The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-01-06
700 PEOPLE |NCAsT
 IF THE MIRACLE
Seventy In Orchestra And Hundred And Twenty In
 Production's Choir
Fly :WEsTBROOK PEGLER By Leased Wire To The Age-Herald)

(by Leased Wire To The Agc-Herai0b
 NEW YORK. Jan. 5.-There have been several tremendous spectacle plays in New York since the war, among them Gnu Chin Chow" Mecca" "Aphrodite" and the Sell wyns importation of last year. Johannes Kreisler." which had stages within stages to enable the presentation of will O the wisp scenes to the number of AZ within the time allotted by public patience to a regular three-act play.
 Each of these was in it's turn the stuffed the eye and numbed tho senses, and was regarded as the ul- timate in that sort of thing. .A
 Now another comes to town. This Is "The Miracle" a production so imposing that the mere statistics concerning the material required for the scenery seem like the annual in- Wntory. of a paint works. canvas mill. lumber yard and a factory for the production of electrical ap- pliances on a large scale.
 The new show Is . stupendous thing, transcending even those two oPCCtdCicS OL 6uudSiOuo huuIIys Mecca" and "Aphrodite," on which Gest. went broke a few years ago.
 In those cases, Gest overbuilt and the intrinsic entertainment in the plays could not support hte cost. Both collapsed on the Russian immi- grant and quondam newsboy of Pie alley, Boston. mashing him flat broke.
 0 o o
 Gest Is Genius.
 I'm just getting off the nut with this troupe" Gest said one afternoon when he had re-engaged the famous "Chauve Souris' company of vaude- villains from Moscow to play a sec- ond season in New York. ..I went over to Paris to forget my troubles. These Russians were playing there, and I just had a hunch to bring 'em to New York. Something told me they'd go across big, like a hippo in a bathtub."
 The "Chauve Souris" ran two sea- sons The company was not very ex- pensive and at the end of the second season the audacious Russlander was able to say that he had paid off more than $100,000 in regrets derived from the two biggest plays ever seen in America, which were also the two most collosal failures.
 ouS 1Soe AS dAoo O eCliu5 HI S0NcTdl . respects. It was his gentle persuasion that brought Eleanora Duse to Amer ica this winter after other producers had blandished in vain for 20 years. His faculty for getting a thousand tiny things done also amounts to genius. Like John J. Pershing, he drives himself, crowds himself, but unlike Pershing, he Is fussy and in- capable of delegating jobs to others.
 A
 Theatre Like Cathedral.
 To present "The Miracle" Gest has had to remodel the entire interior of the Century theatre, one of the larg- est in New York, which now assumes the form of a Gothic cathedral. He brought oxer Max Reinhardt, the greatest producer in Europe, to su- perintend the work, and told him to outdo even the huge presentation that Reinhardt made at the Olympia, London. The vancas Gest has used in ''The Miracle" would blanket a fair sized farm: the electric cables run from footage to yardage to mileage; there are enough electric light bulbs in the body of the house and on the stage to make a gay white way in a sizeable city.
 There are 700 people in the cast. 120 in the choir and 70 in the or- chestra. Gest got Fokine to create the ballet and Belgeddes to design the scenery. and he hopes New Yorq this time will supply the money power to make the darn thing go.