Transcriber’s Note
Italic text displayed as: _italic_
_BY KENNETH MACGOWAN
THE THEATRE OF TO-MORROW._
[Illustration:
The Redoutensaal, a great and splendid eighteenth-century ballroom in
the Hofburg in Vienna, with an arrangement of curved walls, staircases
and platforms newly built into one end. Here, under the light of
crystal chandeliers, surrounded by the baroque beauty of Maria
Theresa’s palace, audience and players unite in a relationship freed
from all the associations of modern stage-setting, a relationship
essentially theatrical in the newest and the oldest sense of the
word. The stage is here shown cleared of all but a few chairs for the
wedding scene in Mozart’s _The Marriage of Figaro_.
]
CONTINENTAL
STAGECRAFT
KENNETH MACGOWAN
ROBERT EDMOND JONES
[Illustration: Decoration]
NEW YORK
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO THE
PLAYWRIGHTS
OF AMERICA
Certain of the chapters and illustrations of _Continental Stagecraft_
have appeared in _Vanity Fair_, _The Century Magazine_, _Arts and
Decoration_, _The Bookman_, _The Theatre Magazine_, _Harper’s Bazaar_,
_The Theatre Arts Magazine_, _The Freeman_, and _Shadowland_.
PREFATORY NOTE
This book is a record of impressions gained from ten weeks of travel
through the theaters of France, Sweden, Germany, Czecho-Slovakia, and
Austria during April, May, and June, 1922. These impressions are partly
reinforced, partly orientated, through previous visits to Paris and
London, and through a long sojourn of Mr. Jones in Germany just before
the war.
For the purposes of this book, the journey excluded England, because
observation and reliable report showed little there that was not
a faint echo of what was to be found on the Continent. Russia was
regretfully excluded for reasons of time and the difficulties of
travel; but fortunately we were able to see in Stockholm a performance
by the touring company of the Moscow Art Theater. Though the most
interesting evenings of our trip were spent in the Redoutensaal in
Vienna, and in the Vieux-Colombier and the Cirque Medrano in Paris,
the larger part of our time was passed in Germany, and the greater
number of illustrations come from productions seen there. In Berlin, in
particular, there were things to be seen which had been much discussed
by American visitors—_Masse-Mensch_, the Grosses Schauspielhaus, and
the work of Leopold Jessner,—and these, we felt, demanded lengthy
study and analysis.
In our ten weeks Mr. Jones and I saw close to sixty performances. We
had expected to find it difficult, if not impossible, to see in this
time as much as we should have liked of the really significant new
work of the Continental theater. But, as it happened, good fortune
and the great courtesy shown us everywhere enabled us to see almost
everything that we wished. Through special performances arranged by
the managements of the Royal Swedish Opera and the Berlin Volksbühne,
and by Jacques Copeau, director of the Vieux-Colombier, we saw half a
dozen most important productions which we might otherwise have missed.
Luck and the repertory system found us at various German theaters
in time to witness the most characteristic and significant work of
the past few years. Finally, we were fortunate enough to come upon
two theaters—one accomplished, the other potential—of extraordinary
interest and importance, which had not as yet been seen or discussed by
American visitors, the Redoutensaal in Vienna and the Cirque Medrano in
Paris. _Continental Stagecraft_ cannot pretend to be so exhaustive a
study as a year’s visit would have made possible, but, in view of the
exceptional circumstances, I think that it is more than proportionately
representative.
With the exception of one sketch of a supposititious production in the
Cirque Medrano, the illustrations show exactly what we saw and nothing
else. Mr. Jones’s drawings are in themselves a kind of criticism
which the modern theater stands much in need of. They give the actual
visual quality of the best productions on the Continental stage far
better than could photographs of settings and actors, which are usually
flashlights innocent of the atmosphere produced by the stage lighting,
or the designs of the scenic artists, which are sometimes imperfectly
realized and sometimes bettered in actual production. Mr. Jones made
his drawings as soon as might be after the performance, working from
many rough notes made during the progress of the play. They are, I
believe, uncommonly true to the impression gained by the audience. My
only reservation would be that they catch the scene and the lighting
always at the best moment, and, through the quality of the drawing,
they sometimes add a beauty that is perhaps a little flattering to the
original.
The text is a collaboration in ideas, though not, with the exception of
the captions under the pictures, in writing. It is a compilation of our
impressions, reactions, and conclusions. Because the words are my own,
I have taken the liberty of the personal pronoun “I” when “we” would be
editorially pompous or inexact.
The book began as an attempt to supplement the International Theater
Exhibition held in Amsterdam and London during the first half of
1922. This large, varied, and arresting collection of sketches and
models showed the art of the theater largely as it existed in the
imaginations of the stage designers. Many of these sketches were for
productions never made, some had been greatly altered for better or
for worse in the course of production. It was our feeling that we
might be able to add something to the knowledge which this important
exhibition was spreading abroad if we could make some record, however
incomplete, of the actual accomplishment of the artists upon the stage,
and particularly of the directors and actors, who, after all, have the
major share in the art of the theater.
We have seen so much that is interesting, so much that is significant,
and a few things so stimulating and inspiriting, that we have been
tempted often to push our report of impressions into an anticipation of
future progress. We have, I fear, substituted our own imaginations in
many places for those of the artists of the International Exhibition.
KENNETH MACGOWAN.
Pelham Manor, N. Y.,
1 August, 1922.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFATORY NOTE vii
CHAPTER
I. BEYOND REALISM 3
Some dull definitions. Realism of the flesh vs. Realism of the
spirit. In _The Cherry Orchard_ Tchehoff and the Moscow Art
Theater reach reality. A mystic picture of life beyond our
Realism.
II. THE LIVING STAGE 17
The art that lies closest to life. Because its materials are living
men and women, it should not seek the illusion of reality. Its
object is to achieve the Form of life.
III. THE PATH OF THE PLAY 27
From Realism through Expressionism. The attempts of Ibsen,
Tchehoff, Wedekind, and Strindberg to reflect the Form of life.
The expressionist movement in the German theater; its violence,
morbidity and failure. Its arresting significance. Some
examples of its vitality. Expressionism and the unconscious
Through Form to beauty.
IV. BLACK CURTAINS 40
The place of Germany in the theater. Its pioneering past and
its natural virtues and failings. A beaten and bruised people
that still makes a fine audience. Berlin becomes Broadway-ized
and morbid. Economy breeds simplicity. A new day dawns on
a black-curtained stage.
V. THE TWILIGHT OF THE MACHINES 54
Relics of the past which was once the future. The abdication
of the designers, Stern and Roller. Reinhardt seeks a new
way out. Linnebach, apostle of the machine, turns apostate.
“_Einfach_” and “_Podium_” the catch-words. Stage machinery
sinks into its place. The designer replaces the mechanician.
VI. LIGHT AS SETTING 68
From Appia’s theories of the ’nineties to the day of projected
scenery. Lamps of six thousand candle-power. Color comes
under control. The dome no longer a sky; a neutral boundary
in Jessner’s _Othello_, a void in _Masse-Mensch_, a wall to be
painted with light in a Stockholm ballet. Settings projected by
Linnebach and Hasait. Light as a dramatic _motif_.
VII. THE GERMAN ACTOR 81
The effect of the war on the German players. The break-up
of Reinhardt’s exceptional company under the pressure of war
and the motion picture. The _Festspiel_ brings them together
again. Ensemble persists in Vienna and Munich. _The S. S.
Tenacity_ as played at the Burgtheater in Vienna and at the
Vieux-Colombier. The players of the Munich State theaters.
Teutonic vitality and intensity which often become violence.
VIII. NEW ACTING FOR OLD 91
Four styles of acting: Impersonation by wigs and spirit, as
practiced by the Moscow Art Theater. Impersonation by type-casting.
The exploitation of personality by great actors.
Presentational acting, and the expository performances of the
Vieux-Colombier.
IX. THE REINHARDT TRADITION 106
In the search for the director who can fuse the new acting
and the new play we come first upon Max Reinhardt. His past
and his present. His virtues and his faults. Powerful theatricalism
in the best sense possible in the old theater. His influence
and his followers. His future.
X. THE ARTIST AS DIRECTOR 118
The advent of the artist in the theater, a functionary unknown
to Molière or Shakespeare. The designer as an originator of
directional ideas. The inevitable union of director and artist,
in the sceneryless theater of the future.
XI. A NEW ADVENTURE IN DIRECTION 130
The methods of the director of the State Theater in Berlin.
The steps and levels upon which he moves his players in
three-dimensional compositions. How he creates effective pictures
and significant groupings in _Richard III_, _Othello_ and
_Napoleon_. Distortion of natural action to make points. The
motionless actor. Arbitrary lighting. A. B. C. conceptions
and limited vision.
XII. MASSE-MENSCH—MOB-MAN 144
Jürgen Fehling of the Volksbühne adds understanding to Jessner’s
freedom and vigor. A drama of industrial revolution
produced in abstract terms and made immensely moving.
Scenery almost disappears and a workmen’s hall becomes a
flight of steps surrounded by blackness. Arbitrary light and a
chorus that speaks as one. Audience, players and play pass
through the black purgatory of revolutionary Germany.
XIII. “THE THEATER OF THE FIVE THOUSAND” 157
Reinhardt’s Grosses Schauspielhaus, the gigantic compromise between
the Greek Theater, the circus and the realistic stage,
in which he made his last effort towards a new type of production.
The failures of the building architecturally. Its
virtues and its possibilities, which the withdrawal of Reinhardt
has left unrealized.
XIV. THE THEATER OF THE THREE HUNDRED 171
Jacques Copeau’s Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in Paris. The
naked stone stage with permanent setting which Copeau and
Jouvet created in their search for a playhouse that should
give the actor full freedom. Three productions: _Les Frères
Karamazov_, _Le Paquebot Tenacity_, _Twelfth Night_. The
quality of writer or expositor in Copeau’s performances. The
future of this theater.
XV. THE REDOUTENSAAL—A PLAYHOUSE OF PERMANENCE 184
The Redoutensaal of Marie Theresa converted by the Austrian
government into a theater without proscenium, machinery or
scenery. Audience and actors lit by crystal chandeliers and
surrounded by Gobelins and a permanent setting of baroque
architecture. Mozart and Reinhardt bring to it an old and a
new theatricalism. The principle applied to the stage and the
plays of to-day.
XVI. THE CIRQUE MEDRANO 198
The little circus on Montmartre as a presage of a theater in
which the audience will surround the players and gain a new
relationship with the play. The attempts of Reinhardt and
Gémier at the circus-theater. _Hamlet_ or _Masse-Mensch_ in the
Medrano.
XVII. THE OLD SPIRIT—THE NEW THEATER 213
Seeking both the new theater and the old spirit, Reinhardt invades
the church. The Cuckoo Theater. Religion in the
terms of the theater a thing of vital and creative spirit in Greek
times and in the Middle Ages. Can the artist of the theater
bring it out of our material age?
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
IN COLOR
The Redoutensaal in Vienna _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
He Who Gets Slapped—A Pitoëff Production 24
Die Meistersinger—Setting by Roller 56
Faust—A Reinhardt Production Designed by Stern 108
Samson and Delilah—Setting by Grünewald 120
Richard III—A Jessner Production Designed by Pirchan 140
Masse-Mensch—A Fehling Production Designed by Strohbach 156
The Redoutensaal in Vienna—Scene from The Marriage of Figaro 186
IN HALF-TONE
The Cherry Orchard—A Stanislavsky Production 10
Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen—Setting by Sievert 32
Der Traum, ein Leben—Setting by Strohbach 44
Macbeth—An André Production 54
Der Schatzgräber—Setting by Pirchan 60
Das Rheingold—Setting by Linnebach and Pasetti 64
Das Rheingold: Valhalla 76
Maria Stuart: Westminster—A Weichert Production Designed by
Sievert 112
Maria Stuart: Fotheringay 114
Samson and Delilah—Setting by Grünewald 122
Uncle Vanya—A Pitoëff Production 124
Napoleon—A Jessner Production Designed by Klein 126
Othello: Before Brabantio’s House—a Jessner Production Designed
by Pirchan 128
Othello: The Handkerchief 130
Othello: Cyprus, the Castle 132
Othello: Roderigo Is Wounded 134
Richard III—A Jessner Production Designed by Pirchan 136
Richard III: Richard and His Shadow 138
Richard III: Richmond and His Army 142
Richard III: Richard’s Soliloquy 144
Richard III: Richmond’s Soliloquy 146
Masse-Mensch: Dream-picture, a Courtyard—A Fehling Production
Designed by Strohbach 148
Masse-Mensch: The Revolutionists’ Meeting 150
Masse-Mensch: The Rallying 152
Masse-Mensch: The Machine Guns 154
The Grosses Schauspielhaus: An Impression 164
Judith—At the Grosses Schauspielhaus 168
Les Frères Karamazov—A Copeau Production Designed by Jouvet 174
Le Carrosse du Saint-Sacrement—A Copeau Production Designed by
Jouvet 180
The Redoutensaal: A Scene from The Barber of Seville 190
The Cirque Medrano: An Impression 206
The Cirque Medrano: A Supposition 208
CONTINENTAL STAGECRAFT
CONTINENTAL STAGECRAFT
CHAPTER I
BEYOND REALISM
It is a pity to begin a book by being dull. But a time of change is
upon us in the theater, and a time of change is a time for definitions.
We have passed through such times before, and we have come out after
some years—a century or so—with categories neatly fixed. We can look
back along the history of English literature and place a judicial
finger there and there and there and say Middle English, Classicism,
Romanticism. All this is pretty well set. Then we come to Realism
and its quagmires—quagmires of balked creation and quagmires of
discussion—and we wallow about gesticulating and shouting and splashing
the mud into our immortal eyes. What is this bog we have been so busy
in? And what is the fitful and rather blinding storm of illumination
which plays about the horizon and calls itself Expressionism?
Of course these things are just what we care to make them. Various
parties to the argument choose various definitions—the kinds that suit
their themes. I claim no more for mine than that they will make clear
what I am talking about, and save a certain amount of futile dispute.
There are plenty of sources of confusion in discussions about art. To
begin with, it is not an easy thing to limit a dynamic organism by
definition. Creative efforts in drama, fiction or painting run out
of one category and into another with distressing ease. More than
that, there are apt to be many parts to a whole, many divisions to
a category; and the parts or the divisions can be extraordinarily
different. Finally, fanatics and tea-table gossips are equally
unscrupulous when it comes to “proving” a point. They make the
definitions of friends and foes mean what they like. They take the
part for the whole, the division for the category. They pin down a
lively and meandering work of art at just the place where they want
it. Two disputants, bent on exhibiting the more indecent side of human
intelligence, can make the twilight of discussion into a pit of black
confusion.
Let us bring the thing down to the present quarrel in the theater: the
quarrel with Realism, which has moments of clarity; the quarrel with
Expressionism, which is murky as hell.
What are we going to mean when we talk about Realism? So far as this
book goes, the word Realism means a way of looking at life which came
into vogue about fifty years ago. It sees truth as representation.
It demands a more or less literal picture of people and happenings.
It insists that human beings upon the stage shall say or do only
those things that are reasonably plausible in life. Resemblance is
not always its end, but resemblance is a test that must be satisfied
before any other quality may be admitted. Realism is not, of course, a
matter of trousers, silk hats, and machinery. The realistic attitude
can invade the sixteenth century, as it does in Hauptmann’s _Florian
Geyer_. Trousers, silk hats, and machinery can be the properties of a
non-realistic play like O’Neill’s _The Hairy Ape_. The test of Realism,
as the term is here employed, is the test of plausibility: Would men
and women talk in this fashion in real life under the conditions of
time, place, and action supplied by the playwright? It is the business
of the realistic playwright to draw as much as possible of inner truth
to the surface without distorting the resemblance to actuality.
There should not be a great deal to quarrel about in such a definition
of Realism, though its adherents may deny hotly the natural assertion
that the method of Realism is barren either in whole or in part. At
any rate, people generally understand what the row is about, and the
disputants can kick up only about so much dust on this battle-field.
Non-realism is another matter.
That the thing is the opposite of Realism is obvious in just one
respect: It does not admit the test of resemblance. It denies in
the theater, as furiously as do the works of Cézanne or Picasso
in the picture gallery, the validity of representation. But what
will it substitute for the technique of Realism and what will it
call the substitute? It will go back to romantic periods for a free
technique, but it will look forward for its materials along paths which
psychological research has lately opened to men and women outside the
ranks of true poetic genius. By this it may arrive at the inner truth
of Shelley and Goethe, Shakespeare and Æschylus, while it sacrifices
the outer truth of Ibsen and Bataille, Pinero and Galsworthy. The
question is both of technique and of materials, for an inner truth is
to be found in a study of the unconscious mind which will not brook the
obstructions of actuality and resemblance. Inner truth is so much more
important than actuality that the new type of drama will not bother
itself to achieve both, and if one must infringe on the other—which
must happen in almost every case—then it chooses quickly and fearlessly
the inner truth.
To give this anti-Realism a name involves confusions dear to the heart
of the controversialist. To give it the name Expressionism multiplies
these confusions. Yet it is hard to see any alternative at the moment.
We must embrace the name—and the confusions.
The chief confusion is due to the fact that there are two kinds of
Expressionism, as there are doubtless two kinds of Realism. There
is the larger and there is the smaller. Realism can be a mere
technique—resemblance; and it can also be a resemblance through which
you catch a vision of the soul. Expressionism can be seen by the
friends of Realism only as the narrow, neurotic, violent, and formless
art which displays itself in the dramas of the new German writers like
Georg Kaiser. I should be prepared to defend this sort of Expressionism
against the Realism of Augustus Thomas or even of John Galsworthy;
but I should not admit that it was the end of the reaction against
resemblance. Expressionism may be applied—and for the purposes of this
book it shall be applied—to the whole tendency against Realism, just as
Romanticism is applied to the whole tendency against Classicism. Many
who dislike Realism and neurotic German Expressionism equally, prefer
to give the form they seek some such well-worn and inoffensive label
as Poetry. This finickiness doesn’t matter—except as it admits new
confusions and dodges the issue. This issue is plain and should be kept
plain. Realism, in any but a very extraordinary sense, is a cramp upon
art. Instinctively artists of the theater are beginning to recognize
this and to seek some way out. This involves new qualities in the play.
For practical purposes let us call the way of escape Expressionism.
Some other term may establish itself in the course of years, but for
the moment this is all we have.
It is fairly easy to apply these terms and definitions to the current
theater—if you are not too doctrinaire or too partizan. Realism
yawningly enfolds ninety-nine out of a hundred playwrights. Maeterlinck
and D’Annunzio require a little special attention and Shaw and Barrie
raise nice points. But, in general, the distinction holds; resemblance
shepherds the realistic plays, emanations of the unconscious guide us
to the expressionistic. Even the purely representational performances
which most of our actors and directors give do not always succeed in
hiding the cleavage.
The most startling and disturbing experience that any friend of
Expressionism can have is to sit through a performance of Tchehoff’s
_The Cherry Orchard_ by the Moscow Art Theater—even by that portion of
Stanislavsky’s celebrated company which was cut off by Wrangel’s army
while playing in Southern Russia and compelled to tour Europe for two
years before repatriation was possible. Here is a play of a generation
ago written by the man whose dramas were the cornerstone of success for
the world’s greatest realistic theater. It is a _genre_ study almost
without plot: decayed aristocrats, old servants, newly-rich peasants
and the incident of the sale for debt of an ancestral property. There
is no more violence in it than the violence of life which rots an oak.
There is no more distortion than is to be expected in light reflected
from the troubled surface of life. And it is played with an almost
utter perfection of realistic detail, complete impersonation, and
rounded ensemble.
Yet if this is Realism we have never known Realism in our theater.
It carries us through life and out on the other side. It drenches us
with a mystic sense of existence. And when we read the text of the
play and separate it from the extraordinary emotional actuality of the
performance, we discover again and again and again speech that drives
straight at free expression instead of resemblance, and action and
character permeated with an almost religious symbolism. All this fused
by playwright and players into what seems a work of the most perfect
resemblance, but what is actually only the appearance of appearance.
The surface of the play is the surface of life. Mme. Ranevsky has
returned to her estates after a turmoil of years in France. There are
the usual appendages: a daughter, an adopted daughter, a governess,
a housemaid, a major-domo, and a man-servant who have grown into the
life of the house, a brother, an old, impoverished friend, a village
clerk with his eye on the maid-servant, an up-and-coming merchant
whose grandfather was a serf on the estate. These people talk a great
deal, and in talking they make certain matters plain. One of these is
that no one can save the estate, the beautiful cherry orchard, from
the consequences of the family temperament. Madame and her brother
have always spent their money as becomes gentlefolk, and some one has
forgotten the secret of how the cherries used to be dried and sent
to the markets of the far cities every year. They flounder about in
self-deception, always hoping for succor, never willing to accept
the scheme of the friendly merchant for cutting the estate up into
villa lots, and never able to do anything themselves to save it from
the auctioneer. Ultimately the merchant buys it in, and in blissful
callousness puts the ax to the trees as the family leave the old house.
Out of these people and their dilemma rises the most curious and moving
symbolism. A suggestion of symbols, rather; for there is nothing bald
about it. Truths of Russian temperament, even Russian politics, are
figured with the hidden yet revealing quality that so often rises out
of life like an odor from old fields, freighted with memories and
anticipations. Perhaps the simplest and most moving example of this
comes at the very end of the play. Through it all has moved a mumbling,
bent old man who has been the loving guardian of the household for
two generations, one of those rare and ancient servants who, by sheer
servility, have lifted themselves out of servantage and into a share in
the family life. In the end, the house is sold, the furniture removed,
the shutters closed. The family depart. Then into the dim room comes
the old man, forgotten. He totters across to the derelict sofa that has
been left behind. He curls up on it like some old leaf. There in the
darkness he dies. The soul of old Russia.
[Illustration:
Realistic production at its best. The final moment of Tchehoff’s _The
Cherry Orchard_ as produced by the touring company of the Moscow Art
Theatre. The ancestral house has been sold, curtains and pictures
have been taken down, the furniture is shrouded. The shutters are
closed. The lights are so dim that the room is no longer a room but a
vague, brooding presence. The old servant gropes his way through the
darkness, crawls upon the couch and dies.
]
As the old man dies something occurs that gives us all the license
we need in order to see in other portions of the play methods and
attitudes far indeed from Realism. The stage directions read: “A
distant sound is heard, as if from the sky, and the sound of a string
breaking, dying away, melancholy.” It is a sound that occurs also in
the second act, unexplained, ominous. Symbolism. Arbitrary and very
expressive sounds from heaven. Is it at all surprising to find the
characters of this play indulging in lengthy accounts of their lives
without taking the least trouble to find some stranger who might
plausibly be ignorant of it all?
Perhaps this is Realism, perhaps not. Certainly it is both sharp with
actuality and mystic with life’s intensity as these Russian players
act it. The company did not contain the greatest of the group which
Stanislavsky has gathered about him since he opened his theater in
1897. The director himself was not there to play the maundering
brother. On this night Kachaloff was out of the cast. But Mme. Knipper,
the widow of Tchehoff, played Mme. Ranevsky, and P. A. Pavloff played
the old servant. How many of the other players acted parts long
familiar to them I cannot say; but their work gave the impression not
only of exceptionally fine individual performances but of an ensemble
long and lovingly built up into perfection. It is an old _cliché_ as
well as a sad comment on acting as an art to say that a player does
not _play_ a character but literally _is_ the character. In the case
of this company from the Moscow Art Theater, there is a deep intensity
in the performance and a frank desire for absolute impersonation
which make such a comment on their playing of _The Cherry Orchard_
the obvious and revealing truth. It is a comment that applies to the
ensemble as much as to the individual acting.
The wedding of an utterly realistic performance with a play of
mystic overtones is justified by the sense of an old and complete
life which both possess. The intimacy of the actors with one another
is as evident as the intimacy of the characters they play, and the
intimacy of masters and servants in this Russian family. The welcome
of the mistress on her return may be a matter of the clever rehearsal
of off-stage noise—amazingly clever, you can believe; but when this
adoration comes out of the wings and walks upon the stage, it is seen
as the perfection of emotion and impersonation. A performance in so
foreign a tongue as Russian gains because our eager imagination is at
work to interpret in the acting the gaps left by the lack of words.
It also loses, because the meaning of the play is not always there
to show the linking of character and character, and of incident and
incident; great spaces of action are blank and without emotion; we
carry away fewer and shorter memories. How many and how continuous,
however, are the memories of this performance, and how piercingly keen
are the sharpest of them! Mme Knipper: a welling flood of emotion at
the old nursery of her childhood; blind affection for the lovely,
ancient orchard; childlike prodigality in her gesture as she scatters
money that might once have saved the estate, followed by childlike
penitence; and then the moment when she hears at last that the orchard
is sold, when her ability to ignore and forget slips from her and she
turns old before our eyes. Pavloff, prince of impersonators of old
men, hobbling about the room; a bent and shuffling figure eternally
mumbling, eternally nursing; a watery-eyed kiss for madame’s hand, a
pat for the twisted collar of the brother, a touch to the turn of a
curtain; an old, old, devoted shape speaking its fullness of character
in every movement. Other figures almost as fully felt and seen. Each
one doing the least little thing with an arresting significance. Here
for once are actors who realize the importance of crossing a stage, as
a display not of themselves but of their characters. Here, equally,
are actors who have got by all the small egoisms of their kind. It
is said that Stanislavsky found his players among artists, writers,
students, shopkeepers, anywhere but in “the profession.” At any rate
in twenty years he has made them into selfless but distinguished parts
of a new organism. Their intimacy as people must be as great as the
intimacy which they give their characters on the stage. They are an
orchestra; their playing is a music, a harmony. They seem to have lived
into this play in the eighteen years that they have given it until now
they are part one of another. It does not matter that some may have
had their rôles only five years, perhaps only five months. They are
enveloped in the mother-liquor of this mature, well-aged performance.
You recall the stew that Anatole France described: “To be good it must
have been cooking lengthily upon a gentle fire. Clemence’s stew has
been cooking for twenty years. She puts into the pot sometimes goose or
bacon, sometimes sausage or beans, but it is always the same stew. The
foundation endures; this ancient and precious foundation gives the stew
the quality that in the pictures of old Venetian masters you find in
the women’s flesh.”
Such Realism as this of the Moscow Art Theater compares most curiously
with the best we know of realistic acting in the productions of David
Belasco and Arthur Hopkins. It has the care and minutiæ of Belasco
sharpened by far greater ability on the part of players and director,
and mellowed by time. It has the naturalness of Hopkins; but, because
it is secured by deliberate direction and not by the indirection of the
American’s method, the naturalness fits into a general design and is
never slipshod. (So far Stanislavsky denies life and its accidents!)
It is, of course, worse than futile to compare such acting with our
own for any purpose but understanding. We cannot achieve a performance
of this kind so long as we have no permanent companies, no repertory
system. It is not alone a matter of the leisurely method of production
which Stanislavsky can employ,—months spent in study of the script,
long readings and discussions over every character. Repertory keeps
the actors playing a piece for years. They are not repeating themselves
evening after evening with mechanical devotion. They come back to
the play from other parts. They see it anew. If it is such a piece
as _The Cherry Orchard_, they plunge into its depths with a sense of
refreshment. They are the parts of a whole which they can never greatly
alter, but which they can enrich by new contributions.
We have, then, in this performance an almost perfect example of minute
and thorough Realism, fused into something beyond Realism through its
union with a play distinctly expressionistic in certain qualities.
It would be easy to see how frank, non-realistic acting could be
applied to _The Cherry Orchard_. It is, in fact, very hard to see
how the players can act some of the speeches as they do, notably the
descriptions of themselves and their lives which the governess and
Madame Ranevsky furnish to fellow-characters fully acquainted with
all they say, characters who very rightly pay not the slightest heed.
If ever a player had an opportunity to bridge directly the gap which
has existed between stage and audience for the past fifty years, and
to present emotion as simply and honestly and theatrically as do the
gravestones in Spoon River, it is the actress who plays the governess.
She begins the second act with the following speech, virtually a
soliloquy, to which none of the others on the stage pay the least
attention, even the attention of boredom:
I have no proper passport. I don’t know how old I am; I always feel I
am still young. When I was a little girl my father and mother used to
go about from one country fair to another, giving performances, and
very good ones, too. I used to do the _salto mortale_ and all sorts of
tricks. When papa and mamma died, an old German lady adopted me and
educated me. Good! When I grew up I became a governess. But where I
come from and who I am I haven’t a notion. Who my parents were—very
likely they weren’t married—I don’t know. I don’t know anything about
it. I long to talk so, and I have no one to talk to, I have no friends
or relations.
Is this Realism? Is it Expressionism? Is it something between, some
Realism of the Spirit opposed to the Realism of Flesh which we know?
Can we say that we know true Realism of the Flesh as yet? Even if we do
know it in a few fugitive productions, are we ready to give up not only
such Realism but also the possibility of deeply moving performances
like this of _The Cherry Orchard_, and to go seeking a fresh and
debatable thing far on the other side of experience? If we are, it is
because, we see that such perfection as this of _The Cherry Orchard_ is
a very rare thing for which we pay with hours of the commonplace, and
because we recognize that when a play reaches such spiritual quality it
has traveled so far from Realism that the journey is almost over.