Continental Stagecraft
by and Robert Edmond Jones. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co. Illustrated. 8vo. xvi+ 233 pp. $5.00.
ADMITTEDLY this book is a somewhat hasty record of a visit by the authors in 1922 to the more significant theatres of the Continent. By its text and illustrations, it aims to make clear what acting, lighting, and stage direction on the Continent have done for advance in the theatre since the War. Naturally, it describes the newest types of theatre construction, such as the Grosses Schauspielhaus in Berlin, the Redoutensaal of Vienna, the Cirque Medrano, and the Théâtre du Yieux Colombier. The illustrations by Mr. Jones are at once suggestive and sympathetic.
In the early chapters, Mr. Macgowan betrays bias. Obviously, Realism as it has been practised in the theatre, irritates him. He says, ‘Realism, in any but a very extraordinary sense, is a cramp upon Art.’ He has to admit that, when he saw ‘The Cherry Orchard’ played by the Moscow Art Theatre, he faced realism which somewhat shook his disfavor; but he waives this case aside, saying, ‘Perhaps this is realism and perhaps it is not.'
It is to be regretted that any such examination of existing conditions on the Continental theatre as this is not conducted with more catholicity of taste. Any reader, trained in the history of the drama, must pause before such readiness to assert that any form of the drama which has expressed the emotion and thought of a period is bad. This assumption seems to involve another; that the desirable in dramatic art is something abstract, something which may be determined by theoricians, wholly apart from the very public who, if they see nothing of their own emotions in the play, or are simply bewildered by the production, will so turn from both that neither play nor production can make a lasting impression.
The book lacks clearness of final effect. Impressions, rapidly gathered and rapidly placed on paper, have not been carefully reworked into a well-unified statement of the author’s theories and their manifestations in the theatres of the Continent. A part of this rather journalistic treatment is a tendency to make a broad generalization at the opening of a chapter, and then so much to qualify it here and there in the course of the chapter that the final impression on the subject treated is vague.
The occasional vagueness is the more objectionable because Mr. Macgowan shows that he can write with epigrammatic force. He writes interestingly, too, of the newer producers, Jessner, Copeau, Fehling, and the scenic-designers who are their chief helpers. Always, too, the intensity of his beliefs and the sincerity of his purpose are clear. Indeed, he ends the book with a forecast on dramatic art almost prayerful in its solemnity. Even with its obvious faults, the book is a path-breaker of importance.
GEORGE P. BAKER.