A Year at the New Theatre

THE New Theatre has seemed to many observers not unlike the New Thought — somewhat vague and not particularly new. Just what artistic advance the theatre intends to further by its choice of plays, is not much clearer at the conclusion of the first season than it was at the beginning; just what the theatre stands for in the dramatic world is not yet definitely outlined. And, in its physical proportions, the New Theatre is a reversion to the auditorium of a half-century and more ago—it is at least fifty years behind the times; while, in its scheme of highly privileged support, its utterly undemocratic horse-shoe of founders’ boxes, around which the auditorium has in reality been built, it is a direct product, almost a copy, of conditions pertaining to that fashionable and exotic pastime of the very well-to-do,— grand opera. In these important respects, there is nothing new about it.

In the New York Evening World of March 28, 1908, was published an interview with the late Heinrich Conried, then director of the Metropolitan Opera House. In the course of this interview, he said, ' I have been chosen to plan the New Theatre in every detail. The architects made their plans in accordance with my suggestions, and I now have in preparation the plans for the stage, the mechanical arrangements necessary for the proper production of plays.’ And he further stated that the New Theatre, though it was not supported by the government, would be a truly ‘ national ’ theatre, an ‘ educational’ institution. Unfortunately, his first statement was correct — unfortunately, because Mr. Conried’s entire dramatic experience in America had been confined to his German playhouse, and later to the Metropolitan Opera House. His own training as an actor had been gained in the old-fashioned Teutonic plays of long ago. He was ignorant of many obvious conditions on the modern stage, especially the English-speaking stage, and, furthermore, he was ambitious to continue his operatic management, so profitable to him in many ways. Mr. Conried died, and when the group of thirty wealthy men whom he had gathered together as founders of the New Theatre, each subscribing at the start $35,000, summoned Granville Barker from England to consider the post of director, Mr. Barker found an auditorium, already nearing completion, which was so vast and so badly constructed for the performance of modern drama, that he took one look and went back to London.

The auditorium was designed by the architects on its present scale not only to meet the needs of opera (since opera cannot be profitably presented without large audiences), but also to make prominent display of a horse-shoe of twenty-three founders’ boxes. The founders of the New Theatre are chiefly men financially interested in the Metropolitan Opera House and pillars of its social prestige. Their idea, and presumably the idea of their wives, — whose influence cannot be left out of the reckoning, — was to duplicate at the New Theatre operatic conditions, ‘ to dramatize the diamond horse-shoe,’as Henry Miller puts it. Now, quite aside from the utterly undemocratic nature of such a social display in a playhouse loftily announced as ‘ national in scope and ' educational ’ in intention, this horse-shoe of boxes, ranged at the rear of the orchestra-chairs, threw the whole scheme of the auditorium out of scale for a theatre. In order to make the occupants of the boxes prominently visible, the balconies could not be slung forward over the orchestra floor. The first row of the balconies is no nearer the stage than this row of boxes, and the last row of the third, and highest, balcony, is thus distant from the stage almost double the depth of the large orchestra pit, besides being raised an enormous distance in air. Over this orchestra pit yawns a mighty void, wherein the voices of the actors wander tentative and dim. From the balcony not only is it a strain to hear, but the stage is so far off that it seems to be viewed through the wrong end of an opera-glass. Any intimacy with the play and players is utterly out of the question. Thus, as a result of the double blunder in the original scheme of the New Theatre, the plan to mix drama and opera in the same house and the plan to make of it a social diversion for the wealthy founders, the theatre has started on its career under a wellnigh insurmountable handicap.

It would seem that the founders and their families, if we may judge by the infrequency of their use of the boxes, recognize this fact. The truth is that the dramatic performances at the New Theatre do not interest them. And a potent cause is the lack of intimacy in the auditorium, for which they themselves are to blame. It should require no argument to convince one at all familiar with the stage that the modern intimate auditorium is an integral part of the modern intimate drama and acting; that we can no more go back with pleasure and profit to the old vasty spaces where Forrest thundered, than we can go back to the old plays which gave him ammunition. And it should require no argument to convince any thoughtful observer that men, however wealthy, prominent, and philanthropic, when they announce that they are going to build a playhouse for the public good and the uplift of the drama, and then, for the exotic pastime of grand opera and the prominent display of their own persons, erect an auditorium utterly destructive of dramatic illusion, especially in those regions where the poorer classes must sit, need not be surprised if the public does not hail them unreservedly as benefactors, or flock to their theatre. There is a distinct taint of insincerity and snobbishness in the New Theatre, which has perverted its physical design and threatens its usefulness. To deny this, or to try to disguise it, would be, to put it mildly, a waste of time.

The crying need of the New Theatre before another season begins, then, is a radical alteration of the auditorium, which of course means, first, the abolition of the incongruous grand opera. Fortunately, the abolition of opera is certain, and some consequent changes will undoubtedly be made in the auditorium. The founders of the theatre, who are its absolute owners and who will bear the heavy deficit, have a right to their boxes, and neither critic nor public has any voice in the matter. But possibly a lessening of the deficit might atone to some extent for the loss of the boxes; and possibly, too, the greater usefulness of the theatre to the public, the greater vividness and interest of its productions, might act as compensation, if the founders are sincere in their expressed desire to serve the stage in America. By alternate occupancy, a lesser number of boxes ranged (no less prominently!) to right and left of the proscenium, as in an ordinary theatre, might conceivably suffice. Then the balconies could be slung forward, the top balcony — at present a pocket to catch and deaden sound — eliminated, and the too-high ceiling lowered. If some of the overload of ostentatious decoration were lost in the process, so much the better. Thus arranged for greater intimacy, the house would hold enough people, say fourteen hundred, for probably profitable operation, with eight performances a week, if it was kept reasonably full. At present it seats twenty-three hundred people, at least half of them farther from the stage than the rear of the orchestra pit. Certainly the gain in intimacy, vividness, and enjoyment of the play would be incalculable. Until something of the sort is done, the New Theatre will remain an opulent semi-failure, be the company never so fine, and the plays presented never so worthy.

But the New Theatre in its opening season has at least demonstrated anew the value and possibilities of the stock company, playing in repertory. There have been errors in casting, and an unfortunate disposition has been shown to engage stars instead of standing bravely out for the resident-stock-company idea. The engagement of Mr. Sothern and Miss Marlowe was ill advised, for example, as was that of Miss Annie Russell. In the classic revivals, no less here than on the commercial stage, the lack of adequate training in our present-day players has been apparent — which is further proof of the need for just such a company. But, especially among the men of the company, many players have given striking proof of the value to the actor of frequently varied impersonations, and the public has watched their growth with steadily increasing interest. Even two such recognized artists as Ferdinand Gottschalk and Albert Bruning have for the first time been able to show to the public the full ripeness and resources of their art. And, in modern plats (like Don and Strife) the New Theatre, in its first season, has increased the public appreciation of ensemble acting, demonstrated vividly its superiority over a ‘one man’ performance.

In his Life and Art of Richard Mansfield, William Winter quotes a letter from that actor to him, dated 1905, which contains these words: ‘The actors themselves are all only too glad to get a good salary and study only one part a season, and this they can do, with Mr. Frohman and others. I stand quite alone, for both the Frohmans and other managers, and all the actors, are against me.' If Mansfield suffered from what Shaw calls ‘the solitary despotism of his own temperament,’ if that was what killed him, it was also what made him great, fed the flame of his ambition and his genius. The endowed stock company can seldom breed, and probably almost never keep, a dramatic genius like Mansfield. But in one winter the New Theatre has shown that it can recruit a company of intelligent artists, both young and old, who are cheerfully willing, nay, eager, to learn more than one part a season; and that, under this spur and with this opportunity, many of them develop and ripen in their art with encouraging rapidity. In spite of the lack of training which has hampered it in presenting the classics, the New Theatre company is already a potential force in the dramatic life of America. It is training players to varied impersonation, and the public to an appreciation of impersonation rather than personality, to an understanding of acting as an art.

Let us turn now to the repertory of the first season.

The New Theatre opened on November 6, 1909, with a dress rehearsal, amounting to a public performance, of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. Although the prospectus of the house shrewdly pointed out the evils of the star system, the theatre opened with a star play, if ever there was one, and engaged for the two star parts Mr. Sothern and Miss Marlowe, ‘for a limited period.’ Here was a departure from the stock-company idea at the very start. Furthermore, not only are Mr. Sothern and Miss Marlowe too habituated to the star system to work genially in stock-company harness, but they are manifestly unfitted for the roles of Antony and Cleopatra. Had a Shakespearean play been chosen for the opening bill wherein they could appear to advantage, — say Twelfth Night, — at least the desolate dullness of that inaugural performance would have been avoided. As a matter of fact, those in charge of the New Theatre did not have the courage of their convictions. They were themselves so habituated to the popular estimate of a name (and a novelty) that they called in two prominent stars and chose a play long disused, to give their theatre this dubious advantage, in defiance of therepertorycompany idea.

Antony and Cleopatra was a dismal failure. Even the minor parts were not well played, and the performance dragged sluggishly. Gloom rested on the New Theatre, and it was not visibly dispelled on November 11, when the second dramatic production was made, of a light fantastic comedy by Edw ard Knoblauch, called The Cottage in the Air — a play adapted from the story, Priscilla’s Fortnight. It was a trifling affair, not so well written as a comedy of similar theme then current on Broadway. It disclosed no originality of fancy, no depth of feeling, no cleverness of dramatic design. It was of a conventionally romantic type long familiar on our stage through much better examples. The only reasonable excuse the directors of the New Theatre can offer for staging it is that they had nothing else.

Six days later, however, on November 17, a play was disclosed of quite another stamp — John Galsworthy’s Strife. This astonishingly gripping dramatic argument was staged with careful and seemingly artless realism, and acted by the long cast, headed by Albert Bruning and Louis Calvert, with clearness, force, and emotional sincerity. Strife tells the story of a factory strike; it presents by turns the laborers’ side and the employers’ side; it shows the fiery, passionate labor leader broken at the end, and the stern old leader of the capitalists broken, too. It does not spare details of the suffering of the millpeople, nor does it fail to show their unreasonableness and vacillation. It makes out a case for each side, and then solves the strike by arbitration on terms considered by both sides before the fight began. In this ironic conclusion it points a silent finger toward the cooperative commonwealth. Strife is a powerful and thoughtful play, written in a restrained but truly nervous style, and superbly acted by the New Theatre company. And it is safe to say that no American commercial manager would have produced it. When it came on, the friends of the New Theatre for the first time took heart.

On December 4, The Nigger was produced, the second play written by an American author, but the first to treat of American subjects. The author is Edward Sheldon, who recently emerged from Harvard College with Salvation Nell and sold it to Mrs. Fiske. This youthful dramatist has the courage of large themes. In The Nigger he plunged boldly across the Mason and Dixon line and endeavored to set forth the tragedy of a high-spirited and high-minded Southerner — the governor of a state — who finds suddenly that his blood is tainted by ancestral miscegenation, and renounces (perforce!) all he has held most dear, to go down and labor among his black kind. Here, unquestionably, is a big, vital theme, however unpleasant to some palates. But Mr. Sheldon has as yet neither the maturity of mind and heart to present it adequately, nor the technical facility to weave it into a convincing narrative. His play, at first raw with the bravado of extreme youth defying artistic restraint, is later discursive and dull. Nor was it acted with any distinction. But it was an honest attempt at significant native drama, and worth doing.

Next of the dramatic productions was a second classic, The School for Scandal, made on December 16. In spite of the inadequacy of its representation, it has proved the most popular play in the repertory, thanks to its immortal charm. A company that in Strife played exquisitely in one key, the key of realism, here played in almost as many keys as there are characters. Mr. Corbin, the literary director, has written that Mr. Calvert, the producer and exponent of Sir Peter, ‘made it his artistic aim to play for the reality and essential humor of the comedy. . . . Sir Peter became a warmhearted old fellow, sorely tried and often vexed, to be sure, but above all a gentleman and deeply in love with his madcap wife.’ But ‘the essential humor of the comedy’ was just what was lost. It was a comparatively mirthless performance, without sparkle, because half of the company tried evidently for a modern key of realism and missed their ‘points.’ Does Mr. Corbin fancy the deep-hearted Sir Peter of William Warren was less of a gentleman, or less in love with his wife, than this toneddown and colorless Sir Peter of Mr. Calvert? Hardly! If you are going to play Sheridan, play Sheridan. And to play Sheridan with a modern company, we should perhaps bear in mind, requires, after all, some heart-breaking experiment and training.

Then, on December 30, came a oneact play, called Liz, the Mother (over which we will hastily draw the veil of silence; it slumbers now in the storehouse, after the single performance), and Rudolph Besier’s Don. This last is a comedy, produced with success in England, setting forth with sufficient plausibility for comedy purposes, and with much humorous irony, the adventures of a young idealistic philanthropist, a sort of modern Shelley, plus propriety, who tries to take an unhappy wife away from her husband and bring her to his parents’ house. His father is a conventional canon of the church, his mother a conventional canon’s wife, his fiancee’s father a conventional army officer, and the pursuing husband a fanatic member of the Plymouth Brethren. Here, surely, are the materials for ironic comedy. The young philanthropist emerges wiser, if no less philanthropic; the Plymouth Brother takes his wife back, to treat her to less religion and more love; and the boy’s mother does not understand anything that has happened. The piece was almost faultlessly acted, with a gay dash, cleancut characterization, and abundant feeling. It was perilously near farce, yet with intellectual tang and real point. It was distinctly worth doing.

Next, on January 26, 1910, the third classic was produced, Twelfth Night. It had an unimpressive performance. The roistering scenes, to be sure, wereamusing, though Sir Toby and Sir Andrew rather rioted to rule. But Miss Annie Russell was utterly inadequate as Viola, and the Malvolio was no better. When Viola is neither romantic nor gay-spirited, and Malvolio neither comic nor tragic, Twelfth Night is hardly brought to life. Miss Marlowe and Mr. Sothern had left the company, but Miss Matthison had joined it. The play was inexcusably miscast, and its charm was lost.

On February 14 The Witch was produced, — a play adapted by Hermann Hagedorn from the Scandinavian of H. Wiers-Jenssen. It proved gloomy, unreal, stilted, theatrical, and was so acted. Mr. Hagedorn shifted the scene from ancient Scandinavia to the Salem, Massachusetts, of 1692. There can be little excuse for this sort of thing, at such a house as the New Theatre. • A foreign drama should either be played as it was written, or not at all. Adapt an alien plot, with its inherent motives and characters, to an American setting, and you ruin the original without producing anything genuinely and sincerely American. The Witch as it came to the stage of the New Theatre suggested that Sardou had visited Salem, Massachusetts, and fogged his melodramatic fervor in the gloom of traditional Puritanism. The Puritans of The Witch were unreal beings, spouting endless streams of tiresome, unreal talk, in a dreary sing-song. Actually, the Puritans of witchcraft days were deephearted religious zealots, and Cotton Mather, leader against the witches, has left writings of a beautiful simplicity and eloquence. Nor does the motive of illicit love, treated not in the deep spiritual key of Hawthorne but in the key of Sardou, make for pleasure or profit in a Puritan drama. The Witch did not have even the excuse of sustained theatrical interest. It was dull as well as false.

On March 14 a double bill was presented, Act Four of Ibsen’s Brand (condensed), and Maeterlinck’s Sister Beatrice, a morality play originally written as a libretto. The plays were not well contrasted for one evening’s fare, there being something too much of severity. And Brand was very badly played, into the bargain, though it is hard to sympathize with those who find this fourth act unintelligible without the others. Sister Beatrice, the title part beautifully acted by Miss Matthison, was mounted in an exquisite setting, one of the most exquisite ever shown on a New York stage. The play, however, just failed of its true effect because the management, ignoring completely the author’s directions to play the second act in sunlight, played the entire piece in a night gloom, thusatonestroke destroying the atmospheric contrast between the human frailty of Beatrice and the joyous, divine forgiveness of the Virgin, and tinging a naive legend, essentially fresh, with artificial solemnity.

On March 28 The Winter’s Tale was revived, on a stage simply dressed in the Elizabethan manner. The presence of Miss Matthison in the cast — an actress admirably adapted for a company presenting classic and poetic plays — and the interest of the archaic setting and the complete and coherent text, combined to make the production well worth while, and certainly as ‘educational’ as Mr. Conried could have desired. Another production had been promised, of Renæ Fauchois’s ‘dramatic biography,’ Beethoven. But this production, postponed through lack of time for rehearsal, was ultimately made by other actors, after the season of the New Theatre company had closed. It need not, therefore, concern us here, any more than the production of A Son of the People, on February 28, by John Mason and his company.

Counting the fourth act of Brand as a separate production, and forgetting Liz, the Mother, in kindness to all concerned, we find that the New Theatre, in its first season of twenty-four weeks, has made eleven dramatic productions with its own company, four of them classics; that is, according to the definition of the literary director, plays which ‘after one hundred years are still alive and welcome to the public.' Antony and Cleopatra was n’t very warmly welcomed, but possibly Shakespeare could not wholly be blamed! Thus one-third of the repertory was classic, a just and admirable proportion, to be maintained in future seasons. Of the remaining seven plays, only two were original works by American authors, and only one of them was a treatment of American characters and conditions. This is neither a just nor an admirable proportion. Of the five modern plays that completed the first season’s repertory, three — Strife, Sister Beatrice, and Act Four of Brand — represent widely different types of style and thought, but each is the work of a man of power; each is large, significant, and was wisely added to the New Theatre’s list. Don, also, striking a lighter note, almost a farcical note, without being commonplace or cheap, added welcome spice and gayety. The Witch, as it came to the stage, was neither foreign drama nor American, and did not justify its production.

The repertory for the first season, then, especially in the light of the fact that the intrusion of grand opera prevented more than eleven productions, contained a hopeful number of significant and worthy plays, and trained the company in a wide variety of parts, including those of classic poetic drama, artificial comedy, modern realism, modern farce-comedy, and allegory. Where it was deficient, woefully deficient, was in American drama. The excuse is offered that, from two thousand manuscripts submitted, nothing better could be picked. And this excuse is probably valid, hard as the uninitiated will find it to believe. The New Theatre has not yet the prestige to attract the work of such native writers for the stage as possess real and tested talent. It cannot offer to them, even at the high rate of one hundred and fifty dollars a performance, sufficient royalties to draw their work away from the commercial theatre. And right here lies the most important field of future effort for the New Theatre.

If it is to be only a house where a resident stock company presents the classics and such European novelties as arenot likely to reach our stage through the ordinary channels, its usefulness is limited, and its purpose rather vague. Its appeal will remain to a narrow circle of patrons, and for the democratic mass of theatre-goers it will bear an academic taint. But if it can add to this appeal the appeal of vital American drama written without any thought of happy or unhappy endings, any consideration of the demands of a star performer, any need to conciliate the prejudices of ignorant or vulgar managers, or to pander to supposed popular taste, then the New Theatre will come to stand for something definite, progressive, and fine in American dramatic art, something national and truly new. We have had ‘art theatres’ before. As a flower of the field, so they flourished. We have had, also, stock companies in the past. William Warren was a wonderful example of the artist a stock company can produce. There were kings before Agamemnon. But we have never before had a theatre backed by such unlimited capital, equipped with such resources, founded upon a basis strong enough to endure the strain of financial loss, public neglect, and critical attack, until it can make for itself a new public and draw to itself the most daring and stimulating work of native playwrights.

In America to-day it is difficult to secure production for a native play with no star part. It is doubly difficult to secure production for a poetic play, or one with sectional appeal, or one that might conceivably offend this, that, or the other class. It is difficult to secure production for a ‘ literary drama ’ (which is not, to be sure, an unmixed evil!) or an intellectual farce or a satire. It is almost impossible to secure production for a tragedy. Native plays of all these descriptions the New Theatre should — and doubtless even nowwould — welcome. Probably it can never promise to the writer such financial returns as he would gain from a successful play in the commercial theatre. But, on the other hand, the native dramas the New Theatre should seek are those that are not certain of success in the commercial theatre, because they are written utterly for the delight of the author in free and frank selfexpression, with no thought of star or manager or public in mind. Have we no playwrights who create sometimes from inner impulse, for love of their craft, and not solely from motives of sordid gain? Until we have such playwrights, we shall never have a truly vital and worthy American drama; we shall, indeed, have no playwrights deserving the high title of artists.

The New Theatre, then, if it can find and produce from season to season, not one play like The Nigger, but half a dozen, — and better plays than Mr. Sheldon’s, 舒 mounting them in the best possible manner, with well-balanced and forceful acting, will come, in our largest American city, to stand for something definite and American. It will train a public to be interested in new plays for their own sake, in the art of the drama, not merely to follow the mob to the latest success; it will attract fresh and solid and daring American work, and gain a prestige which will stamp the play of a new author with the sterling mark. It is going to take time to bring this about; that we must expect, and be patient. But, in spite of the pitiful showing of native drama in the first season’s repertory, the dream is not Utopian. It can be brought to reality.

What, in working for the realization of this dream, the New Theatre must guard against with unceasing vigilance, however, is the insidious danger of immediate popularity. It will not do for the New Theatre to mount American plays no different from and no better than a dozen visible on Broadway, and then bask in the comfortable luxury of possibly full stalls. This is robbing the future to pay the present. The New Theatre must, perhaps for several years, reverse the process. It must rob the present to pay the future. It must gain for itself, at any sacrifice, a reputation not alone for an excellent company, for fine acting in the least as well as in the largest parts, but for a repertory of native dramas with a distinction of style, a daring or originality of thought, a freshness of observation, or ripeness of humor, or pungency of satire, that cannot be found except in scattered instances in the commercial theatre. Thus, and thus alone, will it build up for itself a solid reputation and an enduring public, so that it can attract an ever-renewed supply of the best work of our best dramatists, and come to occupy in time the position of leader in American theatrical affairs. Thus alone, at any rate, can it become truly a New Theatre.