A PRODUCER OF PLAYS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1132, 20 May 1911, Page 11

A PRODUCER OF PLAYS.

. EEJANE ON MI?S. FISKE. ■ "As a producer of plays," said Mndarao Rejane, thu, great, French actress, "Mts. Fiskc has no superior in Europe." And i fellow-countryman writes of her:—".Airs. I'i'ske, who seems to some people curiously limited as an actress, is yet acknowledged by all as one of the leaders of fhe American stage,'her productions of plays never failing to command nnflagginsr attention. Mrsl Fiske is both actress and stage manager, exceptionally brilliant, subtle, and incisive, and the. two faculties are perfectly combined in • the final representation of the play. The secret of her leadership is the breadth, the many-sidedness of her equipment. She was the first to make ■ Ibsen commercially successful in America, because she was the first to take him out of the hands of those zealous, half-baked disciples who babble of a mysterious culture and symbolism, and to play him as a keen, human, and theatrically effective dramatist. Her triumphant stage management helped to this, of course; but her own acting, keen, definite, restrained, ' naturalistic,' but raver neglectful of the- theatrical 'points' was an even larger factor."