robed in scarlet, he stands at the head of a flight of blood-red steps. Below him, a double row of kneeling, scarlet-clad courtiers. Behind, a high gray wall. Above, a blood-red sky.

There is a moment in Richard when this curious figure is forgotten. It is the dream of the king the night before the battle of Bosworth Field. (Why is it, by the way, that no producer seems to have the genius and naïveté to produce this scene as Shakespeare wrote it, to place the tents of Richard and of Richmond on either side of the stage, and to let the ghosts bless Richmond and curse Richard alternately as they do in the text?) Jessner shears away the blessings, and lets the ghosts curse in the wings. Upon the slant of the blood-red steps lies Richard sleeping. As the voices call, he writhes and twists upon his uneasy couch. The voices rise and race, his agitation grows more and more horrible, until at the end his humped body is beating a fearsome tattoo to the rhythm of the cursing ghostly voices. Immediately after this really effective and fine scene, comes the extraordinary, much talked of and quite ludicrous end of Richard. He has his scene with the generals, then goes off to battle—or is it merely to tear off his coat of mail and his shirt? At any rate he is on the stage a few moments later, staggering along the top of the wall, naked to the waist. He cries: “A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!” Then he mounts his sword and, as if on a hobby horse, hops down the steps until exhaustion overcomes him and he falls.

Perhaps this indicates the fault that at present keeps Jessner from being a great director. His judgment and his taste—which mean the soul with which he interprets and animates his work—are very, very faulty. There is no austerity and almost no true beauty in his Othello, only strength. There is no dignity in his Richard III, only horror. He has made Richard terrible, but only with the terror of wormy graveyards. There is nothing of 15th century England in it, none of the beauty and flash of the time to make the hideousness of Gloucester the darker. The play is drowned in black—dirty, mean black. Far worse, it is stripped of the qualities that are Shakespeare. Worst of all, there is no shred of poetry in the whole length of the production, unless it is the final moment.

If you can forget the question of taste—if you do not care what interpretation a man puts on a great work of art—you must admit Jessner to a very high place as a director. He has originality, ingenuity, bravery, an uncommon technical ability. He is industrious, and indefatigably careful. His sins are not the sins of Reinhardt. No detail escapes him; so small a thing as off-stage noise he handles with the greatest skill. But Jessner is no poet.