SOME STAGE EFFECTS THEIR. GROWTH AND HISTORY.

Press, Volume XLV, Issue 7158, 20 September 1888, Page 3

SOME STAGE EFFECTS THEIR. GROWTH AND HISTORY.

The use ot a panoramic background to give the illusion of motion in a railway train was flrst made by Mr Sefton P_sry in a sensational drama written by him fiv the Holborn Theatre some thirteen yeans ago. One very important detail was, however, overlooked in this scene—the revolu-

tion of the wheels. Perhaps the most complete scene of the kind was that shown by the Hanlon Lees in "Le Voyage en Suisse," where the illusion would have

been perfect had it not been for the extremely farcical nature of the accompanying action. Indeed, during the last seven or eight years (but more especially in 1881 and 1882) the panorama has been turned to excellent advantage on the boards. As an instance of the sensitiveness of the stage to outer forces it may be noted that _tr William Beverley's picturesque arrangement of dummy horses and dead bodies in the battle scene of " Michael Strc_o_y* attheAdelphi in March, ISBI, was suggested by the ultra-realistic system adopted by the French painters in the panorama of "The Charge of Balaclava," as exhibited about the same time in Leicester Square. But this ia a digression." In turning to ingenious applications on the stage of ordinary panoramic devices, our attention is first arrested by Mr_lenry Emden's novel effect in the Drury Lane pantomime of 1881-82—" Robinson Crusoe." The impression intended to be conveyed by this moving scene was that of Crusoe's voyage and shipwreck, and the

spectator was clearly given to understand that he was gazing along the decks of the vessel from amidships towards the bow. The banks of the river Thames ."were painted on two panoramas arranged in the form of the letter V, and the ill-fated vessel lav in the intervening space with her stem close up to the converging point. The simultaneous movement of each panorama backwards satisfactorily gave the illusion of navigation to the spectator. Apart from this, great interest was centred in the picturesque beauty of the panoramas, which were skilfully graduated in the painting. Very soon the smiling river developed into one broad expanse of ocean with appalling billows and a frowning sky; anon a series of tremendous cliffs loomed ahead, and then, before one could say " Jack Robinson," the vessel struck on the rocks and went slowly to

the bottom. , . , ,„ , Among the many wonderful illusions which have been given on the boards by means of the panorama, not the least noteworthy was that presented at Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A., in a new play produced there in May, 1882, called " Josiah Allen's Wife." Unfortunately the plot afforded but feeble excuse for this sensation, which was, after all, the one redeeming feature of the piece. The story of " Josiah Allen's Wife ,r was purely one of rural American life. Samantba Allen, heroine of the play (the part was performed by a starring low comedian), undertakes to carry an important letter a great distance in a very short time. At the beginning of the scene she is seen to leave her homestead and mount into an old country waggon. She takes the reins, starts the horse, and performs the entire journey at breakneck pace, without horse or waggon ever leaving the sight of the audience. This novel scene was contrived in the following manner. Running from wing to wing oefore and behind the horse ana waKßon were two panoramas representing respectively a kind of low wall and the open country. In the Intervening space an ingeniously contrived treadmiillay unseen of the audience on account of the wall in front. The two panoramas were connected with this by smoothly working machinery, and the whole was so well balanced that the trotting of the horse set everythinc; in motion, and caused country houses, farms, forests, rivers, and ravines to fly by with an artistic realism seldom attained within the walls of a theatre. Strange to say the play failed to draw, and soon dropped out of sight. More recently still frequent resort has been made here, there, and everywhere to panoramic devices on the stage. In the second act of a dramatisation of Allan Quatermain," produced at San Francisco, November 7th, 1887, a moving panorama was presented showing the perilous voyage of Quatermain's party through the subterranean canal to the land of the Sun Worshippers. "Perhaps the most serviceable application of the panorama to stage purposes is the "horizon" device in the Asphalelan system now in use for some time at the Buda-Pesth Opera House. By this clever arrangement the patriarchal system, of sky borders is completely done away, and the back of the stage made to present an unbroken surface to the eye. As the "horizon" is simply a semi-circular panorama working on rollers, it is hoped by its means to be able to produce sky effects rivalling anything that has yet been attempted in that way. The employment of steam In the theatre as a means of representing cloud matter in motion was first made some ten or twelve months ago at the Munich Opera House. All that is required is an ordinary generator behind the scenes or underneath the stage, working in connection with a series of perforated pipes running below the boards. By turning on the steam cocks a well-filled scene can at once be completely obscured from the vision of the audience. The device is simple enough in all conscience, and would be in every way perfect were it not that the hissing noise made by the escaping vapourhas a tendency to destroy the illusion. Wagner included it in his eclectic scenic Bystem, not so much from its mere gratefulness as a stage effect as from its usefulness in facilitating hia endeavours to abolish the old-fashioned methods of shifting scenery in fuU sight of the audience. Thus many of the ehangesuin " Das Rheingold," "Siegfried, and "Gotterd-mmerung* were made under cover of a cloud created by the combined aid of steam and a series of fine gauze curtains. The vapour effect was Srst made use of in England at Her Majesty's Theatre In 1880. Owing probably to the trouble of fitting up the apparatus, and the few occasions arising for its legitimate introduction in the course pf a performance, it has only been adopted in a few of our theatres. One provincial house, however, the Birmingham Theatre Royal, has laid the services of the steam curtain under contribution with considerable effect in all its pantomimes since the season of 1885-88. America, always in the van of enterprise where ingenuity is concerned, has lent herself more readily to the adoption of this device. Indeed, one or two great spectacular combinations touring the States and visiting small towns as well as large, actually travel with all the apparatus necessary for the production of the effect as part and parcel of their regular baggage. As mention has been made from time to time of gauze effects, it may not be inadvisable,ln concluding, to take into consideration some of the uses to which that material has been put in the theatre since De Loutherbourg discovered its value as a stage adjunct. In a ballet entitled "Almaviva," produced at Paris about the year 1797, a dancing lesson was given on the stage, which, to all appearances had its reflection in a screat mirror at tbe back of the scene. Tne real fact, however, was that'the lady and her teacher were provided with "doubles," who had been thoroughly rehearsed in a reversed arrangement of the same steps. The dancers and their counterparts went through their evolutions back to back, with; some considerable space between in which a gauze curtain completed the illusion. When the audience came to learn how neatly they had been deceived, the mirror dance had great vogue, and has never really disappeared from the boards since. Mr F. C. Wemyss, an English actor, who resided for many years in America, relates a quaint incident in his Memoirs as having happened under his management at the Cnestnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia. When everything was ready for the production of Rover" cany in February of the year 1828, Mr Chapman, the stajze director, and another British importation to boot, desired the manager to expend SOdols on three gauze curtains, by means of which he engaged to create a rain effect that would make the audience look around instinctively for umbrellas. This suKtcestion was only offered at the rehearsal of the scenery on the night previous to the production, and It was not without considerable hesitation that Wemyss acceded to the demand. Now Chapman's idea was sensible enough in its way, but, owing to the lateness of the hour, the effect, which was arranged to take place in a sea scene, could not bo tried, and so proved a complete fiasco. The play had gone well until the juncture when Wilder and the women were rescued from their peril by a small boat. This was tbe cue for the downpour of rain, which, in the shape of gauzes, enshrouded everything in a fog. Unfortunately, however, Chapman had quite forgotten to arrange how the rain was to clear up, and the result was that the gauze curtains, after remaining stationary for some little time, had to go back from whence they came. This contretemps so far imperilled the success of the play, that had not several stirring Incidents immediately followed, and changed the mood of the audience, its damnation would have been at once assured. The author's wrath, however,

had to b© e-tH-e-sed on fl» seco_d nigh* by the _o__ooof poor Chapman's pot effect. The frequent use of gauze curtains in modern S_akespe_rean revt-nde is well worthy ot our ait-Minn, If only, because it goes to show that t_e English^ stage had orS-bj-ted and popularised most of those deverde-fces which combine to make up tbe Wagnerian scenic eystom. The flrst noteworthy effect of tbaski-d «currednt .Sadler's Wells in May, 1881, when Ptetos Inaugurated his memorable roßimo wit* a revival of - Macbeth." In the third .scene of the opening act, where which is afterwards to rankle with fateful purpose in Macbeth's mind, ia flrst ins—lied, the observant spectator might have noticed what appeared to be a tong narrow strip of dark- sand lying before the three witches. This was in reality.a carefully-folded gattze curtain mado in gradually increasing thick—esses and drawn slowly upwards towards the close lof scene by fine cords which were rcn- | dered invisible by the dimness of the light. The movement at first was barely perceptible, but soon the figures of the witches seemed to be gradually melting into thin air, until at last they vanished altogether from sight without stirring hand or foot. Shakespeare's plays do hot in every instance lend themselves equally well to modern methods ot stage mounting; but, in this case, the imagln a—on received material assistance from what was really nothing better than a sort of primitive conjuring trick. Charles Kean, in reviving the same tragedy at the Pri—cess's Theatre in February, 1853, took a leaf out of Phelp's book by enveloping the witches in gauze every time they appeared. Nay, he went further than this, and paved tha way for Wagner, by making all his changes of scenery behind curtains of tha diaphanous material and imparting to each transition thedre_mlike effect of a dissolving view. Indeed, the partly contemporaneousregimes of Phelpsand Charles Kean were reciprocally influenced by one another in a manner which has proved very salutary for stage art. Thus, when Phelps, revived " The Midsummer Night's Dream " in October, 1853, he. too, indulged greatly in these harmonious changes of scene in which the scene-shlfter'a personality waa not, aa of old, obtruded upon the spectator, j But the Sadler's Wells manager went' beyond that, and achieved an effect too poetical in its nature for the eminently realistic mind of Charles Kean. The better to distinguish between the portions ot theplay which passed in the regions of fact oa. the one hand and of fancy on tbe other,* the fairy scenes were shown through a' curtain of green gauze, which shed itmisty tone over everything, and subdued,., as Professor Morley has well said, "the flesh and blood of the actors into eomothino; more nearly resembling dream' figures." It was a feather in Phelpa'acap that the lights were so admirably arranged, that old theatrical hands could barely succeed in divining how the effect waa" produced. An inversion of the old Sadler's i Wells vanishing trick, as introduced by Phelps into his revival of. "Macbeth, was shown by Mr Irving when the revised, edition of "Faust" was first performed at; the Lyceum, on Monday, November 15, ■ 1886. Play-goers will readily call to mind, ; that the transition from the newly added, scene of the Witches' Kitchen to the heavy set of the Lorenz Plats- occurred undoi*coverof a series of gauzes, representing skyey vapour which floated down in front, and passed through the stage. The immediate source of this effect was undoubtedly the Wagnerian music dramas. Here, too, the mere scenic adjuncts of the theatre play their part In showing that art is of no country. The Wagnerian seenie system owes much of tits completeness to> the improvements effected on our stags about tne middle of the present century. It is not surprising that Wagner, having collected these scattered devices Atad systematised them, should now be possHssing an influence on the precise source from which his inspiration was mainly derived. In viewing the relationship of the goods and chattels of the playhouse to its literary externals one thing at least is well assured: Shakespeare himself would nob have derided the aids to the imagination which many of our stage appliances now afford.— -Gentleman's Magazine.