The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1929-03-22

sleep walking scene done in one of
Craig's massive sets with many
steps. Miss Reed makes the words
of Lady Macbeth a dirge of the soul,
the cry of a woman asking deliver
ance from crime. Here is the most
powerful sleep walking scene that
the stage has ever had in my ex-
perience.
Here is Macbeth" at its human
and tragic best. It is a compliment
to any city to have this production.
There were too many vacant seats
last night. Another disgrace that we
will have to live down.
I have asked Mr.. Robert Tsch-
aegle, indianapolis sculptor who is
in town following several months
work in the Fox studio on the
Pacific coast, to give you his impress
sion of the Craig sets.
Mr.. Tschaegles opinion is as fol-
lows:
an the settings for Macbeth,
Gordon Craig justif1es the expec-
tations which we held before the
rise of the curtain, not by dazzling
our minds with strained stage
angles, nor covering the stage or
hiding the actors amid chaotic COL
ors but through subtle poetic stage
0f 4Ioo 1oioI1nGt order
Ellis backgrounds came over the
proscenium arch like muted para
graphs explaining each movement
of the tragedy inevitably and surely.
"There were some moments, Mac
beth's scene with. the witches, an
other in the castle when Macbeth
and his Lady are alone before the
crime, and that haunting interval
of Lady Macbeth walking at night,
when the actors and their spiritual
backgrounds CONCEALED. Their emo
tions framed in a scene of perfect
optical understanding, color and
geometric pattern touched the OBJ
server, then, with rhythmic, musical
completeness, Craig set himself the
considerable task of interpreting a
great dranatist's masterpiece in the
dramatist's own key as near as
possible, through the medium of
lights, draperies and the modern
conception of the mathematics of
the stage.
"Of all Shakespeare's plays, Mac
beth is the most challenging for a
designer with this high purpose.
The play of fancy is tempted and
only a master like Craig could elm
mate the self obtruding designer
from the stage and instead reveal
the "corpeareal," the aesthetic
image of the play, and in SO doing,
linking it Enthusiastically with our
finite world OF reality.
"An of the scenes of the first act,
including that first one with our
introduction to the gargoyle witches,
compose an impression of reality in
which our minds are but troubled
with Macbeth's temptations.
"In the first, there is merely
bridge below which as In the murKy
waters of our lives, the witches
stand.
"We see Lady Macbeth in a small
chamber rejecting again the pri-
Vacy of her position in the drama at
that time. Her shadow is thrown
on the wall in an interlude like a
tempting other self. In the last,
before Macbeth's castle, the painted
form of the castle looms ominously.
at is in second act and in the
third that we are troubled by the
heavy mood, first in the castle where
dark shapes like brooding mountains
rise behind the heavy masonry, and,
in the sleep-walking scene the stage
is draped and set with stairs Of blue.
For the last scene with the
witches, Craig has devised CHASTITY
silhouettes on the foreground set
ting Macbeth in a crimson stain