The beautiful Swedish national costumes should be used for this play.
Any good reference book on the costumes of various nations and many
books about travel in Sweden will furnish illustrations that may be
copied, varying the colors when necessary to produce a harmonious
relation with one another. Since this is a modern play, only the
servants, who are, of course, peasants, would be likely to wear these
costumes on ordinary occasions, but members of the upper classes
sometimes assume them for the festivities of the Christmas season. We
may, therefore, take advantage of this possibility, to increase the
picturesqueness of our play by using the colorful Swedish dress for all
the characters.
A real Swedish interior, carefully reproduced from trustworthy
illustrations, would also be effective. Not all the furniture found
in any illustration should, of course, be used for the stage setting.
A few pieces only should be chosen, with a view to composing without
unnecessary “clutter” into a beautiful and characteristically Swedish
whole.
The lines of this play are exceptionally simple in their phrasing and
yet so full of meaning that no word or syllable should be lost by the
audience. An intelligent, sympathetic rendering of each speech is
especially important, but clear-cut enunciation and a beautiful quality
of voice are also very desirable, particularly for Olga, Liljekrona and
the two children.
Olga is obviously the very heart of this play. She makes a
charming picture with the little boys over the Christmas tree, the
candle-lighting in the windows, and the story of the Christ-Child’s
wanderings. Her tender love for her home and her instinctive fear of
any influence which may tend to lower its ideals or to draw Liljekrona
away from it, must be so clearly brought out in the acting (as it is
in the lines) that the audience will understand and even partially
sympathize with her anxiety to be rid of the drunken vagrant, Ruster.
This anxiety is sharpened by the approach of the Christmas season,
which she feels should be celebrated as a beautiful home festival,
just by themselves. But even as Olga carries her point and Ruster is
about to leave the house, she is assailed by remorse for the selfish
impulse to protect her home at the unfortunate old man’s expense. This
should be clearly indicated in the tone and manner with which she asks
Liljekrona to give Ruster something extra for Christmas and to lend him
his fur coat.
The departure of Ruster ends the first stage of the play’s action,
in which Olga has attempted to secure happiness for herself and her
household by the refusal of her hospitality to some one in sore need
of it. Ruster had seemed to her a discordant element when present, but
his absence seems to bring ten-fold more unhappiness. All the Christmas
preparations go wrong. Sigurd’s cookie-dough figure of the Christ-Child
“doesn’t look like anything,” the E string of Liljekrona’s fiddle has
snapped and he has no new one, Torstein has gone to drive Ruster and
they cannot dance without him, the sheaves for the sparrows have been
forgotten, and finally Liljekrona withdraws to his own room to play the
stormy music which Olga understands as a portent of his return to the
old life of wandering.
In this section of the play, Liljekrona controls the action and should
dominate the scene. Olga attempts, in vain, to infuse joy into the
Christmas observances. Liljekrona’s bitterly self-reproachful speech
about the lonely and the hungry people,--“When they pass so close
as to touch our sleeve,--we do not see them, we do not stop them,
but let them plod their path alone,”--shows that he will no longer
deceive himself as to the heartlessness of their own action. And when
he says--“Your candles are too late. The door is closed. The voice is
gone,”--Olga sees that on the eve of Christmas and in the name of its
fitting observance, she has betrayed its very spirit of hospitality and
kindness.
The sound of the music from Liljekrona’s room, full of the old, wild
passion for the open road, brings to Olga realization of the price
she must pay for this mistake, “if God does not work a miracle in the
night.” Her intense suffering at this point marks the crucial moment
in the play and must be conveyed by action and facial expression as
well as by a poignant rendering of the lines. The moment must be
held perceptibly, after she sinks into her chair, until the sound of
sleighbells, at first far off and gradually approaching, breaks the
spell.
The bells usher in the third stage of the action, which is markedly
different in feeling-tone from the other two. Instead of the fear and
the cloaked unkindness of the first scene and the growing self-reproach
of the second, we have the exaltation of complete surrender to generous
impulse. Olga’s joy in the “miracle” which she so little deserved or
expected must shine from her face and from every word and action, as
soon as she realizes that Ruster has indeed returned and she has a
chance to repair the wrong she has done. Her inspiration to ask Ruster
to look after the children while she is out of the room should be so
acted as to show that there is something behind her simple request.
She will prove her gratitude for this chance to atone, by trusting her
dearest treasures to the man she had feared to have remain in the house
with them.
The scene of the children with Ruster gives the actor an opportunity
to show the battered, dissipated old man, afraid of the innocent
eyes of the children, but gradually put at his ease by their
complete unconsciousness and their real interest in the one thing he
knows,--flute-playing. Ruster’s complete collapse when the children’s
absorption in reading allows him to realize his own desolate situation,
and Olga’s offer to make him their tutor, need only be played with
entire simplicity and sincerity by both actors, to bring tears to the
eyes of many people in the audience.
Olga’s explanation to Liljekrona of her plans for Ruster and why she
is taking this great risk, bring her once more into a position of
leadership. This is emphasized by the action, as first Liljekrona, then
the children and finally Ruster, kiss Olga’s hand, while her curtain
speech to Ruster gives the needed touch of humility and graciousness to
her exaltation.
The curtain should be raised quickly after it has been lowered, so as
to make the tableau of the lighting of the tree seem, as it is, an
essential part of the play.