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But recently even Mr. Belasco has been departing a little from this extreme accuracy of scenic portrayal. When, for example, he produced ".Polly With a Past," he turned over the designing of the second act to Herman Tappe, the milliner, who presented a very charming collection of feminine things in light blue which must have made every woman in the audience who possessed an unfurnished boudoir desirous of imitating it. Unfortunately, the set was supposed to represent a bachelor's apartment!
The methods of the real moderns of the stage are quite different. I am referring now to such producers as Mr. Arthur Hopkins and to such groups as The Washington Square Players of a few years ago and the present Theatre Guild. Their problems of stage decoration are turned over to one or another decorator who studies the text of the play and then attempts to produce a scenic effect which will embody the spirit of the text rather than accurately portray the scene called for by the author. For example, the first act of 41 Good Gracious Annabelle " calls for a hotel lobby. Mr. Belasco, if he had produced this play, would no doubt have given us an interior which would recall the lobbies of a dozen hotels in New York and elsewhere, possibly with marbleized columns and gilt capitals, an office with a cash register and a bookkeeper's cage, several clerks busily engaged, hall
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92INTERIOR DECORATING
boys ambling to and fro and velour upholstered armchairs. Mr. Robert E. Jones produced for Mr. Hopkins an absolutely bare stage hung with neutral-colored draperies and containing a few pieces of my own willow furniture. Personally I do not think that this was among the most successful of Mr. Jones' generally very beautiful settings, but I am not aware that any of the audience failed to enjoy the play because of the extremely unrealistic character of this background.
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