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The whole system was the result of the bad taste and carelessness with respect to stage settings that prevailed everywhere twenty-five or thirty years ago and which remained in many theatres until very recently, and still does in many small town theatres. The realistic method of presenting interiors especially is still prevalent, and I suppose the great master of this form is Mr. Belasco. His achievement has been the production of scenes which are exactly like what they are supposed to represent in real life, with many details carried out so accurately that the old ladies of the audience can gasp at their pleasurable recognition. One remembers distinctly the regular wave of surprise which nightly passed over the audience at one production a few years ago in which a Childs' Restaurant was represented. A similar expression of appreciation, though not of recollection, is to be heard at his present performance of " Deburau," when the interior of an old French theatre is shown, with its benches in the pit, its boxes in the balcony and its stage at the back of the real stage. The other theatrical managers have proceeded along similar lines with a few exceptions, although they have not taken the same trouble or gone to so great expense. Thus in the chief interior scene of " The Return of Peter Grimm," Mr. Belasco produced a collection of furniture which was true to the period, but which so crowded the room that it is surprising that Mr. Warfield never tripped over any of it. Mrs. Fiske, on the other hand, as, for instance, in " The Highroad " a few years ago, which contained
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STAGE SETTINGS91
an Italian Renaissance interior which was very much praised, produced a very correct and rather empty room containing several good examples of antique furniture and several copies of good old sixteenth century pictures.
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