|AT the performance of "The Phoenix" here, the other night, there was a
very affecting place where the play is transferred very quickly from
a street scene to the elegant apartments of Mr. Blackburn, the heavy
villain. The street scene had to be raised out of the way, and the
effect of the transition was somewhat marred by the reluctance of the
scenery in rolling up out of the way. It got about half way up, and
stopped there in an undecided manner, which annoyed the heavy villain
a good deal. He started to make some blood-curdling remarks about Mr.
Bludsoe, and had got pretty well warmed up when the scenery came down
with a bang on the stage. The artist who pulls up the curtain and fills
the hall lamps, then pulled the scene up so as to show the villain's
feet for fifteen or twenty minutes, but he couldn't get it any farther.
It seemed that the clothes line, by which the elaborate scenery is
operated, got tangled up some way, and this caused the delay. After that
another effort was made, and this time the street scene rolled up to
about the third story of a brick hotel shown in the foreground, and
stopped there, while the clarionet and first violin continued a kind of
sad tremulo. Then a dark hand, with a wart on one finger and an oriental
dollar store ring on another, came out from behind the wings and began
to wind the clothes-line carefully around the pole at the foot of the
scene. The villain then proceeded with his soliloquy, while the street
scene hung by one corner in such a way as to make a large warehouse on
the corner of the street stand at an angle of about forty-five degrees.
Laramie will never feel perfectly happy until these little hitches are
dispensed with. Supposing that at some place in the play, where the
heroine is speaking soft and low to her lover and the proper moment has
arrived for her to pillow her sunny head upon his bosom, that street
scene should fetch loose, and come down with such momentum as to knock
the lovers over into the arms of the bass-viol player. Or suppose that
in some death-bed act this same scene, loaded with a telegraph pole at
the bottom, should settle down all at once in such a way as to leave the
death-bed out on the corner of Monroe and Clark streets, in front of a
candy store.
Modern stage mechanism has now reached such a degree of perfection that
the stage carpenter does not go up on a step ladder, in the middle of a
play, and nail the corner of a scene to a stick of 2x4 scantling, while
a duel is going on near the step ladder. In all the larger theatres and
opera houses, now, they are not doing that way.
Of course little incidents occur, however, even on the best stages, and
where the whole thing works all right. For instance, the other day, a
young actor, who was kneeling to a beautiful heiress down east, got a
little too far front, and some scenery, which was to come together
in the middle of the stage to pianissimo music, shut him outside and
divided the tableau in two, leaving the young actor apparently kneeling
at the foot of a street lamp, as though he might be hunting for a half a
dollar that he had just dropped on the sidewalk.
There was a play in New York, not long ago, in which there was a kind of
military parade introduced, and the leader of a file of soldiers had his
instructions to march three times around the stage to martial music, and
then file off at the left, the whole column, of course, following him.
After marching once around, the stage manager was surprised to see the
leader deliberately wheel, and walk off the stage, at the left, with
the whole battalion following at his heels. The manager went to him
and abused him shamefully for his haste, and told him he had a mind
to discharge him; but the talented hack driver, who thus acted as the
military leader, and who had over-played himself by marching off the
stage ahead of time, said:
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"Well, confound it, you can discharge me if you want to, but what was a
man to do? Would you have me march around three times when my military
pants were coming off, and I knew it? Military pride, pomp, parade,
and circumstance, are all right; but it can be overdone. A military
squadron, detachment, or whatever it is, can make more of a parade,
under certain circumstances, than is advertised. I didn't want to give
people more show than they paid for, and I ask you to put yourself in my
place. When a man is paid three dollars a week to play a Roman soldier,
would you have him play the Greek slave? No, sir; I guess I know what
I'm hired to play, and I'm going to play it. When you want me to play
Adam in the Garden of Eden, just give me my fig leaf and salary enough
to make it interesting, and I will try and properly interpret the
character for you, or refund the money at the door."