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In the field of musical comedy this is especially possible, as the settings and costumes are there chiefly to promote the sensuous enjoyment of the audience. Such a production as that of the Greenwich Village Follies last year seems to me magnificently suited to this end. In this show, Mr. Robert Locher has given us thrill after thrill of superb loveliness and note after note of delightful surprise, particularly in his creation of novel and colorful costumes. On the other hand, Mr. Joseph Urban, the much praised, seems to me in such things as the Ziegfeld Frolic to fall far short of the possibilities of the occasion, and his effects, in this as elsewhere, appear quite commonplace.
What a tremendous difference there is between any one of these productions and any production of twenty or thirty years ago! What an infinite dissimilarity in the approach of both the manager and the designer! At that time, for the average production any old junky scenery that could be found in the storehouse and repainted, or, better still, left as it was, and any old furniture that could be picked up at the second-hand shops Or rented for a week or two until the play became a determined success, or a definite failure, was deemed more than satisfactory. For the great productions, such as some of those which Mansfield gave, remarkable
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new scenes were ordered, but these made up in elaborateness what they lacked in real beauty, and the audience delighted in them. The impetus to the change from that time to this has not, unfortunately, been a native American product. Wide-awake producers, and artists who have taken up stage designing, have been quick to respond to European influences. The onslaughts against the theatre of the last generation made every three months by Gordon Craig in "The Mask" have been read here and there in this country and have been fruitful of results.
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