ABSTRACT
The need for Craig's reforms is still evident, in some ways perhaps more so than even in 1900. Many of the devices Craig's sketches call for, which were unavailable to him at the time, are now standard stage equipment. The sophisticated lighting effects, which he evolved in his early productions and continued to explore throughout his life, have become routine. However, at least in the commercial theater this modern technology continues to be used to portray a nineteenth-century mindset. Naturalistic stage pictures are still the norm on Broadway or in the West end, and the lavishly illusionist spectacles of the Musical in the 1990s is a striking example. The fall of a city and escape by helicopter, or magical journeys through underground waterways and a crashing chandelier would have fitted perfectly into the old Lyceum repertoire - indeed the nineteenthcentury theatrical approach is explicit in many of these Musicals, with Miss Saigon being based on Puccini's Madame Butterfly, or Andrew Lloyd-Webber transcribing a play from the 1880s for Phantom of the Opera. Leaving aside the architectural and monumental specifics of Craig's mechanized stage, his call for a completely new style of theater remains a challenge to find appropriate uses for an artistic medium that has been transformed by the fallout of progress.
