Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1915-03-26
GIVING SHAKESPEARE
BACK HIS BEAUTY
How Granville Barker Has Made "a
Midsummer Nights Dream" Into a
Beautiful and Novel Play-Scenery
Almost as Brilliant as the Verses
BY KENNETH MAoGowAN

! ~ 10th century, America is his popularity
in the face Of fhe sort Of ungracious pro-
ductions givenN his plays Philadelphia has
just had a fortnight Of samples from MIR.
Mante; it can still remember the scenic
atrocities of MIR. Sothern and Miss Marlowe.
The Beauty Shakespeare Demands
Now it happens that of all the plays cur
rent on the American stage none demand
scenic Illusion so much as Shakespeares and
none get so little of it. The demand is easy
to understand. Writing for stage with
practically no scenery, Shakespeare larded his
text with the most beautiful and imaginative
of descriptions. All but the work Of finely
imaginative stage-artist will fade to taw-
driness before the warmth of the verse. What
pale stage-dawns we see with our eyes while
cur ears drink in:
But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad
Walks DER the dew of yon high eastward hill
Nights candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tptoe on the misty mountain-tops.
We gaze upon the forest backdrop of some
English park with neat square wood wings
dividing the sides of the stage, while THE
Merchant of Venice" tells us to believe that
we see:
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will sit and let the sounds OF music
Creep in our ears; soft stiffness and the night
Become the touches Of sweet harmony,
Sit Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold.
Drear brown walls, stones and shields
painted with equal freedom on them, are all we
get to suggest the awesome brooding cham
bers of Macbeth" And the next night and
the next, the same walls turn up in Ham
let" and Romeo and Juliet" Silly, fiappy
canvas atrocities, neither beautiful nor ap-
propriate trying to keep pace with Shakes
peare. 1t is simply ludicrous.
Even if one of our Shakespearean produce
tions could achieve real beauty; even if by
some miracle narrow stage-realism could
approach the verse, the result would still be
miles from the real Shakespeare. Because
the ordinary scenery is hard to move, and
because the modern play has evolved into
three or four long, continuous scenes, the
producer of Shakespeare cuts and rearrangeS
the swift, short, varied scenes Of the fluid
Elizabethan stage so that the curtain can
stay up long n time as possible. The least
harmful result is utter confusion of time and
place: but worse than that Shakespeares
dramatic construction is ruined clin2v de-
stroyed, balance annihilated and the swift
run of the narrative interrupted by half
dozen ten-minute waits.
Shakespeare "Remade in Germany"
1t is to the new stagecraft of Germany that
we owe release from such silly conventions,
and the rebirth of Shakespeare a really
entertaining and expert dramatist as well as
poet. Lingston Platt imported little of it
for Margaret Angin's productions last sea-
son; but Granville Barker, the English pro-
ducer, now in New York, is the first to re-
store Shakespeare play to it's original order
and completeness and to set it all in an imag
NATIVE and illusive background-the work
of Norman Wilkinson an English artist
The play is "a Midsummer Nights
Dream the theatre, Walacks. The former
he leaves Shakespeare-who may be sup
posed to know what he was doing-orig
inally wrote it, all he adds to the words is a
very swift, lifelike and yet finely lyric die
tion, instead of the labored pomposty of
blank verse oratory The theatre he COM
pleteIy changes. He annihilates the foot
lights and throws his light from balcony and
gallery in flood that leaps into new life by
the angle at which it is reflected to the spec
tator. The pCture-frame stage goes with
them. Where the footIights We're he places
couple of broad steps leading to platform
over the orchestra pit from right box to left.
The first boxes become entrances, always in
view. The "fore-stage" is divided from the
part behind the proscenium by a cream cur
tain in soft folds which is lowered during
the two intermissions.
The Double Stage
For the short front scenes" this curtain is
replaced by others just soft, on which are
painted suggestions of the places represented.
Thus for the audience chamber where the
play begins, the curtain is pale, with formal
coverings of gold and blue In front of it in
a square black seat as throne. For some of
the shorter scenes in the woods it is a green
forest suggested by angular edges of trees
against a deep blue sky spattered with stars.
Another. not so successful to my mind, is a
pinky plaster wall of one of the "neehani-
Gals" houses in Athens.
When one Of these scenes goes forward
on the "fore-stage," they are setting the next
solid scene behind the curtain. In Mr..
Barker's production there are only two such.
One is the bower OF Titania; the other. the
court of Theseus, where the burlesque of the
mechancals is acted,
TIE Curtain Forest
The bower is easily the most brilliant sue
cess of all Norman Wilkinson's scenery. It
is possible to quarrel with many parts of his
work-as is true OF any new art worth its
salt-many critics have objected to the formal
wreath of greenery which hangs high in the
air above Titania's couch, Yet the whole
effect OF this scene is as undoubtedly right
as the whole method, The ground slants up
to a three-cornered mound directly below the
wreath and the filmy curtains of the bower
suspended below it. The mound forms an
excellent point for many of Puck's capers,
around it race the fairies, darting in and out
Of the woods. These woods are the triumph
Of the scene and the play. They are formed
by curtains draped in a semicircle from
proscenium to proscenium, slit more or less
regularly by gaps that show other curtains
behind. Painted in moist greens suggestive