Theatre

The Manhattan art world was much concerned with the theatre last week. At the new Sidney Ross Gallery an imposing show of the "Theatre in Art" was held for the benefit of the Actors Fund. It was an important collection. Its sponsors assembled portraits of actors, back stage sketches, scenes of circuses, vaudeville, burlesque and grand opera by such potent names as Thomas Benton, Guy Pene du Bois, Alexander Brook, Antonio Salemme. Critics applauded.

In other parts of town, other galleries honored two of the U. S. drama's ablest decorators: tousle-haired Robert Edmond Jones at the Bourgeois Galleries, swart Jo Mielziner at Marie Sterner's.

Not excepting Norman Bel-Geddes, a genius whose accent usually obscures the individuality of the playwrights he stages, Robert Edmond ("Bobby") Jones is the ablest designer of the U. S. theatre. Audiences will long recall his skillful settings for The Green Pastures, Mourning Becomes Electro, The Emperor Jones and a hundred other plays, without having been distracted from the quality of the plays themselves. Robert Edmond Jones, at 28, made a sensation with sets and costumes he designed for Granville Barker's pro duction of The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife. Later he became associated with Arthur Hopkins. Now, at 44, he calls his settings "not pictures, but images. . . ." But this solid knowledge of good theatre makes Jones's designs less effective on a gallery wall than on a stage. At one time Decorator Jones had a Christlike beard and a nice talent in portrait painting. He sacrificed whiskers and easel as his position in the theatre became more secure. What he had to show last week were frankly working drawings.

Slightly less potent in the theatre, more effective in an art gallery was the exhibition of young Jo Mielziner (pronounced Melzeener). Born in Paris 31 years ago, Jo Mielziner was set to drawing by his artist father almost as soon as he could walk. In the U. S. he studied in the Art Students' League of New York and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He won the Cresson scholarship two years in succession, studied painting in Vienna in 1919-20 when Austria was falling to pieces. Director Max Reinhardt was doing magnificent things on the stage of the Bourg Theatre. After one season in Detroit, Jo Mielziner was taken up by the New York Theatre Guild. Since then he has designed sets for 56 productions, a list including such memorable and diverse productions as The Guardsman, The Wild Duck, Strange Interlude, Street Scene, first, second and third Little Shows, The Barretts of Wimpale Street, Of Thee I Sing, Bloodstream (see p. 45). More important to last week's exhibition was the fact that Jo Mielziner is not only a sound stage designer but also a facile, amusing, often brilliant draughts man. Robert Edmond Jones's completed sets are generally more effective than his sketches. Jo Mielziner's seldom are. In addition he has found time between building scale models, carpenter's blue prints, electricians' light plots, laying out color schemes, to make a number of brilliant back stage sketches. One of these, a large water color of a lean, complacent French clown drawing on a huge pair of rose-colored gloves, would be worthy of attention if its author did not know the difference between a fly loft and a fire hydrant.

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