There is something theatrical about the whole set-up: the beach is the pit and the bridge is the gallery; the play itself is insignificant — it’s someone from the audience who steals the show, by running from the spectacle being given. The sky becomes the curtain that hangs from above and threatens to cover and consume the scene on the stage (the lake), which by now may be viewed only as a farce.
By evoking the allegory of “life as a stage,” the artist offers a social commentary. But it is also a personal commentary — a personal experience. Everyone is the protagonist in their own play, and the painting addresses the individual actor (spectator) more than the mass of participants as a whole.
While this allegory of a theater may interfere with the purity of the expressionistic concept, and breach its innate mystery, it also provides a familiar model of human relations to help the audience understand the image. Honore de Balzac demonstrated just how cruel and unforgiving these relations can be in his aptly ironically named cycle “The Human Comedy.”