LIGHTING OF THE CHRISTMAS TREE
PRODUCING THE PLAY
The beautiful Swedish national costumes should be used for this play. Any good reference book on the costumes of various nations and many books about travel in Sweden will furnish illustrations that may be copied, varying the colors when necessary to produce a harmonious relation with one another. Since this is a modern play, only the servants, who are, of course, peasants, would be likely to wear these costumes on ordinary occasions, but members of the upper classes sometimes assume them for the festivities of the Christmas season. We may, therefore, take advantage of this possibility, to increase the picturesqueness of our play by using the colorful Swedish dress for all the characters.
A real Swedish interior, carefully reproduced from trustworthy illustrations, would also be effective. Not all the furniture found in any illustration should, of course, be used for the stage setting. A few pieces only should be chosen, with a view to composing without unnecessary “clutter” into a beautiful and characteristically Swedish whole.
The lines of this play are exceptionally simple in their phrasing and yet so full of meaning that no word or syllable should be lost by the audience. An intelligent, sympathetic rendering of each speech is especially important, but clear-cut enunciation and a beautiful quality of voice are also very desirable, particularly for Olga, Liljekrona and the two children.
Olga is obviously the very heart of this play. She makes a charming picture with the little boys over the Christmas tree, the candle-lighting in the windows, and the story of the Christ-Child’s wanderings. Her tender love for her home and her instinctive fear of any influence which may tend to lower its ideals or to draw Liljekrona away from it, must be so clearly brought out in the acting (as it is in the lines) that the audience will understand and even partially sympathize with her anxiety to be rid of the drunken vagrant, Ruster.
This anxiety is sharpened by the approach of the Christmas season, which she feels should be celebrated as a beautiful home festival, just by themselves. But even as Olga carries her point and Ruster is about to leave the house, she is assailed by remorse for the selfish impulse to protect her home at the unfortunate old man’s expense. This should be clearly indicated in the tone and manner with which she asks Liljekrona to give Ruster something extra for Christmas and to lend him his fur coat.
The departure of Ruster ends the first stage of the play’s action, in which Olga has attempted to secure happiness for herself and her household by the refusal of her hospitality to some one in sore need of it. Ruster had seemed to her a discordant element when present, but his absence seems to bring ten-fold more unhappiness. All the Christmas preparations go wrong. Sigurd’s cookie-dough figure of the Christ-Child “doesn’t look like anything,” the E string of Liljekrona’s fiddle has snapped and he has no new one, Torstein has gone to drive Ruster and they cannot dance without him, the sheaves for the sparrows have been forgotten, and finally Liljekrona withdraws to his own room to play the stormy music which Olga understands as a portent of his return to the old life of wandering.
In this section of the play, Liljekrona controls the action and should dominate the scene. Olga attempts, in vain, to infuse joy into the Christmas observances. Liljekrona’s bitterly self-reproachful speech about the lonely and the hungry people,—“When they pass so close as to touch our sleeve,—we do not see them, we do not stop them, but let them plod their path alone,”—shows that he will no longer deceive himself as to the heartlessness of their own action. And when he says—“Your candles are too late. The door is closed. The voice is gone,”—Olga sees that on the eve of Christmas and in the name of its fitting observance, she has betrayed its very spirit of hospitality and kindness.
The sound of the music from Liljekrona’s room, full of the old, wild passion for the open road, brings to Olga realization of the price she must pay for this mistake, “if God does not work a miracle in the night.” Her intense suffering at this point marks the crucial moment in the play and must be conveyed by action and facial expression as well as by a poignant rendering of the lines. The moment must be held perceptibly, after she sinks into her chair, until the sound of sleighbells, at first far off and gradually approaching, breaks the spell.
The bells usher in the third stage of the action, which is markedly different in feeling-tone from the other two. Instead of the fear and the cloaked unkindness of the first scene and the growing self-reproach of the second, we have the exaltation of complete surrender to generous impulse. Olga’s joy in the “miracle” which she so little deserved or expected must shine from her face and from every word and action, as soon as she realizes that Ruster has indeed returned and she has a chance to repair the wrong she has done. Her inspiration to ask Ruster to look after the children while she is out of the room should be so acted as to show that there is something behind her simple request. She will prove her gratitude for this chance to atone, by trusting her dearest treasures to the man she had feared to have remain in the house with them.
The scene of the children with Ruster gives the actor an opportunity to show the battered, dissipated old man, afraid of the innocent eyes of the children, but gradually put at his ease by their complete unconsciousness and their real interest in the one thing he knows,—flute-playing. Ruster’s complete collapse when the children’s absorption in reading allows him to realize his own desolate situation, and Olga’s offer to make him their tutor, need only be played with entire simplicity and sincerity by both actors, to bring tears to the eyes of many people in the audience.
Olga’s explanation to Liljekrona of her plans for Ruster and why she is taking this great risk, bring her once more into a position of leadership. This is emphasized by the action, as first Liljekrona, then the children and finally Ruster, kiss Olga’s hand, while her curtain speech to Ruster gives the needed touch of humility and graciousness to her exaltation.
The curtain should be raised quickly after it has been lowered, so as to make the tableau of the lighting of the tree seem, as it is, an essential part of the play.
GERTRUDE BUCK.