David Belasco: Naturalism in the American Theatre by Lise-Lone Marker (review)

Book Reviews • DAVID BELASCO: NATURALISM IN THE AMERICAN THEATRE, by Lise-Lone Marker. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975. xiv & 248 pp. $12.00. Lise-Lone Marker's study of Belasco's "vision and method" reminds us forcefully of Belasco's great importance as the first major director of the American theatre. By her careful research in promptbooks, typescripts, scenic photographs, and press books, she permits Belasco to speak fully of the function of the director , the art of the actor, and especially of his great love, the reproduction of nature through facsimile settings and atmospheric lighting. She is also able to take us directly into the workshop of this extraordinary craftsman to observe his creation of four representative productions: Sweet Kitty Bellairs, a costume-society drama, The Girl ofthe Golden West, a frontier drama, The Easiest Way, a sociological drama, and The Merchant of Venice, his only Shakespearean production. Rich in primary sources, well written and well organized, her study supports effectively the words of Walter Prichard Eaton with which she introduces her book: "In most things that concern bringing a drama to life on the stage, he [Belasco] was a pioneer and perfecter; he taught our crude theatre the lesson of detailed discipline; he brought to it mood and atmosphere and sensuous beauty; above all, he showed us that to achieve final effectiveness some guiding intelligence must rule a theatre. He taught us how to unify the diversified arts of the modern playhouse and make them one" (p. 5). What one enjoys and appreciates greatly in this book is the knowledgeable use of detail. Professor Marker draws on her sources to describe and to analyze various facets of Belasco's work. For the Passion Play, staged early in his career and starring James O'Neill, she tells of his use of innovative lighting (he removed footlights and strung locomotive bull's-eye lanterns from the balcony) and of his picturesque groupings (he claimed to have a hundred mothers on the stage with babes in arms for the "Massacre of the Innocents"). For the famous snow storm of The Girl ofthe Golden West, she reports from the promptbook just where the wind machine and the blowers were located; how the raging storm "required 101 102 BOOK REVIEWS three rows of 'snow bags' in the flies filled with salt as well as two boxes of rock salt for the sleet accumulation on the window," and how the "air tanks" produced shrieks of wind while the whole snowy scene lit in cold blue tones could be transformed as backdrops were changed. To operate this complex machinery thirty-two trained stage hands were required. They formed, in the words of the critic William Winter, "a sort of mechanical orchestra, directed by a centrally placed conductor who was visible from the special station of each worker" (p. 154). She gives a vivid sense of Belasco's "massive onslaught of crushing detail" in the famous theatrical rooming house in The Easiest Way and also shows how all the local color was used by the actors to provide lively stage business. For The Merchant of Venice she points out how Belasco interpolated a cinematic type of sequence to show Shylock searching for Jessica and his ducats within and without his house. These are only a few of the rich recreations of Belasco's scenic techniques in the book. Along with them she offers fascinating close analyses of Belasco's "orchestration of the total stage picture" through grouping, costuming, rhythmic patterns, music, and lighting. Professor Marker, however, means to go beyond documentation and celebration of Belasco as the "master dramatic director of the American stage." She offers a "reappraisal" of his work by exploring his role as "America's prinipal exponent of naturalism in the theatre." In addition she tries to rescue him from the ignominy heaped upon him by exponents of the "New Stagecraft" by showing that in some ways he anticipated their own approach to the "art of the theatre." She is less successful in these larger and more original aims, but the effort is a worthy one and raises fascinating questions about the relationship of form and content and the role of theatre as a...