and the curious outlines of woods and rocks arise before one. And in the painting-room a strong smell of paste begins to pervade the whole place, and old-time workmen, who have been connected with the theatre for thirty years or more, with funny little pork-pie caps on their old heads, and long pipes in their mouths, begin to paint “some more of that there rotten Cubistic muck”—as one old veteran puts it, “If only Raphael were to see us now.” You see, things are not what they were thirty years ago, when the painting-room of a theatre was almost a kind of Academy of Fine Arts. Nowadays the paint is merely poured on to the canvas straight out of a bucket, just to get things done quickly, and is spread with a broom; and, lo and behold, from this labour and materials one has charming brocade or a shady wood. Modernism has burst into the theatre with its seven-league boots, and the delicate handiwork of the dear old days is now a thing of the past; most of the painting is now done by means of lighting. Quantity, not
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