THE REDOUTENSAAL—A PLAYHOUSE OF PERMANENCE
In Vienna on Christmas Day, 1921, there were no matches in the
match-stands of the cafés and no paper in the hotel writing rooms. Some
of the well-to-do and the recklessly soft-hearted had begun to feel
that they could afford to keep pet dogs again; but there were no silk
stockings on those most un-Teuton ankles that paraded the Burgring. You
may guess, therefore, that there was no butter on the tables of the
middle classes, and no milk in the houses of those who, by a curious
clairvoyance of language, are called the working people.
Two nights later three or four hundred citizens, with bits of bread and
meat wrapped in paper and stowed in their pockets, could be seen seated
in a great and splendid ballroom of Maria Theresa’s palace, under
the light of crystal chandeliers and the glow of priceless Gobelins,
watching the first performance, _The Marriage of Figaro_, in a theater
a stride ahead of any in Europe.
They had paid good money at one of the doors of that extraordinary old
building, the Hofburg, which rambles from the Opera to the Burgtheater
half across the shopping district of Vienna. After they had parted from
two or three thousand crowns apiece, they had wound up stone stairways
between white walls and twists of old ironwork, passed through
cloakrooms where princesses once left their wraps, and a supper room
where artists may cheerfully go mad over molding, pediment and mirror,
and reached at last the Theater in dem Redoutensaal. They found one of
the handsomest baroque rooms in Europe holding within its beauty both a
stage and an auditorium. A row of Gobelin tapestries filled the lower
reaches of the walls. Above were moldings and pilasters, cornices and
pargeting, spandrels and pediments, fillets and panelling, an ordered
richness of ornament that held suspended in its gray and golden haze
mirrors that echoed beauty, and chandeliers radiant with light. At one
end of the room, beneath great doors and a balcony which the architect
had planned in 1744, was a new structure; it broke the line of the
Gobelins, but continued the panelling, freshened to cream and gold, in
a curving wall across a platform and in double stairs leading to the
balcony. With man’s unfailing instinct for the essence of life, the
audience promptly identified this roofless shell as a stage. There was
a platform, of course, but there was no proscenium. There were doors
and windows in the curving wall, but no woodwings, borders, flats, or
backdrops. There was even a something along the front of the platform
which might conceal footlights, but there was nothing to be seen that
looked more like scenery than a row of screens.
Such is the room in which the forces of the Austrian State Opera House
have been giving _The Marriage of Figaro_ and _The Barber of Seville_,
and in which Reinhardt began late in 1922 the most interesting
experiment of his most experimental life—the presentation of plays
under a unique condition of theatrical intimacy between actor and
audience.
It is an odd spectacle, this of Vienna, the bankrupt, going
lightheartedly out on the most advanced experiment in production yet
attempted in Europe. One of its oddest angles is that the man who made
an empress’s ballroom over into a theater is a socialist—President
Vetter of the Staatstheaterverwaltung, the bureau under the republic
which controls the State playhouses. The conversion was not an easy
matter. Opponents rose up inside the State theaters and outside them.
Vienna was engaged for months upon one of those artistic quarrels from
which it is always drawing new health and spirit.
[Illustration:
The Redoutensaal in Vienna as arranged for the first scene of _The
Marriage of Figaro_. The room called for in the text is indicated by
a row of crimson screens set straight across the stage and pierced in
the center by a door. In the scheme of production indicated by this
unique environment such a mere indication is sufficient to establish
setting and mood.
]
When President Vetter had won his point he plunged briskly ahead at the
work of making over the ballroom into a very special kind of theater
without marring its beauty. Part of the old balcony came out, mirrors
replaced doors and windows down the sides of the hall, and Oberbaurat
Sebastien Heinrich set to work on the problem of creating a permanent
architectural setting for the stage which should harmonize with the
lovely room, yet stand out from it significantly enough to center
attention on the acting space. Meantime President Vetter took another
look at the Gobelins which had satisfied Maria Theresa, and decided
that they weren’t quite good enough; others had to be found. Even now
he is a little doubtful about those on the right hand wall.
The work of the Oberbaurat is admirable. He has continued the molding
above the Gobelins, and made it the top of the curving wall which is
the background for the stage. This shell is broken at each side by
a casement, which holds either a door or a window, and two masked
openings. Through one of these, close to the front of the stage, a
curtain the height of the wall is run out to hide changes in the
screens and furniture upon the stage. At the back, where the shell
curves close to the old balcony of the ballroom, the State architect
has placed a pair of graceful steps, which meet at the top, and
provide, underneath, an exit to the rear. For lighting, there are the
foots in their unobtrusive trough, and small floods placed in the gap
where the curtain moves; but by far the larger part of the illumination
comes from the seven chandeliers in the ceiling of the hall. The
chandeliers towards the rear are sometimes turned half down or even
off, but essentially it is the same light which illumines both players
and audience.
This light and the formal and permanent character of the stage stamp
the Redoutensaal with a character as old as it is fresh. This theater
goes beyond Copeau’s Vieux-Colombier in the attempt to re-establish in
our century that active relationship between actor and spectator which
existed in the great theaters of other centuries, and towards which
the finest minds of the theater have been striving. Here is a stage
freed from all the associations of modern stage-setting, innocent of
machinery or illusions, essentially theatrical. Actors must be actors
upon its boards. They cannot try to represent actual people; they can
only present themselves to the audience as artists who will give them a
vision of reality.
This is comparatively easy in opera. There is no realistic illusion
about a valet who sings a soliloquy on his master’s more intimate
habits. People who quarrel in verse to a merry tune are most unlikely
to be mistaken for the neighbors next door. With music and the stage
of the Redoutensaal to aid them, the singers of the State Opera manage
to give a roughly presentational performance. In direction there is
nothing notable to be seen, unless it is the wedding scene of _Figaro_
with the Count striding up and down across the front of the stage,
opposed in figure and in action to the plaguing women above upon the
stairs. The acting possibilities of this stage, however, are very
great. Reinhardt saw them vividly in the summer of 1922, while he was
making preparations for his five productions in September: _Turandot_
by Gozzi, _Stella_ and _Clavigor_ by Goethe, _Le Misanthrope_ by
Molière, and _Dame Cobalt_ by Calderon. He saw the possibilities and
the difficulties of acting also, and he rejoiced that he was to have
old and tried associates like Moissi, Pallenberg and Krauss with him
once more when he began his experiment with a theater far more exacting
than the Grosses Schauspielhaus, and a technique of acting very hard to
regain after so many years of Realism.
So far as there must be indications of time and place upon this stage,
a beginning in experiment has been made. It has not been a particularly
good beginning, but it shows the opportunities for the artist, and also
the limitations. They are very nearly identical. It is the business of
the scene designer who works here to draw from the Redoutensaal itself
the _motifs_ and colors which he shall add to the permanent setting. It
is his privilege, using only these things, to give the scene just the
fillip of interest which the play demands.
Alfred Roller, a veteran of the scenic revolt of fifteen years ago,
and, next to Reinhardt’s artist, Ernst Stern, the most distinguished
German scenic designer of his time, has made the screens and set
pieces for _The Marriage of Figaro_ and _The Barber of Seville_. There
is little or no good to be said of his work in the latter piece. The
screens with which he indicates a room in the first act, and the bulky
gate which he sets down across the stairs in the second act, are bad as
to color, and quite at odds with the Redoutensaal. Obviously he could
have made so much more amusing a gate out of the permanent stairs, and
given his scene a Spanish stamp by a circle of vivid, tight-packed
flowers in the center. _The Marriage of Figaro_ is much better, though
here again Roller could have done far better if he had turned his eyes
up to the walls above him. The first scene, the servant’s room, is made
by a row of antique screens of faded crimson placed well down stage.
Through a door in the central one, you see green screens, which, in
the second scene are to define the room of the wife. With an excellent
sense of climax, Roller proceeds from the shallow stage of the first
scene to the deeper stage of the second, and finally sweeps in the
whole permanent setting for the wedding in the third scene. More than
that, he calls the stairs and balcony into play, and finally opens the
great doors above the balcony to let us see beyond to a room of crimson
hangings and more crystal. The last scene, the garden, is shoddily
conceived, with a few uninteresting potted trees, a bad painting
of Schönbrunn in the exit under the steps, and a sickly attempt
at moonlight from the floodlights and foots. Why not, you wonder,
delicate, artificial, gilded hedges along the walls, and fruit trees
flattened on _espaliers_ against the steps?
Unquestionably the lighting problem in the Redoutensaal is not yet
solved. Reinhardt looks to solve it with a large light or two concealed
in the forward chandeliers. This may make the illumination of the
stage a little more flexible and expressive; but it is quite as likely
that the way to light the stage is without the least pretense
at illusion. At any rate footlights and lights from the side are
distressing reminders of the conventional theater.
[Illustration:
The first scene of _The Barber of Seville_ as given in the
Redoutensaal. A not altogether successful attempt by Professor Roller
to create an architectural unit which should suggest a Spanish
exterior while harmonizing with the decorations of the ballroom.
]
Almost as reminiscent is the curtain which slides out between acts
while the stage hands move the screens. Why a curtain at all—unless the
curtain of darkness? Why not uniformed attendants managing the simple
matter of screens or small set pieces with the aplomb of actors? Or if
there must be a curtain, why a crimson sheet; why not a hanging whose
folds continue the _motif_ of the Gobelins at each side?
Perhaps the most serious question concerned with the physical
arrangements of this stage is whether there should not be some scheme
of levels other than floor and balcony. A lower forestage would aid
the director in composing his people, and getting movement and variety
out of this fixed and therefore limited setting. It would also aid an
audience that is seated almost on a flat floor.
The sceptic may find other limitations in the Redoutensaal. And he
will be right if he points out that its atmosphere is too sharply
artificial in its distinction to permit every sort of play to be given
here. Gorky’s _Night Lodging_ might be played in the Redoutensaal
as a literally tremendous _tour de force_, but it would be in the
face of spiritual war between the background of the stage and the
physical horrors of the slums which the play describes. Plays for the
Redoutensaal must have some quality of distinction about them, a
great, clear emotion free from the bonds of physical detail, a fantasy
or a poetry as shining as crystal, some artificiality of mood, or else
an agreement in period with the baroque. You can imagine Racine or
Corneille done perfectly here, Euripides only by great genius, _The
Weavers_ not at all. Nothing could suit Molière better, or Beaumarchais
or the Restoration dramatists. Shakespeare could contribute _Twelfth
Night_ and _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, perhaps _Romeo and Juliet_,
but never _Hamlet_. Here, of course, is a perfect stage for Oscar
Wilde, a good stage for Somerset Maugham, A. A. Milne, some of Clare
Kummer. The Moscow Art Theater would have no trouble with _The Cherry
Orchard_. More or less at random, you think of Bahr’s _Josephine_, _The
School for Scandal_, _The Sabine Women_, _Lysistrata_, _The Mollusc_,
_A Marriage of Convenience_, _The Truth_, _Prunella_, _The Beggar’s
Opera_. The one impossible barrier to performance in the Redoutensaal
is Atmosphere. If a play is drenched in the emotions of firesides,
poppy fields, moonlit gardens or natural physical things, it is
impossible here.
These are the limitations of the Redoutensaal, not of its idea. The
permanent setting and its enclosing hall can take the shapes of other
periods and meet almost every demand of the drama except atmosphere.
Ideally the hall should have some sober yet arresting architecture
common to many periods. A neutral order of this sort might be the blank
Roman arches and plain pilasters which are seen so often in modern
buildings. The chandeliers might take a form less ornate and less
blazing; nuances of lighting, if desirable, might then be achieved.
More important, however, would be to have three interchangeable shells
and steps. One set of walls should be classical and severe, suited
to Greek tragedy, _Julius Cæsar_, and, with a bit of brightening, to
Shaw’s _Cæsar and Cleopatra_. Another shell should strike the note of
artificial distinction with which the Redoutensaal now echoes. The
third should be of dark, paneled wood, to suit Shakespearean tragedy,
the comedy of Goldsmith, and modern pieces from _Rosmersholm_ to
_Getting Married_ and from _Alice Sit-by-the-Fire_ to _Magda_.
The idea of a permanent room in which to act a related repertory is
thoroughly applicable even to our peepshow playhouses with their
prosceniums. It would be possible to install a shell or room on the
stage of any reasonably presentable theater, such as Henry Miller’s,
the Little, the Booth, the Plymouth, the Selwyn in New York, the
Künstler in Munich, the Volksbühne, the Kammerspiele in Berlin, the
Comédie des Champs-Elysées in Paris, St. Martin’s in London. The room
would have to be formal, probably without a ceiling, and certainly far
more like a wall than a room. Such a compromise seems the only chance
America may have of experimenting with the idea of the Redoutensaal.
There is nowhere in this country a room so naturally fitted to the
purpose by its beauty as was the ballroom of the Hapsburgs. The
building of a fresh structure is a little too much to ask; for we
have hardly the directors or actors to launch unpractised upon such a
costly and critical test. It might be risked perhaps, as Frank Lloyd
Wright proposed risking it, in a theater of a purely artistic nature
far from Broadway. Wright designed for Aline Barnsdall a playhouse to
be erected in California, with an adjustable proscenium, a stage with a
dome that all but continued over the auditorium, and, upon the stage,
a plain curving wall some ten feet high, following the shape of the
dome. The nearest analogy to the Redoutensaal that has been actually
attempted in America is probably the adaptation which Director Sam Hume
and the artists Rudolph Schaeffer and Norman Edwards made of the Greek
Theater in Berkeley, California, for _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Twelfth
Night_. There is a certain significance, however, in the pleasure which
our scenic artists seem to get out of a play which gives them only
one setting to design, but which requires them to wring from it, by
means of lights, many moods and a variety of visual impressions. Lee
Simonson’s circus greenroom for _He Who Gets Slapped_ and Norman-Bel
Geddes’ sitting room for _The Truth About Blayds_ showed how seductive
to the artist of the theater may be the game of playing with lights in
a permanent setting.
Approached purely from the point of view of scenic art, or the
so-called new stagecraft, the Redoutensaal presents excellent reasons
for its existence. Historically it could be defended by a study of the
theater from the Greeks, with their day-lit, architectural background,
to Georgian times when the stage and the house were both lighted by the
same chandeliers, and the wide apron, the boxes, and the proscenium
made a sort of permanent setting which was varied by the shifting
backcloths. But if we go no further back than the days when Craig
and Appia were beginning to write, and before their voices and their
pencils had won an audience among theater directors, we shall find
the start of an evolutionary development for which the idea of the
Redoutensaal provides a plausible climax. In the first decade of the
twentieth century, the “flat” was flat indeed, and the painted wing and
backdrop ruled. If there was any depth, it was the space between wing
and wing, or the false space of painted perspective. Then the ideas of
Craig and Appia, making a curious alliance with Realism, forced the
plastic upon the stage. The solid, three-dimensional setting dominated.
When directors and artists began to discover the physical and
spiritual limitations of “real” settings which could present nothing
bigger than the actual stage space, many went back to the painted
flat. It was a different flat, however, one painted with dynamic and
expressive design. The third method is seldom quite satisfactory.
The living actor, with his three-dimensional being, clashes with
the two-dimensional painting. The result is bad from a realistic or
illusionistic point of view; and, as soon as we think of the stage in
terms of a frank convention, we find that we want the emphasis thrown
upon the actor as the more interesting and the more difficult element.
We want a defined and permanent artificiality that shall give the actor
scope, serve as a _pied-à-terre_, not join in a fantastic competition.
We can escape plastic and limited reality in the Redoutensaal, while
we supply the actor with a background that harmonizes with the living
character of his body. At the same time we can secure the vivid
indication of mood or time or place which we seek, and achieve it more
vividly because of the permanence of the main fabric of the stage, and
its contrast with the merely indicated setting.
German scene designers and directors move in theory steadily towards
what they call the podium, the platform pure and simple, from which the
player addresses the audience openly as a player. In practice they tend
steadily to try to approach this by driving out as much of changing
scenic background as possible. They place something in the middle
of the stage, a table, a flight of steps, a pillar, a bed, and they
try to eliminate the rest of the stage. Jessner does this in Berlin
by using his cyclorama as a neutral boundary without character in
itself. Fehling, the director of _Masse-Mensch_, uses black curtains,
and the artist Krehan by the same means tries to center our attention
on small set pieces placed in the middle of the stage and designed
to represent corners of rooms or a sofa by a window. Black curtains
appear everywhere in Germany—perhaps as an expression of the mood of
the beaten nation, but also unquestionably from a desire to drive out
both Realism and pretense and to leave as little as possible upon the
stage except the actor and the barest and most essential indication of
setting. The German uses black curtains to achieve nothingness. Instead
he gets desolation, spiritual negation. In the Redoutensaal, the actor
is backed up by space. It is a positive presence instead of a negative
background. Yet it does not obtrude, this splendid room, with its gold
and gray, its mirrors and its tapestries. These things float in the
back of consciousness, filling what might be a disquieting void or a
depressing darkness. Always the cream walls dominate the gray, and
always the living actor, driving his message directly at the spectator,
dominates them all.