(A scattering of words anent Washington Square, “Henry VIII”, Yvette Guilbert, “The Merry Wives of Windsor”, and sundry other things and people, as far as space and time allow.)
ALLAN ROSS MACDOUGALL
From my garret window I look out on Washington Square. Snow and ice still lie there, and the trees are black and mean.
On the first page of his new book, “Moby Lane and Thereabouts”, Neil Lyons says: “Spring has many ushers, and is heralded by divers signs. Some people look for these signs among the hedgerows; others seek them in the sky, or listen for them in the night, whilst other people neither look or listen, but go smelling about, or stand upon hill-tops, tasting.” My sign shall be, I think, the grimy trees of the Square. And sometimes as I sit here looking out on the icy barrenness I wonder if, when Spring’s breath does touch the earth, whether flowers will come up—flowers that I long to see: crocuses, anemones, daffodils. It’s all very well to see them in shop windows, but God! to see them come up out of the earth and unfold! But I fear our Square is too sophisticated. I know a man will come—a common tobacco-chewing man with a stunted soul who belongs to a Union and gets paid so much coin by the hour—and he will arrange squares, and oblongs, and diamond shaped plots of earth. Then will he proceed laboriously and without joy to stick tulips or some other straight official flower into these geometrical, soulless patterns. And throughout the year in the Square, nature will be kept in bounds and orders.
“Henry VIII”
It seems scarcely possible that Sir Herbert Tree would have the calm artistic audacity to come to this country and present his production of “Henry VIII” in the moth-eaten scenery and costumes that were used in the London production in the year 1910. Yet he did, and oh! the wearisome drab antiquity of it all! But the “People” liked it and gave the beknighted actor-manager “one of the greatest premieres that New York has witnessed these many years”.
Mention is made in the programme of “the inspiring aerchiological advice” of Percy Macquoid, R. I. The advice may have been quite inspiring. I do not doubt it. But the results of that advice! That medley of costumes! Those photo scenes of Windsor Castle and Blackfriars Hall and Westminster Abbey! They were bad when first conceived and painted, and five years in a London storeroom has not improved them to any degree compatible with their presentation to an audience that has looked upon the work of Bakst, Urban, Jones, Sime, and Rothenstein.
And what can be said of the lighting? There was one comic spotlight that followed Sir Herbert (or ought I to say Wolsey? I hardly know; they were never quite distinct) around the stage like a little motherless puppy. Sometimes it went before, sometimes it frisked after, on the tail of his magnificent scarlet gown. It had a grand time! But it never seemed to be doing the thing it ought to be doing.
But let me not bore you as these things bored me. Pass we now to the acting. In London the honors of the play were carried off by Arthur Bouchier as Henry, and his wife, Violet Vanburgh, as Katherine. A repetition was performed here. Lyn Harding as Henry, and Edith Wynne Matheson as Katherine, carried every one before them. And Tree? Well, he had his moments. There was his superb entrance with the look he flashed at Buckingham: fine too was the acting in the scene of his downfall. Between these two highlights such ordinary acting has seldom been seen in a man of Tree’s reputation. In a cold classic way Miss Matheson was splendid. I liked her much, and but for her some of the scenes in the play would have been colourless. There was the usual mob of supers who got caught in doorways and tripped over furniture, but on the whole they behaved as well as an ordinary stage manager can make such people behave.