Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1915-03-22
THE NEW BEAUTY

WTE SPEAK of beauty as a permanent
w reality, and yet the shifting rainbow is
scarcely more evanescent than the substance
OF our dreams of beauty. The essence of
Victorian beauty was elaborate Ornamental
tion-arabesques and rocco trimmings that
made it a fragile and expensive luxury, de-
signed for the privileged few Nowhere has
the leaven of democracy worked more ap-
parently than in the metamorphosis of our
sense of beauty to an appreciation of simple
lines and good proportions and harmonious
colorings, with an underlying consideration
for utlity-a beauty for the masses, attain
able to any one for the mere effort of ap-
preciatng and desiring it.
With consistent rigor we are simplifying
and eXpurgating every form Of expression;
flowers of Oratory. flowery Brussels carpets,
slushy music, too soft and limpid portraits
of Galahads and Maidens at Prayer, are all
being cast away, one by one, into limbo of
outgrown things
One of the latest and most charming CT
our simplihcations is the new stage craft, as
expressed by Granville Barker in the plays
he has staged in New York city this winter.
Several of the months magazines comment
on this new venture. In spite of our former
pride in Belasco and his pinnacle of realism,
the facsimile of Childs restaurant, deposited
bodily upon the stage, the magazine comment
on this new stage craft, SO much less real
and so much more imaginative and romantic,
is in the main. favorable.
The significance of Mr.. Barker's work In
staging Shaw's "Androcles and the Lion" and
the charming curtain raiser, 1.-The Man Who
Married Dumb Wife," is much deeper than
the heeting pleasure which these plays give
their audiences. The enthusiasm with which
this work has been greeted gives promise that
this is only the forerunner of a new school
of play production, which shall stand to the
minute and even sordid realism of Childs
restaurant scenes as the straight fine lines
OF modern houses stand to the bulging, bow
legged gables of Queen Anne cottages. For
like the modern revival of Colonial archi-
lecture, this so-called new stage craft is
really only the revival of a classic simplicity,
temporarily neglected.
Clayton Hamilton, the essayist and critic,
writes Enthusiastically of this change in "Ro-
nance and Realism in the Drama" %. in the
Bookman:
We have become so accustomed TO the
realistic method in modern art that the reader
needs to be reminded that all fiction was ro-
mantle until three centuries ago. Realism
is contemporaneous with modern science and
other applications OF inductlve thought.
The point OF this revolt against realism
In the theatre is assuredly well taken. The
advocates of the new stage craft do not
demand the abolition OF picture frame pro-
ductons OF realistic playsi they demand only
that romantic plays shall no longer be pro-
duced in a realistic manner Mr..
Barker has discarded the conventions of the
realistic stage. Before the curtain he has
built wide apron, descending in terraced
steps to the auditorium; and In this empty
apron he has conducted a great part or the
action. Behind the curtain his scenery Is
merely summary and suggestive-not detailed
and Photographic like the scenery OF the re-
cent realistic theatre. He suggests the inn
minence of the Eternal City by pale mono
chromatic background with three round
arches, and by a sweeping gesture OF an
actor toward the gallery, which points out
an imaginary Coliseum. For the purposes Of
a romantic play, this surely Is a better method
of the Coliseum, and solid imitation of the
Arch Of Titus in the foreground.
Mr.. Hamilton discusses these plays in a
similarly sympathetic vein in Vogue and
there is also very appreciative description
OF the work of Robert Jones, the American
artist. who devised the extraordinarily charm
ing coloring and setting of the playlet, THE
Man Who Married a Dumb Wife" (2);
Mr.. Jones made the dresses him
self, painted the scenery, dyed the curtains
with his own hands, arranged the head
dresses ana even made the shoes The night
before the nrst performance Of the play he
might have been seen in q little room at the
rounded with stu1s and pins. In his shirt
sleeves and looking as though he had not
slept Tor nights, he was making the dress
which lAllah Mccarthy (the heroine) was 10
Wear the following evening, ana which had
not Yet had the nrsl atlng with
soEs ne han9 lenzths = ~ material Is I'd