The Theatre
(Chicago Little Theater)
Themost interesting thing about Shaw’sPhilandereras it was put on at The Little Theater the latter part of November, was the new treatment it received at the hands of the scenic artists of that precious institution. One is tempted to use the trite but pretty figure and say that it was an instance of an old gem in a new setting, only modifying it by the statement thatThe Philandereris merely a fake gem. The luster it may have had in the eighteen-nineties is now almost entirely worn away. In short, its fun is pointless. Ibsen, thanks largely to Mr. Shaw’s active propaganda, is a household pet. Ibsen clubs are as obsolete as Browning clubs; while the “new” woman as embodied in her present-day sister, the feminist, is too familiar and too permanent a figure to be the subject of effective satire. That the play still has appeal for a modern audience is due wholly to its characters, and yet these stage people are not real. They are no more than caricatures, each effectively distorted and exaggerated in the drawing, each effectively touched off in monochrome. To use another overworked phrase, they are typically Shavian in that they are not characters but traits of character. They are not real people; they are perambulating states of mind, as are almost all of Shaw’s creations, and the more emotional, rather than intellectual, the state of mind, the wider its appeal.
But neither Shaw nor the play is the thing in this discussion. The setting of the play, subordinate, no doubt, in intention, but predominating because of its novelty, is what interested most the eyes of the layman brought up for years on the familiar conventions of the ordinary-sized theater. The action demands interior settings, but instead of the realistically-painted canvas walls and wooden doors, The Little Theater gives us tinted backgrounds with rectangular openings for entrances and exits. The first act is done in gray, the second and third in blue, and the fourthin a soft green. The effect of people, particularly of women, moving against such plain unrelieved tints is pictorial in the extreme. Each successive movement, each new position is a new picture. The curtains parting on the last act, showing the copper tint of a samovar, a vase of delicate pink flowers, a white tablecloth, a handsome dark woman pouring tea, all against a soft glowing green, gave one the feeling of seeing an artfully-composed, skillfully-colored canvas at a picture gallery. And it suggested, more successfully than any other setting I have ever seen, the home of a person of refinement and restraint. Less successful was the setting for the second and third acts. The use of indigo in representing an Ibsen club may be satirical and it may be subtle, but its effect on the spectator after an hour or so is depressing, and in the general atmospheric gloom that increases as the act goes on the sparkle of some of the brightest dialogue is lost.
On the whole, the workings out of this new idea in scenery is suggestive in its effect and lovely in its pictorial quality, but until the novelty wears off it obtrudes itself upon the interest that belongs rightly to the play. Its cheapness should ingratiate it to the professional producer. Naturally, the effect of one unrelieved tint in the settings of a theater of ordinary size would be deadly in its monotony, but the idea suggests of itself endless variation and improvements. After leavingThe Philanderer, with its obvious limitations, with its uneven, at times amateurish acting, one cannot help wishing that our every night plays had half the thought, half the taste, half the imagination in their production that The Little Theater plays seem to have.
Samuel Kaplan.