CONTEMPORARY THEATRE REVIEW AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL Editor in Chief Franc Chamberlain., Nene College, Northampton, UK Editorial Board Leon Gitelman (Russia)Malcolm Knight (UK)Jacques Lecoq (France) Judith Malina (USA)Neville Shulman (UK)Anatoly M.Smeliansky (Russia)Maria Delgado (UK)
Aims and Scope Contemporary Theatre Review is an international journal concerned with all aspects of theatre—from text-based drama and current developments worldwide, to work of an interdisciplinary or cross-cultural nature. The journal includes primary material, produc tion notes, documents and interviews as well as research. Contemporary Theatre Review complements the companion Contemporary Theatre Studies book series. Notes for contributors can be found at the back of the journal. © 1997 OPA (Overseas Pubhshers Association) Amsterdam B.V. Published in The Netherlands by Harwood Academic Publishers, a member of The Gordon and Breach Publishing Group. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under national laws or under the photocopy license described below, no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system of any nature, without the advance written permission of the Publisher. World Wide Web Addresses Additional information is also available through the Publisher’s web home page site at http://www.gbhap.com. Full text on-line access and electronic author submissions may also be available. Editorial enquiries by e-mail: <
[email protected]>. Ordering Information Four issues per volume. Subscription are renewed on an annual basis. 1997 Volume(s): 6–8 Orders may be placed with your usual supplier or at one of the addresses shown below. Journal subscriptions are sold on a per volume basis only. Claims for nonreceipt of issues will be honored if made within three months of publication of the issue. See Publication Schedule Information. Subscriptions are available for microform editions; details will be furnished upon request.
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Obituary
Rufus Collins, New York 16–08–1935-Amsterdam 04–11–1996 Rufus Collins, founder, director, mentor, teacher and student in the United States, Rome, London, Dublin, Bangladesh, Flanders, Holland and Surinam, was born in Harlem, New York. He began to study dance at the age of four. When he was eleven, he was a granted a scholarship to the prestigious American School of Ballet which he refused. At the age of twenty Rufus focussed his attention on theatre. He studied drama at New York’s Circle in the Square and then joined forces with the anarchist theatre commune The Living Theatre under the artistic guidance of Judith Malina and Julian Beck. At the end of the sixties the group moved to Europe and it was during this time that Rufus first visited Amsterdam. It was to become the city where he, in his own words, ‘always felt happiest’. After The Living Theatre dissolved Rufus first settled in London where he directed the musicals Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar. In 1983 he permanently moved to Amsterdam after a short stay in Belgium where he was director and choreographer at The Royal Ballet of Flanders. In Amsterdam he directed The Kingdom, a full scale opera with a cast of forty young amateurs of colour. This opera, about the black independence movement in Haiti, was to become characteristic for his body of work. Time and again his productions would deal with racism and its consequences. Rufus Collins was an inspired pioneer, a lion who always kept fighting for the recognition of black theatre. His vision was to create the sort of theatre that would reflect the character of Amsterdam. He was an explosive director who was constantly filled with ideas. Until the end Rufus remained an inspiration for DNA and the people in his
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life. His legacy is vast but perhaps the most important lesson that he has taught his students is that when all is said and done, there is nothing that counts but the work. He died in Amsterdam on the 4th of November 1996. He is survived by his sister, Georgia Collins. Georgia Collins
MOLIERE TODAY −1
Contents
Introduction Michael Spingler
1
Antoine Vitez Re-staging Molière for the 1978 Avignon Festival, an Interview with Nada Strancar and Didier Sandre Jean-Michel Charles Lanskin
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Interpretation by Design: A Tale of Two Misanthropes Scott T.Cummings
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Molière’s Misanthrope: A Critique and Reluctant Defense of Courtly life Sylvie Romanowski
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Notes on Contributors
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Index
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Contemporary Theatre Review 1997, Vol. 6, Part 1, pp. 1–11 Reprints available directly from the publisher Photocopying permitted by license only
© 1997 OPA (Overseas Publishers Association) Amsterdam B.V. Published in The Netherlands by Harwood Academic Publishers Transferred to Digital Printing 2004
Introduction Michael Spingler
The long established refusal on the part of academic critics to recognize the primacy of farce in Molière’s theatre is contradicted by wide-spread theatrical practice. Theatre artists routinely transgress the norms established by traditional scholarship which aims to attenuate Molière’s unruliness by encompassing him within the frame of classical literature. Such a critical project stems, at least in part, from a fear of the disruptive energies of farce. Reflecting critically on questions of production, on the other hand, both restores farce to its central place in Molière’s theatre and recovers original meanings and their links with contemporary concerns. KEY WORDS: Molière, Theatrical production, Farce, Mise-enscène, Classical literature, Popular theatre. Introduction The essays that follow all deal in their various ways with limits, limits which are imposed and respected or violated and broken. The reader will encounter the question of transgression both as a subject within Molière’s plays and as a dilemma confronting Molière’s critics and interpreters. It is the latter problem that I want to address here. More so than Shakespeare, Molière has been surrounded by a network of institutional taboos which sets strict conditions concerning what can be said about the playwright and his plays. Certain notions
2 MICHAEL SPINGLER
concerning Molière’s status as an author who belongs in the Pantheon of high culture and classical literature are so powerful that they have become sacrosanct and inviolate dogmas. Among these none is so tenacious as the persistent view that Molière forsook farce when he wrote his great comedies and only “returned” to it (for reasons which are never fully explained) later in his career. Much of the bias against farce comes to us from the nineteenth century. Just as 18th and early 19th century legislation and censorship of theatre attempted at various moments to stifle the voice of popular theatre by limiting it to pantomime, so did institutional criticism of the 19th century strive to rob Molière of one of his voices, that of the farceur. Generations of critics have framed and tamed the playwright-director-actor into a “classic”, that is a moderate champion of solid bourgeois common sense, order, and reasonableness. Richard Schechner observes in Performance Theory that because performance is usually marginal, subjective, and therefore dangerous, it is often hemmed in by conventions and frames which, he says, are ways of making the places, the participants, and the events of performance somehow safe (1988, xiv). From this point of view the efforts of traditional criticism to tame Molière can be seen as exemplary of a culture’s efforts to suppress certain forms of theatre and performance as base, vulgar, unruly, and ultimately frightening. As Jarry remarked about farce, what makes little children laugh frightens grow-ups. The disruptive, unruly energies of popular theatre may lie behind the apparent fear of many critics, even today, to allow farce in Molière’s serious plays. The inappropriate intrusion of farce into the arranged and governed space of high comedy is seen to be intolerably threatening. Alfred Simon identifies the problem when he describes a recurrent critical reluctance to allow Molière the irregularities of Shakespeare: “Ce qui parait évident et naturel chez Shakespeare surprend et choque dans une oeuvre que l’on veut à tout prix soumettre à l’ésthétique classique. ‘What appears understandable and natural in Shakespeare surprises and shocks when it appears in a work which must at any price be made to conform to the classical aesthetic’ (314, my translation). Thus Alfred Bermel, in a recent study, warns us concerning Tartuffe of the dangers of “pushing ridicule too hard, even for the play’s farcical sequences (168)”. What Professor Bermel would
INTRODUCTION 3
caution us against is the dangers of excess, of going beyond a line, of pushing something to and beyond the limit. He implicitly recognizes the subversive power of farce and tries to steer us from it. This critical tradition typically holds that a reasonable and bien pensant Molière was against excess and attacked it in his plays. The goal of such criticism seems to be to avoid any of the dangers which may be present in his theatre. The lesson is: Don’t push Molière too hard. Many directors and actors, however, as Nada Strancar and Didier Sandre in their interview in this issue with Jean-Michel Lanskin make clear, are not terribly interested in safety and are certainly not afraid of excess. As Strancar says about Antoine Vitez, “Antoine did not want the actors nor the characters to be proper. He wanted them to go to the end of their passion”. For Vitez it was precisely farce which presented the way out from the restrictive frame of a doctrinaire classicism into a theatre of extremes where, as Didier Sandre says in the same interview, directors and actors could let “their own subjectivity, their imaginative delirium find its way”. Sandre explains that “Antoine wanted us to use physically all the heritage from farce, the theatre of mistakes, the comical, burlesque theatre…a physical heritage that was at variance with the literary tradition inherited from the nineteenth century.” As Olivier-René Veillon observes, “Pour Vitez, comme pour Molière…la farce est la vérité ultime du théâtre, la réduction a l’essentiel, au plus élémentaire, au plus simple, au plus grossier; la concentration sur scène de situations archétypales, irréductibles, à partir desquelles se fonde tout exercice de théâtre. Je dis bien réduction et non ébauche ou point de départ car la farce n’a jamais été cela pour Molière sinon dans les manuels scolaires”. ‘For Vitez, as for Molière, farce is theatre’s ultimate truth, its reduction to essentials, to what is most simple and gross, the concentration upon the stage of irreducible archetypal situations which are the foundation of all theatrical activity. I said reduction and not sketch or departure point, for farce has never been that for Molière except in school books.’ (224, my translation) That something grossier and rough can be a positive quality in a playwright, a quality to be sought out and embraced, is an idea that is perhaps more readily entertained by theatre artists than by scholars and critics. Many of us have deeply ingrained notions of propriety. and respectability in matters of scholarship which result in a
4 MICHAEL SPINGLER
reluctance to acknowledge the insights and ideas of theatre artists. Indeed, it is generally around the notion of excess, of vulgarity, of violence and transgression that the thinking of people working in theatre so often diverges sharply from people working in universities. So, those artists, critics and theorists who acknowledge the primacy of theatrical practice, the daily business of getting the play on the stage, tend to accord to farce a primacy which many scholars would deny. It is time for those of us who teach literature in the Academy to give more consideration to the imaginative and intellectual work of directors, actors, and designers. That is why this collection, in keeping with the goal of Contemporary Theatre Review to encourage research which bridges the gap between the practice and the theory of theatre, focuses on Molière’s theatre as works to be performed as well as texts to be read. I want to stress here that the goal of this issue is not to undermine or dismiss academic scholarship but to enlarge its horizons by including the thinking and insights of actors, directors, and designers. The essays by our university contributors represent meticulous and responsible scholarship in the true sense of the term. However, they, in no way stand in opposition to the view of Molière presented by Didier Sandre, Nada Strancar, or Scott Cummings who are primarily interested in what happens when Molière is staged. The contributors all, in various degrees, take into consideration the “scenic writing” which Laurence Romero reminds us is so essential to our study of theatre. By concentrating on questions of production the studies collected here make a strong case that Molière’s use of popular conventions and practices throughout his plays, and especially in the serious works, may be a theatrical strategy of aesthetic and social criticism which undermines classical doctrine and practice. To my mind, it should be a given that in theatre production each artist brings his or her views to the work in such a way that each time a play is produced it becomes a new work. As Nada Strancar says, “There is no single rendition of a play, no one truth”. In that spirit the essays that follow consider the work of a considerable number of directors, some extremely celebrated and others less known but no less important, as texts which enjoy a status equal to that of the written script. By taking into account problems and questions of production, the essays suggest that, in contrast to the classical author
INTRODUCTION 5
frozen within the frame of serious literature, there is another Molière that we must recuperate, the one that Baudelaire understood sympathetically, instinctively, and idiosyncratically when, in “Le Vieux Saltimbanque”, he spoke of the “comique solide et lourd de Molière” (1987, 100). Baudelaire, who knew a thing or two about popular culture, placed Molière among the clowns, barkers, and saltimbanques of a Paris fair rather than in the Pantheon of great writers. It strikes me that is the Molière that Nada Strancar and Didier Sandre talk about when they refer to Vitez’s efforts to recuperate a physical Molière, one grounded in the burlesque of the fabliaux and the commedia and at odds with the literary tradition of parlor theatre inherited from the 19th century. This is a Molière where Célimène and Arsinoé get into a brawl and tear at each other’s hair. Vulgar? Offensive? Let us hope so. Because if what we have is a Molière who doesn’t offend anyone, who is mild and anodyne, then we can consign him to the tranquilizing fare that we get on sitcoms. Instead let us consider a production of Tartuffe in which, as Nada Strancar suggests, Tartuffe tries to rape Elmire. The word is freighted and threatening and many of us would prefer to avoid it. To push things, further, the scene (Act IV, 5, often avoided by critics in favor of its twin, Act III, 3), may not be an “attenuated farce” as Jacques Guicharnaud has argued (152) but, instead, a rough and tumble sexual farce of the lowest order.1 Moreover, as Strancar also hints, Orgon may have hidden under the table precisely in order to watch Tartuffe at work. The recurrence within the play of the notion of “tout voir” suggests that long before contemporary psychoanalytic theory Molière was thinking in complex ways about voyeurism and the power of the look. The scene, as Strancar sees it, with its dark hints of suffering and distress within a broadly comic context confronts us with a theatre which is dangerous precisely because it is farcical. A possible refuge within conventional scholarship might be to dismiss Strancar’s assertions as gratuitous extrapolations, with no basis in theoretical method or conceptual framing and to reject them as a typically theatrical and consequently disrespectful misreading of the text. Yet,
1 See my “The King’s Play: Censorship and the Politics of Performance in Molière’s Tartuffe”. Comparative Drama, Winter, 1984, 247–248.
6 MICHAEL SPINGLER
before dismissing her “non-scholarly” view of the play we would do well to have some respect for the experience of an actress who has an empathetic understanding for the character who has been backed up to the table and is now on her back desperately fighting off Tartuffe.2 The insights that are born of the actor’s experience have their legitimate place within the criticism and research in theatre and we risk missing essential levels of meaning if we fail to take them into account. And this is true for designers as well. Scott Cummings provides us with a model of the type of inquiry into Molière that can come from production criticism. His “review essay” attempts to create a bridge between the kind of daily play reviewing which appears in newspapers and the more sustained critical reflection which appears in professional journals.3 In his article on two productions of Le Misanthrope by Irene Lewis and Mary Robinson he ponders how meaning can be made and perceived through theatre design and argues that such elements of staging as sets, lights, and costume are every bit as important as bearers of meaning as is the written text. For many of us this is old news but nonetheless it seems that it must be repeated over and over to ces messieurs de l’académie. By reflecting on the possible meanings made through design, Cummings has identified a range of concerns and issues revolving around erotic identify as a reflection of social life. In particular he shows how visual design refocuses the play and makes Célimène and her desires (and, in Allen Moyer’s design for Mary Robinson’s production, her bed) the center of our attention. The productions feature sexy Célimènes who dress and undress in full view of the audience and romp with Acaste and Clitandre to the undoubted scandal of Alceste and Arsinoé, and, quite probably, a few spectators as well. Theatre’s comic destiny is to offend. Thus a staging rather than a reading of the play uncovers an erotic world whose reflective surfaces reveal Célimène to be an actress rather than a character; she is a performer who is responsible for the creation of her own image. She may be the object of other’s looks and desires but the productions Cummings discusses suggest
2
Although Nada Strancar did not play Elmire in Vitez’s production this fact does not effect the importance of her views on Elmire’s dilemma since these views are based on an actress’ experience and memory of the stage.
INTRODUCTION 7
that she derives a considerable amount of power and pleasure from her situation. Cummings’ account of the two productions reminds us that erotic power is a force, both threatening and frightening, that is deeply intertwined with the politics of social life. In his account of them, both productions provide a field where feminist theories involving looks and desires can be engaged and debated. Cummings’ study of the productions also shows how the marginalization of Alceste in a penthouse world of calculated pleasure in Robinson’s mise-en-scène connects with the theme of commodity fetishism in Lewis’ staging where a world of mechanical production, of pieces stamped out serially from the same mold, reduces the integrity of the individual to something fake.4 The question then becomes one concerning what Alceste can accomplish in an erotic funhouse. His “tragedy” may be that there is no place for him to be “tragic” in Célimène’s world of comic replication. Alceste has quite simply got his plays mixed up and has walked on to the wrong stage. The question of a marginalized Alceste, out of place and out of synch, is approached from a different angle by Sylvie Romanowski who sees the court/salon as the setting for the play’s central concern which is that of cultural change. Cultural change generally involves redefining and resetting norms and limits; it is a process which, to many, is unsettling and frightening. Romanowski’s thorough and provocative account of court etiquette suggests a range of ways in which Molière’s concerns touch upon dilemmas which vex our own time, not the least of which is how to establish normative boundaries for communities while at the same time allowing space for divergence and dissent. In The Misanthrope’s unstable world of mutating values and shifting social strata, Alceste’s rebellion (and Romanowski cites Robert Falls’ Goodman Theater production where a “beat” Alceste sulks to one side in a rumpled raincoat) is but one element in a complex dynamic of social and cultural transformations in which both 3
There are to be sure a number of theater journals that review plays. However, these reviews, like book reviews, are typically relegated to the back section and are implicitly, if not explicitly, accorded lesser status than the scholarly articles which appear in the main section. They are, in a word, merely “reviews”. Cummings’ essay is considered to be an essay with equal status and an equal claim to our attention as any other article in this issue.
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external attacks from a misanthropic dissenter and its own internal contradictions undermine the glittering world of Célimène’s salon. Romanowski’s reflection on the limits set by manners and etiquette, and especially her complex account of the internal and external forces which beset the aristocratic social world of Le Misanthrope and Dom Juan, identifies that world’s disastrous attempt to have it both ways, to reconcile the desire for escape with blocking mechanisms which normalize and regulate individual members of the group. In this context, she presents Alceste as an outsider whose marginalization is a function of his excesses, in particular his boorish violations of etiquette. Her essay provides us with one possible answer to the questions raised by Scott Cummings concerning what a rebel can and cannot do in a performed world which scorns honesty as an intolerable threat to the group. In The Misanthrope the rebel is consigned to the role of a buffoon whose antic dissonances set in motion the forces that unravel the web of conventions that protect Célimène’s circle. Romanowski’s essay implies that the way productions handle aesthetic and theatrical questions of stage behavior and style can have far reaching social and political implications. This is persuasively demonstrated in Peter Ferran’s account of Bertolt Brecht’s attempts to recuperate a comic Don Juan (and a comic Molière) from the critics who have persisted in seeing Juan and Molière as noble, serious, and literary. Ferran’s analysis, conceivably the most extensive and insightful to date of Brecht’s adaptation of Molière, shows us how a thoroughly modern directorial reworking of a playwright can nonetheless bring us back to the heart of the playwright’s original concerns. Ferran argues that the Brechtian “adaptation” of Molière which some may attack as a tampering with the original as well as an introduction of extraneous material (for example, the “excessive” insistence on commedia) in fact incites us to reconsider the original Molière and to find in the script the modern performed and
4 See Walter Benjamin’s account of replicated copies: “By making many reproductions it [the technique of reproduction] substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence”. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (221).
INTRODUCTION 9
performable comedy. Ferran demonstrates that Brecht’s refashioning of Juan into a comic figure relocates him in an unheroic universe where the “socially comic” becomes apparent, and that this redefinition of the character unites Molière’s comic tradition with epic gestus. Moreover, Ferran contends, this refashioning of Don Juan involves a new mode of dramatic composition and a new mode of character presentation. In Brecht’s “scenic writing” it is not enough to redefine a character; the character must be enacted in a new way. In his detailed account of Brecht’s method and practice, Ferran shows how, as Brecht and his comrades combine gestus and commedia in order to get to a modern social and economic vision, they uncover at the same time the “original” molièresque theme of repetition (which of course means rehearsal in French), replication, and imitation as essential operations of seventeenth-century aristocratic life. Thus Brecht’s very modern approach to Molière uncovers the key idea that aristocratic life is something played; epic playing exposes Don Juan comically as a theatrical creation rather than an heroic myth. The exposure of social and economic concerns hidden behind the facade of heroic posturing brings us to Helen Harrison who, in her account of Planchon’s L’Avare, shows how a modern production can introduce a range of contemporary questions which can at once address current problems and uncover concerns implicit in the original script. Harrison locates the question of limits squarely within economic matters. As Ferran shows for Brecht, Harrison argues that Planchon’s sense of the way the play handles aesthetic, formal, and theatrical matters raises important social and economic questions. For one thing she reminds us that, all denial notwithstanding, it takes money to get theatre on the stage and that this annoying fact of life makes sententious claims about the disinterestedness of high culture seem dubious indeed. In her account of Planchon’s staging, aesthetic and artistic limits are defined as clearly protective; they function as barriers or boundaries which separate the Aristocracy from the Bourgeoisie, and high culture from popular art. Her essay asks us to be attentive in both Planchon’s production and Molière’s script to “the questioning of any restrictive aesthetic which would maintain boundaries between popular art and art for a cultivated minority”. This, interestingly, recalls Didier Sandre and Nada Strancar’s allusion to the French bourgeoisie’s efforts to preserve Molière as the
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exclusive cultural property of the nation’s elite, efforts which, happily, any number of French and foreign directors have persistently undermined. What is at issue, Harrison suggests, is the power of restrictive aesthetics to separate classes and thus protect cultural and economic interests. She shows how the seventeenth-century aristocracy protects itself socially and economically through a structure of codes, conventions, and artifices which are clearly theatrical. For instance, she claims, the play’s handling of the happy ending (a problem that preoccupied Brecht as well) is a use of a convention in order to identify issues of social and political difference between Harpagon and others in the play. An even more striking example of Molière’s use of convention to get at social issues is provided by her account of why the play is written in prose. Demolishing the traditional saw that Molière used prose when he was pressed for time or when he considered the material to be “low”, Harrison shows how prose breaks an aesthetic boundary or “line” in order to bring the theatre and its audience closer to a mundane, prosaic, and economic world thus undermining the protective or sheltering function of theatre. This idea strikes me as vital because it brings us to the point where matters of money and the problem of restrictive aesthetics intersect. Harrison’s account of Planchon’s production shows that economic behavior and aesthetic codes are not separate realms but intricately connected social functions. Questions of money are matters which many of Molière’s commentators have preferred to leave unexamined and there are a number of reasons for this dating back to Molière’s time as Philip Berk asserts in his provocative essay on Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. Berk’s study shows how the play, far from being a straightforward satire of bourgeois ambition and pretention, is in fact an unsettling examination of aristocratic and monarchical uses of art for political purposes. Molière’s insistence on métier in cultural production, according to Berk, is a strategy for dislodging art from its divine status. Who says “métier” says “money”. Molière’s emphasis on work and money demystifies “high” art and robs it of its privileged cultural position as something effortlessly or “magically” produced. Furthermore, Berk contends, the aristocracy goes to great lengths to mask métier and money as the real (and bourgeois) source of art and culture. Therefore the question of production can be posed in terms of
INTRODUCTION 11
opposing notions of work and money against artifice and magic as sources of art. Far more revealing than the traditional view that the play is a satire of bourgeois ambition is Berk’s thesis that the Bourgeois Gentilhomme challenges the claim made by the aristocratic and royal ideology of cultural production that art and culture spring magically from the King. This ideology suppresses the more realistic situation of a number of hard-working artists (many of whom, like Molière, are bourgeois) who are doing the actual work and, some of them at least, rising through the ranks from bourgeoisie to nobility because of it. The hyper-visible and hyper-legible surface of court representation hides this fact and tries to maintain the myth of a monarchy and aristocracy which depends on nothing but its own magical powers for the perpetuation of its standing and privilege. What Berk’s essay helps us to understand is the way the play slyly hints at the situation hidden behind the brilliance of court performance: Although Jourdain may be a buffoon, the King needs him and his money. Berk sees the play as structured around an opposition between court performance which aims to maintain its conventions as instruments of concealment and the realistic project of Molière’s comedy to expose them. From this point of view, the play is not about the foibles of the bourgeoisie but, rather, about the selfprotective performative life of the court. It is here that Berk’s analysis of the play is at its most subtle and provocative as he shows how Molière uses the conventions of theatre to expose the political uses of theatre. For, Berk reveals, the play’s balletic ending, far from being a purely aesthetic contrivance, is a performative event which masks or blocks the realistic exposure which precedes it. To wit: Jourdain is an embarrassment to the King and to aristocratic culture in general because in spite of his oafishness the King and court need his money. How can they hide Jourdain? The answer is to “ennoble” him, to absorb him into court performance. The King refashions Jourdain into a spectator at court and makes him disappear within the cultural project of court art. Thus the social and realistic comedy disappears into the final court entertainment and his incorporation of this very process into his own play is Molière’s political message. Berk shows us how the play’s complex and subtle dialectic first reveals métier as the uncomfortable social reality underlying aristocratic privilege and then recreates the aristocratic masking of that reality through court
12 MICHAEL SPINGLER
performance. In a sense the play moves backwards from realistic exposure to the theatrical forms which block social sight, ending with the awkward and embarrassing bourgeois farcically “ennobled”—that is, absorbed into and effaced by the court entertainment which ends the play. Louis XIV gets rid of Jourdain by theatricalizing him. Thus the purely theatrical opening and concluding scenes, often passed over in literary approaches to the play, are in Berk’s essay, restored to their full role as meaning made through performance. By insisting on the primacy of métier, Philip Berk brings us back to our basic contention that a Molière play is not a finished literary or cultural artifact but a script that must be repeatedly produced for it to disclose its meanings. I believe that these are exciting time for Molière studies and that the essays collected here underscore the importance of production to our reassessment of the playwright. Modern directorial innovation encounters historical sources and Molière is recuperated and restored to the modern sensibility and imagination. The best contemporary productions leave no doubt that Molière is very much of our time. It only takes a quick look around us to see how much we need him. As Sylvie Romanowski stresses, among the functions of theatre may be not only to show and assess, but also to catalyze cultural change. Theatre such as Molière’s is rarely a justification of the status quo, but rather a reflection on the possibilities for going beyond the limits of what is institutional and established. It is by playing Molière that one discovers this. Of all the ideas or theories we can leave with our students, this strikes me as most important. The best I can wish for these essays is that they have some effect on the way Molière is taught today. It seems to me that this is the thrust of Laurence Romero’s appeal to us to reconsider how we teach Molière. As he suggests, the classroom can be the site where the problems and processes of production can be explored with a view to providing new bases for interpretation and to discovering new, or, equally important, recovering old and forgotten meanings in the work. It is as teachers that we can come close to occupying the same ground as our colleagues who are actively involved in producing theatre. For, as Didier Sandre observes, Antoine Vitez was a fine teacher and his productions of Molière were born in the classroom. Vitez was not alone in this; many directors and actors lead double lives as teachers. This doubled life
INTRODUCTION 13
can, to a degree, function in the opposite direction: It does not seem to me too much to ask that we attempt to become directors in the classroom when we teach Molière. That is, in addition to introducing into the classroom what Romero calls “the other voice” of established directors we introduce our own “directorial” voices as well as inviting our students to contribute theirs. There is no reason why, for most of us, the classroom cannot become a rehearsal room where the practice of theatre is actively engaged and the script is brought to life. Of course I am not talking about the sort of polished performance one expects to see in the theatre. At any rate, it is naive to suppose that what goes on in a director’s classroom has the same finish as what eventually goes on the stage. Theatre is an art of imperfection and is nourished by trial and error; that is what rehearsals are for. We may not all be gifted directors or actors, nor may our students. They may indeed, from shyness, stage fright, and suspicion of the unfamiliar resist our attempts to introduce scene work in the class. Nevertheless, to get our students to understand, to appreciate, even to love this playwright we have to get physical with Molière. We have to temper the abstract and the theoretical with the concrete. We have to wrestle with the body of the play. This, I think, is the perspective and approach which has informed the essays in this collection. What Peter Ferran calls finding the performable comedy is, to my mind, the activity where directors, scholars, and teachers can unite in a common enterprise to maintain Molière as an essential part of a culture which is dynamic, vital, and which has the energy and wit to cross class and institutional lines. What needs to be done is to kidnap Molière from the Pantheon of classical literature and to put him back on the Pont-Neuf with the strolling players, low-life rogues, cut-purses and clowns with whom he filled his theatre. We have to teach him the way the best theatre artists play him, not as an embalmed author, but as a living theatre artist. References Apostolidès, Jean-Marie (1981) Le Roi-machine: Spectacle et politique au temps de Louis XIV. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit
14 MICHAEL SPINGLER
Charles Baudelaire (1987) Le Spleen de Paris: Petits poèmes en prose. Paris: GFFlammarion Walter Benjamin (1969) Illuminations, Edited with an Introduction by Hannah Arendt. Translated by Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books Alfred Bermel (1990) Molière’s Theatrcal Bounty: A new View of the Plays. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press Jacques Guicharnaud (1963) Molière, Une aventure théatrale. Paris: Gallimard Richard Schechner (1988) Performance Theory. New York: Routledge Alfred Simon (1987) Molière, qui êtes-vous? Lyon: La Manufacture Olivier-René Veillon (1981) ed., Antoine Vitez: Toutes les mises en scène. Paris: Jean-Cyrille Godefroy
This issue was commissioned by Rick Takvorian.
Contemporary Theatre Review 1997, Vol. 6, Part 1, pp. 1–11 Reprints available directly from the publisher Photocopying permitted by license only
© 1997 OPA (Overseas Publishers Association) Amsterdam B.V. Published in The Netherlands by Harwood Academic Publishers Transferred to Digital Printing 2004
Antoine Vitez Re-staging Molière for or the 1978 Avignon Festival An Interview with Nada Strancar and Didier Sandre Jean-Michel Charles Lanskin
Antoine Vitez (one of France’s major stage directors who died in 1990) re-staged four plays by Molière for the 1978 Avignon Festival. This spectacle was highly praised by most of the spectators and critics, so that it’s now often recalled in the memory of many people as “Vitez’s Molières”. The present interview with Nada Strancar and Didier Sandretwo members of the cast—deals not only with Vitez’s directions, his ideas as far as reading, staging and playing Molière today is concerned and his revolution in ‘dusting the Classics’, but it also gives us the opportunity to share with two presently prominent French actors their testimony about this spectacle, their personal acting experiences in The School for Wives, Tartuffe, Dom Juan, The Misanthrope, as well as their own feelings vis-à-vis Molière.
’ des Femmes, Directing KEY WORDS: Tartuffe, Dom Juan, L Ecole approaches, Acting techniques, Physical comedy. In 1990, one of France’s major stage directors died, Antoine Vitez, a professor at the Conservatoire National d’Art Dramatique in Paris and also an actor himself, had founded in 1974, at the Théâtre des Quartiers d’Ivry in a Communist suburb of Paris, a workshop “Atelier permanent de farce et de tragédie”. At the beginning of the 1980s, after the success of his production of four of Molière’s plays for the 1978 Avignon festival—this cycle having then toured France, Italy, Switzerland and Yugoslavia—he was given the direction of the Théâtre de Chaillot (the former T.N.P., Théâtre National Populaire,
16 JEAN-M. C. LANSKIN
founded by Jean Vilar) and later, a few years before his death, he was appointed General Manager of the Comédie Française. Nada Strancar was a student of Antoine Vitez when she played in Molière’s The Jealous Husband at the Théâtre des Quartiers d’Ivry in 1974. In 1975, he chose her for the title role in a memorable production of Racine’s Phèdre. She and Didier Sandre (in real life husband and wife) have both been nominated several times for a “Molière”, the annual recognition in France for the best performance on stage. In the 1978–79 tetralogy which has remained in many memories as “Vitez’s Molières”, they played Georgette and Arnolphe in The School for Wives, Dorine and Cléante in Tartuffe, Elvire and Monsieur Dimanche in Don Juan, Arsinoé and Oronte in The Misanthrope. They kindly granted me the following interview for this special issue of Contemporary Theatre Review. J.M.C.L.: Nada, I remember the conversation on the theatre we had one night in July 1990 after dinner. We started talking about Antoine Vitez who had then just passed away, but you also shared with me some of your feelings about the actors’ profession, the important role that a stage director has and about Vitez’s Molières. You told me then that whenever you have the time to go to the theatre and to sit once in a while in the audience, you do not care for showpieces for stars [“What is the need for a brilliant actor if the rest of the production is just ordinary?”]. And you noted that the thing that interests you most is a stage director’s interpretation of a play [“Some people claim that one can do without stage directors but, in their absence, one starts immediately to miss them”]. You also said that Molière hurts you and the woman within you. I would like to resume this conversation about Antoine Vitez, his staging Molière, as well as about you and Didier as actors and your experiences in this Molière cycle. Nada, you met Antoine Vitez at the Paris conservatoire. What do you recall of your first encounter? N.S.: It was during my second year there. I was extremely inhibited and it took me a long time to feel productive in his class where I was scared stiff by the look of a certain
ANTOINE VITEZ RE-STAGING MOLIÈRE 17
freedom that I did not understand, and in which however I might have understood it, I was unable to participate, again because of my inhibitions. I freed myself with Medea and then Antoine said: “Now I know that we can work together!” In fact, I later worked with him almost each year, from Tournier’s Friday in 1973 to Hugo’s Lucrèce Borgia in 1985. J.M.C.L.: How about you, Didier? You were one of the rare members of the 1978 troupe who had not been a student of Vitez at the Conservatoire. How did you meet him? D.S.: I happened to perform at the Ivry Theatre in a play by Witkiewicz under the direction of Ewa Lewinson who was Antoine’s assistant at that time. He saw it, he liked me, and he asked me to play in his next production—Hugo’s The Burgraves—but I was not free. However, I knew that he already had the Molières in mind and I insisted on being part of that cast. That’s how it went. J.M.C.L.: In 1978, at the time he produced the Molière tetralogy, wasn’t Antoine Vitez rather controversial? Wasn’t his audience extremely restricted? N.S.: Yes, and the word “elitist” was often spitefully used. All his productions at that time made a huge scandal. But first we should place ourselves back into the theatrical context of the 70s. The Théâtre des Quartiers d’Ivry was a very small and very poor theatre but enormously active. It was perhaps poverty that launched imagination —although I am not saying that one needs to be poor in order to create something of high quality. Back at that time, the “red” suburbs of Paris welcomed the most active and innovative stage directors because the cultural branch of the Communist Party was then very avant-gardist; it was generating lots of quality ideas and doing excellent research. J.M.C.L.: Under Vitez’s direction the Théâtre des Quartiers d’Ivry became indeed a workshop in 1974. For the opening of the “atelier”, Antoine Vitez chose The Jealous Husband—a rather unfamiliar piece of Molière’s work. Amazingly, instead of
18 JEAN-M. C. LANSKIN
staging perhaps two of his early farces, he did the same one twice, with the same actors changing roles and costumes. Nada, you were already part of that cast. What do you think Vitez’s intention was in picking this play for his first staging of Molière? N.S.: I do not remember if Antoine had any special reason for choosing this particular play, but I do know that he wanted to show that there is no single rendition of a play, no one truth—which is a good thing!—and this is why these plays are still staged today, why they have been staged since Molière’s time and why they will be staged in the future, with each staging a different vision that is in keeping with the way a tradition is perceived as centuries go by. J.M.C.L.: Interestingly, you just used the word “tradition”. You mentioned earlier the scandals provoked by all Vitez’s productions in the 70’s. Were not these scandals created by what the general audience thought was a breaking with tradition? And, at the same time, did not Vitez have also a notion of tradition in mind, especially when he produced his Molières in 1978? D.S.: I think that this cycle has its place in the story of what the classical theatre represents in the French theatrical culture. For a very long time, the bourgeoisie maintained that Molière, Corneille, Racine and Marivaux were the sacred property of the Comédie Française (often referred to as the “Maison de Molière”). Before World War II, Jacques Copeau, Charles Dullin and of course Louis Jouvet tried to give this repertoire a new birth with a more intellectual and artistic approach. And after the war, Jean Vilar, with the T.N.P. (Théâtre National Populaire), reintroduced the idea of both a troupe and a repertory accessible to all. N.S.: But in most people’s minds, the idea of tradition concerning Molière was to keep the actors rather seated and proper, like in parlor plays. Antoine did not want the characters nor the actors to be proper. He wanted them to go to the very end of their passion, their imagination, their joy, their suffering. As far as I am concerned, this is what
ANTOINE VITEZ RE-STAGING MOLIÈRE 19
helped me most in my work as an actress: not to be proper. Tense feelings involve not only a suffering of the mind but also of the body, and this physical suffering has to be shown on stage. Let us recall a scene in Tartuffe, when Tartuffe wants to rape Elmire and when Orgon, the husband, wants to catch him doing it. This example among others is enough to prove the paroxysm of the situations that Molière himself set up in his plays. Let’s face it: here is Orgon, a man who hides under a table to watch his wife being raped and waits there until almost the last minute. This is not your everyday occurrence; such a scene cannot be played just like tinkling on the piano. D.S.: Besides, I believe that Antoine wanted also to explore the notion of dusting off the classical theatre. J.M.C.L.: Didier, what dust are you referring to? D.S.: In the 60s and the 70s, immediately after Jean Vilar, stage directors applied themselves to the task of what they called dusting off the classics—that is, letting their own subjectivity or their own imaginative delirium find its way. N.S.: There was also a tendency in those days to make the audience believe that this theatre was a 20th century theatre despite perhaps a language that was a little odd. And in order to popularize it, some even tried to make verses sound like prose, to have the text read like something heard on television every day (I find this ridiculous, as far as theatre is concerned). J.M.C.L.: So, exactly how did Vitez get the idea to produce his Molière cycle in 1978? N.S.: As in most of Antoine’s projects, it was the exercises that took place in his classes at the Conservatoire that gave it birth. He drew his ideas from these class experiences. J.M.C.L.: Vitez once said about this tetralogy that he felt as though he were directing one long play of twenty acts instead of four separate plays. His emphasis was not on a distinct interpretation of each play, but rather on the correspondence between all four. Why did he select these
20 JEAN-M. C. LANSKIN
four plays rather than others (such as The Learned Ladies or The Imaginary Invalid)? D.S.: It seemed to Antoine that the plays he chose were the keystone of Molière’s work, and through them one could feel the progression of Molière’s writing, from The School for Wives—the most archaic of the four and in which there is a recollection of the burlesque, the farce, the acrobats’ theatre—to The Misanthrope, which is definitely a comedy of manners. Besides, I think that these four plays— particularly the two I just mentioned—are also, in a way, a biography of Mr. Jean-Baptiste Poquelin himself, for example with regard to his relations with women. After all, do not Arnolphe and Alceste look alike in their behavior and their foolish projects? And cannot the personage Poquelin-Molière be seen in them? To respond to the last part of your question, I remember that Antoine often said that if he could have added a fifth play, it would have been indeed The Imaginary Invalid. N.S.: These four plays are a microcosm of Molière’s entire work and all the themes that run through it, from his first short plays to the greatest ones: man’s relations with power and religion, relationships between men and women, women’s culture. The latter is less obvious in these plays than in The Learned Ladies you mentioned earlier, but nevertheless, with Agnès, we have innocence and cultural apprenticeship, and then we have Célimène of course whom I think represents the first female emancipation, not only as far as culture is concerned but also with respect to her place as a woman in society. This must have been for Molière a subject of fascination and maybe also of fear. J.M.C.L.: Let’s talk about some of the details of the production. I suppose that such an undertaking did not progress without difficulties… N.S.: We indeed had a lot of problems—well, Antoine had many difficulties producing this spectacle, because, though it was made with the same actors, the same set, and the same props, it cost a lot of money. Since it consisted of four
ANTOINE VITEZ RE-STAGING MOLIÈRE 21
plays, we had to rehearse for seven months (from January to July). In fact, he almost decided to stage only two plays instead of four. But finally enough money was found to do it J.M.C.L.: How was working with Vitez? What directions were you given? N.S.: No preliminary work was done around a table, for example. Upon arriving the first day, we were shown a model of the stage setting. He then talked about the themes, the ideas he wished to treat, but very little about the characters. After an hour, we took our books and started doing this and that, letting ourselves be led by our instincts. D.S.: One of his general directives at the beginning was that we play freely and have the joy of acting together. N.S.: From what we did, he would glean one or two ideas, one or two movements, one or two relations and he developed them progressively. The directions that he gave us were particularly about the style of acting. He really challenged us to do some stretch acting. We had to forget all the psychological and middle-class jumble of the 19th century as well as the psychoanalysis of the 20th, and the sociological approach in favor at the time—this was not long after 1968 and the vogue was still to find, like Roger Planchon for example, social conflicts in the theatre of the 17th century. D.S.: Also Antoine wanted us to use physically all the heritage coming from Farce, the theatre of mistakes, the comical, burlesque theatre, the “Commedia dell’ arte”, etc.…a physical heritage that was at variance with the literary “tradition” handed down from the 19th century. Using for props only two chairs, a table and a stick, Antoine wanted to let the actor imagine his or her part and to show his or her feelings about the author’s work, the character, the situations. J.M.C.L.: The set was the same for the four plays. This was for economical reasons but also to symbolize the unity of the
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project. If I remember it well, this set was rather simple and dark. N.S.: Yes it was but with some colors of fire, like red. I would not say that it was a burnt set, because it did not have this sinister aspect. At the same time however it had something a little incandescent. J.M.C.L.: It was rather classical. N.S.: Yes, a painted box, but which could be seen as either the interior or the exterior. So Antoine and the designer had the idea of a house wall with a few windows and openings. Depending on how one would open or close them, on how one would appear on stage, we were either inside or outside, The actor had to relate the heat, the cold, the interior, the exterior and it was not for the set to take charge of these phenomena. J.M.C.L.: What about the props? In all of Vitez’s productions I saw, they were reduced to the minimum. D.S.: Referring to the records of La Grange, an actor in Molière’s troupe, we knew that the plays—especially Tartuffe—were performed with a table, two chairs and a stick. So we decided to use the same simple props. The question was not to do cultural archeology, but rather, perhaps, to dream of a tradition that had vanished or that had been totally distorted by the 19th and 20th centuries. N.S.: On the other hand, the important thing for Antoine was the actors, the bodies of the actors in the space—following in Jean Vilar’s footsteps. J.M.C.L.: In the 60s, didn’t some stage directors believe that 20th Century costumes would “modernize” Molière? I remember, for example, a performance of The Misanthrope in which the men wore tuxedos and the women had gowns designed by a parisian grand couturier. Vitez opted for 17th century fashion. As in his production of Phèdre, the props were reduced to a minimum but the costumes were very elaborate. Did this testify to a certain concern for authenticity?
ANTOINE VITEZ RE-STAGING MOLIÈRE 23
N.S.:
Antoine thought that modern costumes vulgarized the classical theatre. D.S.: On the other hand, he loved to see us rehearse with jeans, tee-shirts and tennis shoes. I remember the day we actually put on our costumes; his disappointment was intense. May be because our bodies seemed to have vanished. Let’s admit that the 17th century fashion is not really becoming— it is heavy, constraining, and it responds to an extremely complicated etiquette. Only did the last dress rehearsals persuade him, and also several debates—for, after all, actors are much more convinced about the necessity of costumes. Our movements, our behavior, our relationship with others often depend on what we wear, don’t they? J.M.C.L.: How about your personal feelings as far as costumes are concerned? N.S.: On stage, actors must be beautiful and impassioned while being confronted at the same time with costumes they are not used to wearing (corsets for example, for women) and, in spite of such constraining clothing, including undergarments, to try to play as if the body were not hampered—or if the body happens to be hampered, that this is deliberate. In a situation of anger or pain or excitement or any other emotional shock, breathing becomes difficult (because of the corset again, as an example), one then needs more air and shows signs of suffocating—more so than if one is wearing a tee-shirt. I think that for Antoine the modernity of a production of Molière or Racine came from bringing together contemporary corporal expressions with costumes that tied up the body and which caused a kind of fight between the body and what was constraining it; a kind of antagonism between the nice and elegant engravings found in books and suddenly the vision of a petticoat, or two women with periwigs who speak properly and who, all of a sudden, start to scream out like fishwives.
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J.M.C.L.: As happened in the scene between Arsinoé and Célimène. While we are still on the subject of costumes, in the 17th century, didn’t actors supply their own? D.S.: Yes, they were hired with their wardrobe. Except some details required by the text-like “green ribbons” here or “Rhinegrave breeches” (trousers reaching to the knees) there-the actor was dressed and not the character. With this idea in mind, Vitez and Claude Lemaire, the costumer, wanted us to be dressed like actors in the 17th century but not as characters. For example, in The School for Wives, I played Arnolphe but I was dressed as if I, Didier Sandre, had brought my own costume and wig. I had a different vest and a hat with feathers when I played Oronte in The Misanthrope, a longer vest as Cléante in Tartuffe, and as Mr. Dimanche in Don Juan I had a different collar. These were little details which had the purpose of creating a different perception of the actors’ figures, their way of dressing themselves, but one could recognize an actor’s personal wardrobe. J.M.C.L.: The troupe consisted of eleven actors who had different roles in all four plays. Also, it seemed that Vitez’s casting was not based on the traditional criterion of parts, like age, physical appearance or personality. Did he want to give each actor the opportunity to demonstrate his or her diverse talents, or was it due to his political ideas as a leftist? D.S.: Antoine’s troupe was kind of a family affair within which the different parts were assigned; he really hated any traditional casting of actors. He believed that no one was ideal for a role and that there were as many possible interpretations as actors to play it. So the casting was decided according to a possible alternation between major and minor roles. J.M.C.L.: Hence, most members of the troupe had a big role in one of these plays and secondary roles—not lesser parts—in the other three plays. Besides, since the production was to last
ANTOINE VITEZ RE-STAGING MOLIÈRE 25
for two years, I imagine that Vitez also took the actors’ possible weariness into consideration. D.S.: Yes, he did. For example, Arnolphe was my big part (as Tartuffe was Richard Fontana’s, Don Juan, Jean-Claude Durand’s, Alceste, Marc Delsaert’s, Elvire, Nada’s, Agnès, Dominique Valadié’s, and Célimène, Jany Gastaldi’s) but playing Arnolphe every day would have probably demanded a concentration difficult to renew each night. But when I played Arnolphe one evening, Cléante the next day, Mr. Dimanche, the third, Oronte, the fourth, and when then the cycle started again with The School for Wives— because it was done in this order, following the chronology of Molière’s writing—I was regenerated by the diversity of the other roles. I mean that it was not the same concentration of mind, the same physical exertion. So, when I was approaching the role of Arnolphe again, I was recharged and ready to invest myself entirely into this character—and it was the same feeling as far as my other three roles were concerned. Had the production consisted of a single play, for example Tartuffe, I am sure that I would have been a little bored with my role of Cléante, and that I would have probably dreamed of playing Tartuffe or Orgon —parts that show off an actor much more. The part of Cléante is rather complicated and ambiguous. It is that of a cool thinker who makes long speeches, and the role has the reputation of being a bore. But I was glad to play it and to find again the coolness and the moderation of this character, just after having played Arnolphe’s passionate journey, and having been also, in the meantime, Mr. Dimanche in Don Juan, with a floured face—for that particular scene was staged in a burlesque style—and after having performed Oronte’s “showpiece” in The Misanthrope. J.M.C.L.: I would like to ask you a few more questions about certain roles in Vitez’s production. In Tartuffe, the role of Orgon’s mother was played by a man, Marc Delsaert. Was it only because the troupe consisted of more men than women?
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N.S.:
No. It was simply because, in the 17th century, the role of an old woman was usually played by a man. Also, I think that Antoine wanted to see Marc disguised as an old lady. He had a great pleasure in watching people transform themselves. J.M.C.L.: Usually, one sees Sganarelle as a younger man than his master. In this production, the role was played by the only old gentleman in the troupe, Gilbert Vilhon. N.S.: Because, since Antoine started in the theatre, Vilhon had been for him a little like a family member. Besides, Antoine wanted to show Sganarelle, the servant, as a kind of a father or guardian, someone with the wisdom of experience. D.S.: After all, how old is Don Juan? His picture as a greytempled man comes from the 19th and the 20th centuries. La Grange—who first played the role—was not even thirty years old. J.M.C.L.: Nada, how about your roles in this cycle? In 1985, after your triple performance at the Avignon Festival,—when you played Shakespeare and Chekhov-one read in Le Monde: “She can do everything and better than well” and in Le Quotidien de Paris: “Nada Strancar, a magician of tears and laughter”. This did not surprise those who had seen you in the Molière plays: on the one hand as Elvire and Arsinoé, and on the other as Dorine and Georgette! N.S.: My interpretation of Georgette, in The School for Wives, was inspired by the Thénardiers couple in Hugo’s Les Misérables. Georgette and her husband Alain were both drunk most of the time, constantly arguing with each other, and were really the burlesque characters in this spectacle. In Tartuffe, I was glad to play Dorine. I thought I would be given the role of Elmire—which is uninteresting to me. I preferred the good Dorine, especially because of Antoine’s conception of this character. Usually, Dorine is represented as someone who simply has common sense, who sees everything that is going on, who never suffers and who resolves all difficulties. In Antoine’s production, although she kept her
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good humor and her positive side, she looked really more concerned about the suffering of Orgon’s family. She had her doubts as much as anyone else, her crying fits, and in fact, she did not always find the right solution. J.M.C.L.: Among a lot of tense moments in this cycle, I remember your scene as Arsinoé with Célimène. This confrontation was like a torture session with screams and tears. How did you imagine the character of Arsinoé? N.S.: I tried to portray her as a woman who was still pretty and desirable but who did not know it. In fact, if actually she was not desired by any man, it was because she did not like herself anymore. Arsinoé’s suffering was due to her desire to resemble Célimène and to be loved by Alceste. But that was impossible because of her inhibitions. This was my own recipe. Effectively, the relation between these two women was shown as very hard, up to the point of tearing out each other’s hair. And at the end of the scene, I cried while falling like a miserable thing at her feet. J.M.C.L.: How about Elvire? N.S.: The part of Elvire was most painful to me. I personally think that it is a wonderful part, but I believe that any actress who plays this role winds up feeling very bad. Because of the place Elvire is given, Don Juan is always considered to be right. Even if, at the end, his damnation exonerates her, when she exits the stage and when Don Juan says ironically to Sganarelle: “Surely, you’re not crying”, the reversal takes place very quickly and she is always—whatever rendition is adopted by the actress—the one who appears as a killjoy and a pain in the neck, like a woman being constantly at his heels and whom he can hardly get rid of. What I tried to do with this part was to give Elvire an elegiac side and not the one of a virago, especially when she first enters on stage. Usually she arrives and starts immediately to make a scene. Instead, I had her swoon as soon as she sees Don Juan again: She is still in love, and, then becomes more and more in love, and all the anger she might have amassed and her resentment
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against Don Juan vanish as soon as she sees him and she does not feel anymore like making a scene; she simply wishes to say “Look at me, here I am and I love you. Why don’t you love me anymore?” I do not know how innovative I was with this rendering, but today some people still talk to me about it. J.M.C.L.: As I mentioned earlier, you told me in 1990 that Molière was hurting you. Would you call him a male chauvinist? N.S.: I don’t know. But there is something that I find very rough in his plays: It is that a woman is always guilty of something, either guilty to be what she is, or guilty by her presence. He shows women as always a pain for men. Anyway, I find Molière’s female characters very difficult to play, because they don’t seem to be real but rather women born in the hallucination of men. This is for example the case with Elvire; first there is the phantasm of passion and then the phantasm of mysticism. So, what can one do, when one is an actress, to succeed in playing these two extreme poles? It is very complicated—especially as it is in one scene at the beginning of the play and one scene at the end, and in the meantime one is off-stage, stewing and wondering about how to do it. As for Agnès, she is guilty for wishing to live her maiden’s life. Célimène is guilty for wanting to set herself free and to live within the world. In fact, Molière gives me the impression that he met only women he had a hard time understanding and who therefore appeared to him like monsters. You mentioned earlier The Learned Ladies; isn’t it the same? Here is this dear Henriette who dreams of a quiet, simple and unpretentious happiness in marriage and family life. I am not really sure that this was what Molière had a wish for. Again, this is complicated. As far as I am concerned, I did not find myself extremely happy in Molière’s women. I don’t know if I would have been happier in playing Célimène. I don’t think so, because I remember that for Jany Gastaldi (who played this role in Antoine’s production) it was very, very hard. And the end of The Misanthrope, when Célimène seems to be entirely to
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blame and is, in a way, put on trial by everybody in the play as well as by Molière, it was a painful experience even for me, although I played Arsinoé and not Célimène. When I play in Racine or in Marivaux, I feel that women are right. I am not saying that they are holding the truth, but at least—even with the failings or the perversity they might have—they hold life; whereas Molière gives the impression that women are here…how shall I say?…to bury men! J.M.C.L.: Is it a feeling that came to you when you played in Vitez’s Molières? N.S.: I already had that feeling when I was at the Conservatoire where —with the exception of the role of Elvire—I never worked on Molière. Even though this was not my type of part, I nevertheless worked even back then with Antoine on other roles which were also not my type of parts: those were as women in Marivaux’s and not in Molière’s plays. J.M.C.L.: Vitez cast himself in three of the four of these plays (with the exception of The School for Wives). He was a guard in The Misanthrope and a police officer in Tartuffe. In these, he came out as a secondary character—almost a walk-on— reminding me a little of the famous Hitchcock’s cameos in his movies. Vitez however-like some other great directors among his predecessors such as Louis Jouvet or Jean Vilarwas also a good actor. So I wonder why, unlike Jouvet, for example, he did not play the title role in Don Juan or Arnolphe in The School for Wives? N.S.: It had been planned at the beginning that the spectacle would tour France and other countries after its premiere in Avignon, and Antoine couldn’t leave his professorship at the Conservatoire for such a long time. But I think that if there were a role he wanted to play, it would have been Arnolphe. D.S.: I think that Antoine wanted also to produce these plays with a troupe of young actors and to keep a certain homogeneity of ages. Besides Antoine (then 48) and Gilbert Vilhon (the only old man), I was at age thirty the oldest among the company. J.M.C.L.: In Don Juan, Vitez took the part of the commander. Was it a deliberate choice?
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N.S.:
If you think of the roles he chose for himself, they all personified an eye—a kind of a judge’s look—and it was maybe a way to remind us of his being always there as the director. D.S.: I see the Commander as an image, at one and the same time, of a father and of someone who has the power to give orders—perhaps a way for Antoine to show up as himself on stage. J.M.C.L.: To conclude this interview, what do you remember about the audience’s reception? D.S.: The reception of the production in Avignon was absolutely an extraordinary reward that we didn’t expect. N.S.: For the first time in Antoine’s career, it was a tremendously popular success. D.S.: And that favorable response was repeated in Paris where we played during the Fall Festival at the Athénée theatre. N.S.: This success led to his being offered the direction of Claudel’s Le Partage de Midi at the Comédie Française by Pierre Dux (who was then its manager). D.S.: Today, due to his work at the Chaillot Theatre and at the Comédie Française and also now that he has unfortunately passed away, Antoine Vitez is surrounded with a halo. But in 1978, he was still controversial. He did not then have the authority, in the eyes of the public, that he acquired later. Although he always had supporters, an artistic and intellectual audience—a little “elitist” as Nada recalled earlier—I do think that the two-year tour of his Molières did a lot in making him feel like working for a larger audience, and he did it at Chaillot. N.S.: It was this production that allowed him to leave the kind of ghetto created by the label “intellectual theatre” where he had been confined, where nobody understood anything of what he was doing and where one would see nothing but actors convulsing on stage, etc…Finally, these Molières have remained in the memory of a lot of people as one of the greatest creations of those years. The number of people who are still talking about them with admiration is actually quite astounding, as if they had not seen a play by Molière since then.
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1. Tartuffe, Act III, Scene 3. Antoine Vitez, Director. Photo: CI. Bricage
2. L’Ecole des Femmes, Act I, Scene 4. Antonie Vitez, Director. Photo: CI Bricage
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ANTOINE VITEZ RE-STAGING MOLIÈRE 33
3. L’Ecole des Femmes, Act V, Scene 4. Antoine Vitez, Director. Photo: A. Bernard Morlino
4. Dom Juan, Act I, Scene III. Antonie Vitez, Director. Photo: CI. Bricage
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5. Dom Juan, Act IV, Scene 3. Antoine Vitez, Director. Photo: A. Bernard Merlino
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6. L’Ecole des Femmes, Act III, Scene 4. Antoine Vitez, Director. Photo: CI Bricage
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7. Le Misanthrope, Act III, Scene 4. Antoine Vitez, Director. Photo: A. Bernard Morlino
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8. Le Misanthrope, Act IV, Scene 3. Antoine Vitez, Director. Photo: A. Bernard Morlino
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ANTOINE VITEZ RE-STAGING MOLIÈRE 39
9. The Misanthrope, Act IV, Scene 4. Photo: Jennifer Bishop
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10. The Misanthrope, Act I, Scene 2. Photo: Jennifer Bishop
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11. The Misanthrope II, Act II, Scene 1. Photo: Ken Kauffman
Contemporary Theatre Review 1997, Vol. 6, Part 1, pp. 1–11 Reprints available directly from the publisher Photocopying permitted by license only
© 1997 OPA (Overseas Publishers Association) Amsterdam B.V. Published in The Netherlands by Harwood Academic Publishers Transferred to Digital Printing 2004
Interpretation by Design: A Tale of Two Misanthropes Scott T.Cummings
The scenography of two recent productions of The Misanthrope, one at Baltimore’s Center Stage and one at the Philadelphia Drama Guild, promotes a revisionist view of the play with Célimène at the center and, in the process, contrasts modern versus postmodern approaches to the design of classic texts. In Philadelphia, the lavishly designed space defines Célimène as a pampered hedonist. In Baltimore, Célimène is a sexy narcissist who defines space by her presence in it. In either case, the marginalization of Alceste makes his ultimatum to her a false choice and his eventual departure of little consequence. KEY WORDS: Misanthrope design, Contemporary performance, Comedy character. In the American regional theatre, the 1992–93 season might have been dubbed the Year of Molière. A glance back at that year’s season schedules around the USA reveals that amidst the Shakespeare and the Sondheim, the ubiquitous Christmas Carols, and a second generation of AIDS plays such as The Baltimore Waltz, Marvin’s Room, and The Sum of Us there were no fewer than a dozen Molière offerings. For the record, they were: one The Learned Ladies (American Conservatory Theatre), one Scapin (Classic Stage Company), one School For Wives (Pittsburgh Public Theatre), two The Misers (South Coast Rep, Indiana Rep), three Tartuffes (Playmakers Rep, Utah Shakespeare Festival, Hartford Stage), and no fewer than four The Misanthropes (Cleveland Play House, Dallas Theatre Center, Long Wharf Theatre, and
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Philadelphia Drama Guild). This was far more than any other classical dramatist (save Shakespeare), more than such regularly produced moderns as Shaw, Ibsen, Lorca, Brecht, or Pirandello, more even than the much beloved Chekhov. Molière also outpolled such American masters as O’Neill, Williams, Miller, and Wilder. Why the upsurge? Could it be the budget-friendly cast sizes? The dearth of contemporary comedy in the era of AIDS? Or that most artistic directors, frustrated with hypocrisy and moral posturing during the Reagan-Bush era, chose their seasons as the US Presidential election was gearing up that winter? For the moment, this essay is more concerned with how Molière is performed than why, and in that interest, narrows its focus to aspects of two productions of The Misanthrope, one presented by Baltimore’s Center Stage (May 8 to June 7, 1992) and directed by Artistic Director Irene Lewis, and the other by Philadelphia Drama Guild (October 9 to November 1, 1992) and directed by Artistic Director Mary B. Robinson. These productions come out of theatres with similar profiles: major East Coast not-for-profit bastions of culture with solid subscription bases, budgets over $3 million, modified thrust stages, and female artistic directors who seem to share a commitment to nontraditional casting and a repertoire which balances new American voices with European classics. Lewis and Robinson also share overlapping career paths: both women have professional roots at Hartford Stage in Connecticut, where each served as a resident director for a number of years under Mark Lamos. Both Misanthropes were intelligently and handsomely presented, robust and stylish, even grand, in differing ways, and, with minor exceptions, well-acted. In strengths and weaknesses alike, Lewis’s and Robinson’s productions reflect two different contemporary approaches to staging Molière (or, by extension, any putative “classic”), one modern and the other, for lack of a better term, postmodern, the chief difference being the relative homogeneity of production elements. One strives for a snug and seamless unity, the other relishes a degree of fragmentation and isn’t bothered by loose ends, rough edges, and incongruity. The modern approach is archeological: with the text as artifact, it seeks to create a performance context within which the play fits, makes sense, comes alive, while preserving its integrity as a classic. The goal here is not to
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mount museum pieces but to bridge gaps between now and then. The postmodern approach is dialectical: it “privileges” and “foregrounds” discordant and marginal elements left and right, allowing contradictions to stand forth unapologetically and interpolating them when necessary. The modern director asks, “What are we going to do with this play?”, as if it is inaccessible or deficient somehow and has to be repaired and delivered across the centuries by a Concept that is suitable for framing the experience, one that both honors the play and pleases the audience. The postmodern director asks, “What are we going to do to this play?”, as if its integrity is an offense which must be challenged, even dismantled, lest its authority as Art or as Classic pass unassailed. The quickest way to determine what a director and her collaborators are doing with or to a classic is to go to the place where three roads meet, that is, to examine how a production’s approaches to design, staging, and characterization come together. This is particularly informative when the play’s setting, as in The Misanthrope, is the domain of one (and only one) character. Because the play takes place chez Celimène, the physical setting can be expected to reflect or to manifest her character somehow, and the way it does so in the two productions at hand exemplifies the two different approaches. The Philadelphia Misanthrope represents the more conventional modern approach, with its deepest roots in Saxe-Meiningen’s crowd scenes and Stanislavsky’s chirping crickets, while the Baltimore Misanthrope signals the newer postmodern approach working its way gently into the regional theatre mainstream. Both productions marginalize Alceste—in Philadelphia, he is isolated upstage center at moments; in Baltimore, he is pushed out towards the audience—in favor of a Célimène who is placed dead center, figuratively and literally, in a theatrical space that either identifies her or gains from her. In Philadelphia the scenography defines Célimène; she does not exist independent of the room she is in. In Baltimore Célimène defines the scenography; a room does not exist unless Célimène is in it. This curious symbiosis between character and setting, although oppositely asymmetrical in the two productions, gives Célimène a unique status in the performance of the play. She is, in a sense, both figure and ground, and the dynamism between the two transforms her from love object to desiring subject.
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As the performance unfolds, the key to the play becomes the erotic identity of the heroine. The play sits in her lap, as it were, until she gets up, and the manner in which she does so reveals something essential about her and casts a retrospective light back over the entire play. In short, where does her libido lie? In Philadelphia and in Baltimore, the answer is in the set. A Case of Maximal Design In Philadelph did Célimène a stately pleasure dome decree. Or so it would seem, judging by the stunningly gorgeous set by Allen Moyer and flattering light by Arden Fingerhut provided for the Philadelphia Drama Guild production. Mary Robinson uses the 1973 Tony Harrison version of the play, commissioned by the National Theatre and set in 1966, the tercentenary of the play’s premiere. Her production is more ‘90s than ‘60s in style, primarily indicated by the contemporary cut of Michael Krass’s hip costumes. Culturally specific totems are kept to a minimum (a cordless telephone, a VCR) in the interest of creating an otherworldly realm: the fantasyland of Célimène’s Boudoir. Less a room than a roomscape, it is opulent, grand, unique, and so ostentatiously elegant that it might be featured on “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”. It would be a chintzy overblown honeymoon suite in the Poconos if it were not so lavishly and lusciously and lovingly carried out—in a style that might be called, oxymoronically, Cartesian Rococco Pop. The room is a symphony of cushioned squares and circles. At the center is a giant round bed covered with a salmon pink bedspread which hangs down in pleats and is rimmed at the top with tassles. Round and square lavender throw pillows are piled up to form the head of the bed upstage. Célimène will recline here from time to time as she entertains her various gentleman callers, stretched out regally and negligée, a society mermaid on the halfshell. The bed is practically a room in itself, big enough that Célimène, Acaste, and Clitandre can pile on like kids at a sleep-over without getting in compromising positions. From this center of levity, circles radiate out concentrically. The bed sits up throne-like on a round platform. A bit further out, a circle of six silver-blue padded chairs rings the platform, each facing in on the bed, each ready for an admirer who
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comes to fawn and gossip. Downstage right and left on the thrust are two circular staircases spiraling up out of the floor, providing the major entrances throughout the play and whatever tenuous connection this realm has to the world below. The most imposing aspect of the set is the treatment of the walls, which is where Circle meets Square. The walls are covered with square tiles (about two feet on a side) which are padded and upholstered with a powder-blue fabric. Set in on the diagonal six inches from each corner is an upholstery button and in the center of each square is a shortstemmed red rose, backed by a small round reflector. One of these square wall panels is curious enough; 300 of them is stunning. They stretch at least 20 feet from floor to ceiling, 10 tiles high, and surround the modified thrust stage on three sides in a series of zigzag wall units set at right angles to each other, 3 tiles wide, then 1, then 7, then 1, then 3 to upstage center, and then symmetrically down the other side. This creates what amounts to a billboard-sized wrap-around checkerboard quilt wall, with each block monotonously and rigidly identical, relieved only by the dollop of red from the rose which sticks out a few inches from the surface of the wall. A small ceiling unit hangs high overhead on an angle above the upstage portion of the playing area, painted in a way that reflects light in another series of smaller squares of different value. Although it gets lost in the shuffle, this ceiling puts a lid on the room and adds greatly thereby to its sense of enclosure and isolation, of being a fantastic place cut off from the real world of law suits and politics which swirls around below. Imagine an ornately decorated multi-tiered birthday cake as big as a New York skyscraper and atop that cake a windowless penthouse lined with hidden treasures and creature comforts. That’s where this Misanthrope takes place. That the actors are not swallowed whole by this glorious monstrosity is to their credit, all the more so because Mary Robinson’s casting puts an accent on youth. Hers is a twentysomething Misanthrope, a portrait of carefree courtiers and cocksure careerists who enjoy a good party, none more than Célimène. In her first eye-popping entrance up the spiral stairs and across the stage, Orlagh Cassidy emerges from below wearing high heels, lots of makeup, and a spunky, raspberry pink party dress, strapless, short full tulle
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skirt, a huge fabric rose on her hip. She doesn’t sizzle; she fizzes with a champagne-and-diamonds air that combines the innocence of a debutante and the composure of a socialite. Cassidy’s Célimène is at ease, in command even, as she changes into something more comfortable in full view of her guests, doffing her high heels and wig, donning a silver-blue and pale-pink floor-length satiny robe with a high cowl neck and wide, pointed collar. When Alceste complains of her household full of suitors, her response is playfully unapologetic. “They’re sweet. They visit,” she winces in pleasure, as if to say, “I can’t help it if I’m attractive.” And when Clitandre is announced awhile later, she pops up to freshen her make-up and summon the maid to serve more bubbly. As the old Cyndi Lauper song goes, “girls just wanna have fun.” This casual decadence is multiplied a millionfold when the boudoir’s hidden treasures are revealed. Up and down the side walls, sections of the paneled walls turn out to be closet doors (seven tiles high) and they are summarily opened to reveal the accoutrements of Célimène’s lavish “lifestyle.” Stage left, there is one closet for wigs out of which rolls a vanity table, another filled floor to ceiling with rows and rows of shoes (no doubt the provocation for nightly Imelda Marcos jokes among the spectators), a walk-in closet for dresses and hat boxes piled high out of sight. Stage right, there is a bathroom filled with brightly colored plush towels, a home entertainment center with big-screen television and stereo, and a fold-out bar with shelves and shelves of champagne. Each set of double closet doors is mirrored on the inside so that it reflects the room’s opulent splendor ad infinitum. In keeping with the tastefully overdone decor, there is no end to the reflective surfaces. The matching vanity table (left) and roll-out bar (right) are fronted with mirror. The champagne buckets and coffee service are shiny silver. Even the upstage center ‘corner’ of the stage flips around on a revolve to reveal a mirrored wall, so that the audience, if it cares to, can see its own wavy reflection through much of the action. The mirrors are there not for the sake of the audience’s vanity or Célimène’s (as in Baltimore) so much as to magnify the conspicuous abundance of things and to enhance the room’s funhouse feeling. The preponderance of pinks and blues and silvers in Célimène’s wardrobe and boudoir reinforces the pampered and protected quality suggested
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by the room’s architectural isolation from any outside reality. As genuinely pleasant as it is to gaze at the set and the stirrings onstage, it is hard to imagine anything of consequence happening here. It is a play room, a fantasyland, and, despite Robinson’s directoral efforts, its panoply of creature comforts overshadows the seriousness of Alceste’s escalating legal troubles just as it does Célimène’s climactic comeuppance. At the end of the play, as Célimène’s libeled and outraged coterie abandons her one by one, she sits down right (away from the bed!), her back to audience, chastened by her chastisers. A moment earlier, she has come clean and wet from the bathroom, wrapped in a white fluffy terrycloth bathrobe, her hair matted down, without make-up. The buoyant red rose has been plucked from the center of the circle, and now, in her plain and pure whiteness, she is the perfect match for Alceste, who stands opposite, down left, all in black, wearing a long black overcoat; ready for travel. When Alceste issues his ultimatum cum invitation to join him in exile, her decision is not as brittle or as charged as it should be. Faced with a choice between absolutes (exile with Alceste or the world), she makes a relative decision (‘I’m too young…’). The potential heroism (or villainy) of the moment is diluted and the play’s delicate and tricky crossover to para-tragedy is bypassed. As the lights fade down, Célimène is left alone in empty abundance, contemplatively combing her hair, but her solitude is ambiguous. Has she been condemned to internal exile in her pink-andblue gulag or will she live to party down another day? Is Alceste a true loss to her or just another fish in the sea? Judging strictly from Orlagh Cassidy’s performance, it is difficult to tell, but her acting task here is both complicated and completed by the safety net of the surrounding room. Although the staging invites our sympathy for Célimène, the visual and material splendor of her boudoir suggests that she is no more or less pathetic than a child with all the toys in the world and nobody to play with. A More Bare Bones Approach Irene Lewis’s production of The Misanthrope at Center Stage in Baltimore was, in effect, a revival of one she mounted several years ago for the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Both featured Lynnda
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Ferguson as Célimène and Stephen Markle as Alceste. The playing area created by set designer Kate Edmunds is cavernous, more echo chamber than antechamber. It flows (‘cascades’ would be too picturesque) from a wide entryway upstage right, down three or four broad sweeping stairs, across the main playing area, past two small downstage benches right and left, down a small staircase into the auditorium and down the house right vomitorium. Upstage left there are two parallel walls which create three narrow lanes which lead straight onstage; as with the voms and the upright entrance, these are passageways more than. doorways, designed to facilitate the hasty appearance or disappearance of Célimène and her entourage. The entire set—floor, steps, benches, and rear wall—is painted the same ice blue, except that about halfway up the huge rear wall the paint strokes of a roller brush begin to allow a darker undercoat to show through, almost as if the paint job was still in progress. At a height of 10–15 feet, the light grayish blue roller brush strokes give out altogether and the wall becomes black, highlighted with strokes of a deep, almost royal blue. The border between the blue below and the emerging black above creates an abstract jagged line across the rear wall, one of the many (subtly) jarring visual effects which characterize the design. It feels a bit like the lower jaw and teeth of some gigantic maw preparing to swallow the stage and its tiny, insignificant figures whole. All the way upstage center against the rear wall is a low pedestal with a neo-classical portrait bust sitting atop it, the type usually carved out of white marble. The disproportionately large base of the pedestal on which the bust is placed deprives it of much of its dignity, as does the fact that scattered about the set and throughout the production are a number of smaller replicas of this bust. Three of them sit at the base of the pedestal; others sit atop square columns against the rear wall and the stage right wall and on squarish ledges cut out of the walls leading off left. These ‘scenic’ busts, the only decorative detail on the set, are painted to match the blue-gray of the set, but a number of identical ‘prop’ busts (carried on by servants for this-or-that scene) were painted to match the bright colors of the costumes. What were these busts all about? The actors/characters never use or even notice the master bust or its many mini-clones. They remain purely scenic, a quirky visual idea tossed into the mix with
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postmodern non-chalance, offering silent and mysterious commentary, puckishly inviting and defying interpretation at the same time. In its weight, color, and sculptural detail, the standard classic bust carved out of white marble argues for the nobility and the individuality of its subject. The proliferation of this image ad nauseum in miniature replicas (some in garish colors) turns it into an object of mass production, reduces it to a pathetic souvenir, something fake. It suggests an explosion of the narcissism which is the hallmark of Célimène’s character in this production into a full-blown commodity fetishism of the self. Architecturally, the stage suggests a grand ballroom out of, say, Cinderella, but without the fairy tale ambiance. Dominated by the vast flat expanse of the upstage wall, the space feels more industrial than romantic, as if you were staring at the side of a huge battleship. The blue of the floors, the stairs, the side walls, and the rear wall created a theatrical tabula rasa, a neutral facade against which the characters themselves stood out like statues, an effect accentuated at moments by the generally cool lighting provided by Pat Collins. The stage takes on the specificity of locale only when peopled by the characters of the play, most especially Célimène. At the start of the play, when Philinte and Alceste dash on from the wide upright entryway wearing exquisitely designed bird masks, which, helmet-like, cover the head entirely, we quickly gather that they are stepping out onto the verandah to catch some night air and get some relief from the insufferable masquerade ball going on indoors. From scene to scene and act to act, Lewis shifts the setting from room to room of Célimène’s no-doubt palatial abode, through changes in costume, light, and minimal set pieces: a large gilt-framed dressing mirror and stool, a royal purple billiards table, a round dining table set for an elegant dinner, a French window, pieces of oddly pruned topiary. The action does not stop while this skeletal furniture is moved on and off. Whatever set changes are necessary are performed by a small cadre of servant characters, usually after a scene has begun and the principals are heatedly engaged in conversation. For example, midway through Oronte’s first appearance a valet brings on a chair and sets it down moments before Oronte himself bends his knees to sit. This is done in a totally unnaturalistic way: no orders are given, no pretense or excuses are made that this is anything other than a practical change
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of scenery. Nevertheless, it has the effect of pointing out that in the leisure class world of the play, there is always somebody there to provide for one’s needs, to wait on one hand and foot, to step and fetch whatever is needed at the moment. Moreover, once familiar, this staging convention keeps the emphasis on what the characters are doing and saying and, in that sense, the characters define their surroundings more than their surroundings define them. The huge monochrome playing area overshadowing the set pieces prevents them from redefining the space illusionistically. Whatever room they suggest—verandah, boudoir, parlor, salon, garden—is important only as a place of leisure, of repose, of ease and this quality is conveyed more by the character’s conduct than by scenic details. This emanation of scene from character is most dramatically demonstrated by the lady of the house. Lynnda Ferguson’s Célimène is a woman in a hurry to get from one pleasing distraction to the next. Whenever she comes onstage, she seems to drag the room she is entering behind her like a train. She moves with swift, business-like urgency, as in the beginning of Act Two when she strides up the house left vom, returning from a hunting excursion, rifle under her arm, following a servant who leads a scampering schnauser on a leash, followed breathlessly by her diminutive servant, Basque, played by David J.Steinberg, a dwarf. She takes her position centerstage as a maid comes on and, automatically, helps her out of her hunting costume and wig, revealing a tightly corseted torso and the stiff rings used to support a hoop skirt. She stands there, half naked, wearing black shoes and white sheer stockings to mid-thigh, her hair pulled up tight in a bun awaiting her next wig of the day. This state of undress defines Célimène in our experience, making her both sexy and a bit clownish, caught in the limbo between private self and public persona. Stripping Célimène down to her foundation garments points out how constructed her beautiful figure is when fully dressed even as it suggests how beautiful her natural figure would be when fully undressed. Her rosy red cheeks, her long shapely legs, her pinched waist and ample bosom make her a slightly indiscreet object of desire, but the skirt rings circling her hips and knees like concentric hula hoops make a mockery of her appeal in much the same way that the miniature replica busts make a mockery of the original. To borrow from Walter Benjamin, the “mechanical reproduction” of the busts
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and the mechanical production of Célimène’s sensual contours destroys the concept of the original and challenges the dignity, even the identity, of an authentic individual self. Lynnda Ferguson’s Célimène seems to find refuge in a narcissism so vast that it figuratively fills the stage and so self-sufficient that it undercuts her need to be the life of the party. She is the party. When she does her toilette, a young boy stands in front of her holding up a hand mirror, making sure that whichever way she turns, she looks at her own image. For Célimène, this seems to be the perfect view. She spends a good portion of her time in front of the mirror, déshabillé, checking her make-up, adjusting her wig, or simply drinking in the pleasure of her own image. Away from the mirror, she comports herself with the same langorous charm. She drapes herself over a chaise longue like some 19th-century odalisque, cocking her leg or corkscrewing her torso, striking alluring poses more for her own delight than her suitors. She seems benignly aloof, disinterested in the interest of others. She does not need an audience, or even Alceste, except to scratch an itch she easily can reach herself. When, in an interlude between the second and third acts, she does a frisky pas-detrois with Acaste and Clitandre, they are mere props for her terpischorean fantasy. And when it comes time for her to choose between Alceste and society, both options seem equally unappealing and paltry compared to the glory of moi. By contrast, the neediness of Stephen Markle’s Alceste, who curries the audience’s favor from early on, amplifies the independence of the Baltimore Célimène. Several times, he turns to the auditorium and, through wink, word, and wave, solicits the audience’s endorsement of his policy of plain-speaking, reacting gratefully to even barely audible reinforcement. At other moments, he seems to include us in his sweeping condemnation of manners, but either way, as pal or scourge, he demands from us a level of individual attention that Célimène doesn’t seem to need from anybody. His diffident moral superiority seems inauthentic, his threat of self-exile becomes juvenile, his final exit is unnuanced. The Baltimore production seems to be toying with the idea of having Alceste and Célimène swap characters. Alceste, more curmudgeon than coquette, is nevertheless the one who craves society; Célimène, more narcissist than misanthrope, is the one who
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can do without. This temperamental reversal of Célimène and Alceste might have paved the way for a lesson in complex psychology or an exciting subversion of The Misanthrope, but it doesn’t play itself out either way. It only succeeds in making them oxymorons, contradictory characters who stand (out) on their own, like the souvenir busts, as major elements of a disintegrated production. Comedy Tomorrow, Irony Tonight These are tough times for Comedy, which seems nowadays to be an impossible theatre on three counts. First, romantic comedy as a genre, old or new, is haunted by the spectre of AIDS. This makes sexual intercourse, adultery, and promiscuity a game of Russian roulette in contemporary comedy and a matter of wishful nostalgia when we return to the yesteryear of classical comedy. Second, comedy demands not just vices but victims. In a time dominated by the thunderous reverberations of Difference, the valorization of the Other, and the bugaboo of political correctness, acceptable comic targets are hard to come by. Scapegoats, after all, have feelings, too. Third, comedy unmasks hypocrisy, more than any other foible or vice. The value of this decent exposure is predicated on the assumed and desired congruity between private self and public face, a value which, if we are honest, we no longer share with our ancestors. Perhaps for Molière’s audience Alceste embodied a virtue which they needed to pretend to aspire to, but on our side of the Freudian divide, not only do we know that manners or personality is a mask we wear, a role we play to facilitate social intercourse—Molière knew that!— we expect and accept that behind the scenes, subtextually, the private self is working to satisfy its private needs. The theatricalization of everyday life is by now so complete that we no longer trust a person until we perceive, if only intangibly, the gap between his public persona and his private agenda. In politics, perversely, the American electorate (certainly the media) trusts least the politicians who have not yet proven untrustworthy. They must be hiding something, the thinking goes, and until we at least catch a whiff of the skeletons in the closet or a glimpse of the invisible strings of special interests, we are suspicious.
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Where does this leave Alceste, the Man of Integrity? Judging by the two productions at hand, on the periphery, ironically trying to fight his way into a play that really doesn’t have a place for him. Thus does a position of genuine centrality open up for Célimène and the nature of her affections and appetites become a telling concern. On the most basic dramatic level, this quickly comes down to the question of whether she truly loves Alceste or not (and for what reasons), whether she craves the facile affections of a houseful of suitors more than she honors the irrational love of a rational moralist. The text remains ambiguous on this score, and a production which simply passes on that textual ambiguity to the audience without inflection reneges on some of its responsibility. This is not to ask for tidy textbook answers which explain away her feminine mystique, just for some notion of what turns the lady on. The notions to be found in Philadelphia and Baltimore are not always crystal clear and not always well grounded, but to the extent that we can read Célimène’s character in the scenography we must see that in these productions the choice between Alceste and society is ultimately a false choice and that the comic unmasking of Célimène is a false climax. This might have been staged as a defiant and redemptively feminist rejection of the phallocentric paradigm shared by misanthrope and anthropes alike, but it didn’t play out that way. Neither Célimène seems that principled or idealistic. In fact, the images of serial reproduction and commodification in the set—in Philadelphia, the cushiony wall panels and the closets filled floor to ceiling with consumer goods, and in Baltimore, the mini-busts scattered about the stage—make such values as principle, integrity, and authenticity slightly ridiculous. Each Célimène seems to have carved out a comfortable niche in a more cynical world: in Philadelphia, it is one of conspicuous consumption; in Baltimore, one of festishistic narcissism. In both cases, this needs to be seen not only as a matter of satisfying personal desire (and even perhaps, subliminally, avoiding sexually transmitted diseases in the process) but as a social adaptation to the implied way of the world. So, as the culminating action of these two productions carries Célimène towards her rejection of Alceste and her rejection by her social circle, she doesn’t seem to have that much to lose. The mounting mania of comedy never reaches a level of genuine danger
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for her, a point at which something so preciously valuable (an ethical principle, say, or a happy marriage, or even a particular sense of self) is sufficiently at risk to generate a comic catharsis. The Philadelphia Célimèneis a pampered hedonist, a party girl who could have danced all night if everybody had stayed. If she is less than virginal, she is nevertheless swaddled in a penthouse playhouse which either implies her innocence or promises she won’t suffer too much in the end. The Baltimore Célimène is a sexy narcissist whose constant preening leaves little doubt why the lady is a vamp. She comes and goes with an autoerotic sensuality which is so self-enclosed that it seems to carry whatever set is needed with it. Both productions enact Célimène’s comic unmasking and achieve Comedy’s cleansing action, but that metaphorical cleansing comes as the result of a warm bath rather than a cold shower.
Contemporary Theatre Review 1997, Vol. 6, Part 1, pp. 1–11 Reprints available directly from the publisher Photocopying permitted by license only
© 1997 OPA (Overseas Publishers Association) Amsterdam B.V. Published in The Netherlands by Harwood Academic Publishers Transferred to Digital Printing 2004
Molière’s Misanthrope: A Critique and Reluctant Defense of Courtly Life Sylvie Romanowski
Molière set Le Misanthrope (1666) in an upper-class salon at a time when norms of politeness were being refined for the elite of French society. Molière uses theatre, one of whose functions it is to re-enact social change for the spectators, to examine the evolving norms of sociability. Society’s principal model and central institution was the court of Louis XIV. Alceste rebels against the demands for polite behavior demanded by courtly life, but at the same time hopes to marry the salon’s head, Célimène. His criticisms are powerless to reform the salon members and to win Célimène, but the salon collapses due to inner tensions. Molière thus shows the dangers of non-conformity to social norms of courtly life, even though these are often based on illusion. KEY WORDS: Molière, Le Misanthrope, Courtly life and “honnêteté”, Anti-court critique, Function of drama in society, Critique and acceptance of social norms. La cour ne rend pas content; elle empêche qu’on ne le soit ailleurs. —La Bruyère The court does not make people happy; it prevents them from being happy elsewhere. Le Misanthrope, first presented in 1666, takes place in an upper-class salon of a wealthy widow, Célimène, where people gather in between their duties at Louis XIV s court (still at the Louvre at that time), mingle, exchange compliments and insults, scrutinize each other, and watch over their lawsuits. This world is dominated by the royal court,
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where courtly norms define behavior. Célimène’s salon is a microcourt1 organized around a ruler, a mirror image of the royal court with overlapping constituencies. Molière, who was himself close to the King,2 makes it clear that the play’s milieu is close to the center of power situated at the Louvre: the court is mentioned twice in the first scene (verses 85, 165); Oronte offers Alceste an entry into the court in Act I, 2, and Arsinoé discusses the same possibility at length in III, 5. Célimène values some members of her salon principally because they can exert some influence at the court and assist her in legal problems (I, 2, 544). Alceste’s rebellion can best be understood when certain important aspects of court life are kept in mind. Critiques of the court, court life, and courtiers were nothing new in that era; indeed they flourished simultaneously with the increasing importance and centralizing of the monarch’s entourage that took place during the Renaissance. Molière’s play can be usefully considered as taking part in that anti-court tradition, but it has aims beyond court critique, as I hope to show. This essay will focus on the relations between the play and the society that furnishes both its context for performance and its content. After discussing the nature of court society as it existed in Molière’s time, I will examine briefly the relations between drama and society. Alceste will be situated in this context in order to determine the specific meanings of Molière’s staging of court life and its discontents, and I will discuss the play’s specific critiques of court life. Where appropriate, I will give some examples from two recent productions of Le Misanthrope illustrating some essential features of court life, one in English and very updated to our own times (Falls, dir.), and the other (Rist, dir.), in French and also in modern dress.
1 McBride (1988, 59): “Célimène’s private hotel…is a micro-court within a macro-court”. 2 Paul Bénichou (1948) has most persuasively argued for viewing Molière as sympathetic towards courtly life and values; I would suggest, however, that though Molière was near the court, he was not fully of the court; and that his view and acceptance of that life comes with some irony.
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A rebellion against conformity can be set in any kind of society, since every society has codes of behavior, and assumes that its citizens will follow certain common values. But Alceste, like the rebellious hero of Molière’s Dom Juan to whom he has been compared (Brody, 1969), revolts against a specific type of society which is very unlike our own post-revolutionary, industrial societies, so that if one wants to see beyond the universal element of revolt against generally accepted values and grasp the nature and import of Alceste’s rebellion against this society, one has to understand the nature court life of that time. Historians of court literature and society of the old regime such as Elias (1939, 1969), Greenblatt (1980) and Scaglione (1991) have described the development and nature of court life from ancient times to the end of the old regime, as a hierarchically structured group of people organized around a monarch, linked to each other by codes governing etiquette, wealth allocation and power relations. By the beginning of Louis XIV’s reign, the French court had increased in size and importance, on the one hand relegating to the periphery of power those nobles who did not belong to it, while on the other hand admitting to it larger numbers of recently enobled people. It was impossible to be close to the center of power and not be of the court; conversely it was impossible for a person who was not brought up in a court to have “l’air de la cour” (“courtly behavior”) (Elias, 1969, 204 and generally chapter 5).3 Court society was a cohesive, totally encompassing society, where individuals were on view and little or no distinction was made between private and public life, contrary to modern times. That there might be examples of a courtly type of structure in our society was suggested in a recent production of this play at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago (Robert Falls, dir.).4 The setting was Hollywood of the 1980s, the media world of Hollywood hills; Célimène and her friends were starlets, conscious of their appearance and bodies, while Alceste was a “beat” writer in a rumpled trench-coat trying to live in a society he both needs and hates.5 However, this is a very localized instance of courtly organization, and not at all a model for the rest of our society, whereas the royal courts of the old regime were at the center of power and of the state, having a “representative and central significance…for most Western
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European countries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries” (Elias, 1969, 36). Individuals belonged to the court, in the strong sense of the word belong, and were connected by relations of interdependence that made people inextricably linked to their context. Elias (1969, 76) emphasizes the fact that the social context was not just an external context, but constituted the very being of individuals: “It was difficult if not impossible to turn their backs on the competition for socially valued opportunities…a threat to privilege as such meant for most of the privileged a common threat to what gave their lives meaning and value”.6 In our contemporary times, it is hard for us to fathom how difficult it was for a court member to escape this relationship with the court and with the ruler—precisely what Alceste will attempt to do. A recent production of Le Misanthrope by Christian Rist emphasized the omni-presence of people by having the characters not in the scene remain visible around the edges of the stage, in the orchestra pit, or behind a large, white, back-lit cloth screen where their silhouettes
3
All translations are mine, unless the text is quoted from a published translation listed in the bibliography. 4 Robert Falls writes in a statement of the program “Showbill” for the performances of The Misanthrope at the Goodman Theatre (p. 10): “The world of Alceste and Célimène—the world of intrigue and backbiting in Louis XIV’s court—is a world that’s turned up again and again in countless forms in the centuries since Molière’s day”. 5 Guicharnaud states (1963, 349) that this play “est si peu un document sur une époque que c’est, de toutes les pièces classiques françaises, celle qui se prête le plus aisément a une mise en scène’ en complet-veston’” (“is very little a document on a period so that, of all the French classical plays, it is the one that lends itself the most to a staging in modern ‘suit and tie’”). My point of view is that there are elements of courtly organization still present in our Western modern societies, which enable modern settings to be successful, but that the play is also firmly entrenched in a specific time period and sheds light on the problematic relations between individual and society at the time when courtly organizations were most significant. 6 Elias’s statement is starker in the French translation from the German by Pierre Kamnitzer (1974, 60) (Paris: Calmann-Lévy): “Toute perte dans ces domaines privait la vie de sa signification profonde”. (“Any loss in these areas deprived life of its deepest meaning”.)
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moved about and from which someone occasionally poked a head through to view the proceedings on stage. The first movement of the play shows opposition to the court society by a person holding to other values that challenge the established order. Alceste’s particular position is that he wants to critique the people around him, make them comply to his own norms that are other than courtly, and still be recognized by that society. As part of that opposition, he wants to remove Célimène from that milieu and willfully possess her all to himself. Alceste’s attitude points to another, important aspect of his epoch, which placed great value on strong-willed, autonomous individualism. In the Renaissance, a new sense of the individual arose which stressed “self-fashioning” (Greenblatt’s term, 1980) of one’s identity by the selfconscious exertion of willpower. The individual was understood as “self-identity as a center of knowing” (Reiss, 1982, 59) having a “will …associated with an entirely human reason” (Reiss, 1982, 38, his emphasis) which sought to possess knowledge and dominate the world. However, as Greenblatt notes, individuals were also caught in a web of relations: “fashioning oneself and being fashioned by cultural institutions...were inseparably intertwined;…the human subject itself began to seem remarkably unfree, the ideological product of the relations of power in a particular society” (1980, 256). A peculiar blend of self-affirmation and submission resulted in social codes and types of behavior that have been generally described as “theatrical”: Theatricality, in the sense of both disguise and histrionic selfpresentation, arose from conditions common to almost all Renaissance courts: a group of men and women …revolving uneasily around a center of power, a constant struggle for recognition and attention, and a virtually fetishistic emphasis upon manner. (Greenblatt, 1980,162, my emphasis) The court was anything but a stable, restful place, in spite of its splendid allure: “Life in this circle is in no way peaceful” (Elias, 1939, vol. 2, 271).7 It was filled with rivalries, shifting alliances, competition between individuals and cliques—witness the description
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by writers of the period such as La Bruyère, Saint-Simon, or Madame de La Fayette who writes in her novel La Princesse de Clèves: L’ambition et la galanterie étaient l’âme de cette cour…Il y avait tant d’intérêts et tant de cabales différentes…Personne n’était tranquille, ni indifferent; on songeait a s’élever, à plaire, à servir ou a nuire; on ne connaissait ni l’ennui, ni l’oisiveté, et on était toujours occupé des plaisirs ou des intrigues (1966, 44– 45). (Ambition and love were the very soul of the court. There were so many interests and so many competing groups. No one was at rest or indifferent; people sought to elevate themselves, to please others, to serve others or to do them harm; people were never bored nor unoccupied, and were always busy with seeking pleasure or with intrigue.) Yet the people of the court were also supposed to be “docile and diplomatically adroit servant[s] of princes” (Scaglione, 1991, 287), resulting in a paradoxical opposition between personal and public morality and the “pragmatic coincidence of the theoretically incompatible criteria of being and seeming” (Scaglione, 1991, 289). This instability and tension between the need to conform and the autonomy of ego is linked to a second movement of the play, in which competition leads to the increasing instability and eventual disintegration of Célimène’s salon. The first movement of Alceste’s critique attacks this world from an external perspective; the second movement shows how internal dissentions between individuals lead to the collapse of the salon. One of the principal functions of drama is to show and interpret conflict during periods of cultural change. As Mary-Beth Rose says (1988, 1): “drama not only articulates and represents cultural change, 7
I differ in emphasis from a view that sees the courtier as seeking the permanence of the statue (Apostolidès 1981, 52–54), a view shared by Spingler (1991, 351–353); though the courtier aspired to permanent status within an enclosed space, and the rules of self-control and etiquette helped to give stability, he or she seldom could count on permanence and had to compete continually for a place in the sun.
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but also participates in it…not only to define, but actively to generate, and in some cases to contain cultural conflict”. Drama can articulate and represent two kinds of cultural change. One is the passage from a former, outmoded society to the present society, and the other is a change from the present society to a possible, imagined, future societal order, Reiss (1980, Chapter 1) represents the first view, whereby Renaissance tragedy breaks with mythical thinking and replaces it with a society based on a new model of analytical, logical thinking. Comedy, he says in a footnote (309), “can (and no doubt should) be examined in these terms…comedy appears to put socialized discourse into question, into crisis, in such a way as finally to allow its affirmation as a visible order”. The second possible relation between drama and society views drama, not as the justification of the present order, but as a critique and the imagining of different or future possibilities. Jean Duvignaud (1965, 557–558) emphasizes theatre and art generally as a thought-experiment: “L’expérience artistique tend surtout à répondre à des désirs qui ne sont pas encore définis…l’art n’est pas la réponse à une question, il formule une question pour une réponse qui n’existe pas encore”. (“Artistic experience mainly tends to address desires that are not yet defined… art is not a response to a question, it formulates a question for an answer that does not yet exist”.) Whether theatre is a justification of the present order, or a “simulation” (Apostolidès, 1989, 98) of a possible order, one common aspect should be stressed: theatre does not merely show change, it performs it, producing a change in an audience. Reiss (1980, 24) draws a very important distinction between what a play says and what a play does, between what the characters know and what the spectators construct out of what they have seen: “The protagonist may remain ‘in the tragic’ but not the spectator, not the one who constructed the code”. Thus the question becomes whether Le Misanthrope may be seen as a backward- or forwardlooking play, and that in turn may be discussed in the context of the particular cultural moment at the time of Molière’s writing of the play. At the beginning of this essay, I stated that Le Misanthrope was set in a salon, which was a space where the privileged upper classes could mingle (Lougee, 1976), both the upper strata of the bourgeoisie on their way to enoblement, and the nobility itself, which, in the second
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half of the seventeenth century, consisted increasingly of the new nobility of the robe and less and less of the old, traditional nobility of the sword inherited from feudal times (Scaglione, 1991, 283). Conformity to the new norms was an instrument of upward social mobility and consolidation, in that it enabled the new nobility emerging out of the bourgeoisie and the old nobility to blend together in agreement with a recognized code of behavior. At the time of the young king’s establishment of his own court, codes of behavior were being defined for this new milieu, under the general rubric of “honnêteté”—a term that means “courtesy” and generally replaced the outdated terms “courtois” and “courtoisie” (Stanton, 1980, 48–53, Scaglione, 1991, 253). The passage from “courtoisie” to “honnêteté” was a late stage of the long evolution from knight to courtier to gentleman: “The ideals of courtliness and chivalry underwent a momentous reduction that centered the new idea of nobility on personal ‘honor’, with an accent on the duel as the definitive test of truth and merit” (Scaglione, 1991, 282). The development occuring at the time of Louis XIV took this one step further, replacing honor with “honnêteté” and the duel (in France outlawed in the 1630s by Louis XIII, but still practiced against the law, a problem represented in Corneille’s Le Cid) with the lawsuit.8 The chief exponent of the new “honnête homme” was the Chevalier de Méré, whose first Conversations were to be published two years after the first performance of the Misanthrope. It was a world where the semantic shift from “courtisan” and “homme de bien” to “homme habile” and “homme galant” as well as “honnête homme” showed that sociability counted above all else, above virtue and morality (Stanton 1980, 52). Individualism was tamed by docility, in a world which revolved around a young king desirous of establishing his authority firmly and irrevocably over all ruling classes, in order to avoid a recurrence of the civil disorders known collectively as the Fronde (1648–52).
8
The two main characters, Alceste and Célimène, are involved in lawsuits of an unspecified nature from before the beginning of the play, and Alceste of course will have to appear before a magistrate to defend himself against Oronte’s accusations arising out of his criticism of the sonnet and its author.
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The code of “honnêteté” placed demands on the participants who at least had to seem to conform, if they did not do so inwardly, to the new ideals—hence the split between being (one’s own personal thoughts and values) and seeming to adhere to the required “honnête” behavior and thoughts. Elias has captured this moment of awareness when new social norms are being established: Opposing inclinations do not yet wholly vanish from waking consciousness;…it is already quite clear how human beings are becoming more complex, and internally split in a quite specific way. Each man, as it were, confronts himself. He “conceals his passions”, “disavows his heart”, “acts against his feelings” (1939, vol. 2, 272). This quote describes the situation not only of Alceste, but Célimène and Philinte who are equally aware of the split and externality of the new demands of politeness. But with Alceste Molière shows a character who rebels against a dominant social group which values outward appearances over personal values of integrity and truth. His rebellion is directed against these norms expected of the new courtesy, and as such continues a certain line of critique of the courtly norms and life that accompanied the rise and expansion of courtly life. This constitutes one of the principal movements of the play, that of opposition to the dominant courtly and “honnête” ethos from a different perspective—one that harks back to a previous era and draws upon traditional court critique. Alceste is an example of how not to be courtly, in the general sense, and how not to be “habile” or “honnête” in particular. He commits several offenses against certain well-known precepts of courtly behavior that were further refined and emphasized by the ideal of the “honnête homme”. Indeed, several critics interested in anti-court writing (Mayer, 1951; Smith, 1966; Scaglione, 1991) have placed Alceste within this tradition. Three main aspects of Alceste’s non-courtly attitudes may be discerned. First, he commits faults against the demands that a courtly person show what Castiglione names “sprezzatura”, an untranslatable term meaning a free and easy manner, an airy manner, detachment, negligence, casualness.9 Second, Alceste cannot conform to the newer norms of politeness, preferring
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to stay with outmoded concepts of personal honor. And finally, he commits grievous faults against the code of “galanterie”, the behavior expected of men towards women. The offense against casualness, the art of concealing one’s art and effort to appear refined, strikes the spectator from the beginning of the play, as Molière indicates that Alceste sits, then gets up with a brusque movement. His repetition of the pronouns “moi” and “je” (“me” and “I”)10 during the opening scene (10 times in the first 12 verses of the play) also shows an insistence on himself that is not in the best of taste. Especially forceful is the use of the present tense “je veux” (“I want”) three times in those same verses, because in French this tense of the verb vouloir carries a much stronger meaning which would be better rendered as “I insist on it”, or “I demand it”: Richard Wilbur has translated one of those expressions, “Je veux me fâcher”, as “I choose to be rude”. Alceste insists heavily that he wants to be singled out (1,1, 63), that he wants to be different from the rest of the world. He even cultivates contradiction in order to appear different, as Célimène observes about Alceste, “ne faut-il pas bien que Monsieur contredise?”) (II, 4, 669); for otherwise he would appear to be “un homme du commun” (Wilbur: “an ordinary being”) (II, 4, 675). Even his swearing calls attention to his rudeness: in the Rist production, the deliberateness of his swearing was emphasized by the actor who split the word “morbleu” and other such expressions into two distinct syllables and paused afterwards. This passion, this lack of modesty, his unwillingness to hide his distaste for social norms and for the people around him, all make him the contrary of the polite, discreet “honnête homme”. It is ironic, of course, that the people criticized by Célimène in II, 4 also commit the same kind of errors against the principle of “casualness”: those people are called extravagant, full of pride in themselves even though they are boring, overly insistent on their talent which they actually lack. Alceste’s own lack of savoir-faire is emphasized in that he will take any opportunity to separate himself from the others, even when he might agree with Célimène about a frequent and deplorable lack of manners that abounds. Alceste’s hubris and total lack of casualness is linked to a former, older form of behavior no longer current in his time. This anachronism, which has been noted by some critics (Gaines, 1984; Parish, 1991), is best exemplified by the comic scene opposing
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Oronte’s sonnet, written in the then current “précieux” style, and Alceste’s folk ditty harking back to the earlier age of King Henry IV. A critic (Riggs, 1992) has commented on the irony that Alceste actually finds himself in the very situation evoked in Oronte’s sonnet: “to hope is to despair/When one must hope eternally” (Wilbur, I, 1, 331– 332). I would add that there is a further and complementary irony in the fact that Alceste’s folk song tells of a situation exactly opposite to his own: no one has offered him the keys of Paris if he would give up his beloved, and anyway he does not possess the love of his “darling more fair” (Wilbur, I, 2, 399–400). Another layer of irony here is that Henry IV is the very king who, upon becoming the monarch, executed resistors to his rule, thus laying the foundations for the new centralized court structure and dominance later brought to a peak by Louis XIV. Henry IV may be said to have shaped his court in such a way that would lead to later “honnête” codes of behavior: The change from courtois to honnête…reflected a gradual change from the image of a knight who drew his authority and legitimacy from a court…but acted as a relatively independent agent…to that of the man of court who saw himself and was seen by the whole society as the acme of civilized living…This process spanned the twelfth through the seventeenth century, the moment of transition coming at the time of Henry IV of France, …who…upon becoming king felt compelled to execute “those who resisted, those who did not understand that from free lords and knights they were to become dependent servants of the king” (Scaglione, 1991, 294).
9
I use the term “casualness” to render the Italian word “sprezzatura” used by Castiglione, and variously translated as “negligence”, “artlessness”; this word is taken from Woodehouse’s discussion of The Book of the Courtier (1978, 76– 80). Artlessness was a complex and sophisticated notion that combined true mastery of art with the concealment of that mastery and implied that only superior persons were able to achieve this. 10 The translations for Molière’s text are my own, unless I indicate that they are taken from Richard Wilbur’s translation.
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Not only is Alceste not in accord with his own text, being rather more like the man in Oronte’s despised sonnet, but he has committed a grievous fault that might be punishable by death. Alceste has no being and no language of his own, and the very king-hero he invokes would have censured his rebellious behavior. That Alceste has nowhere to stand, no place of his own, will be reflected in the ending of the play, when he runs off, leaving people rushing after him, thereby emptying the stage of people. The “désert” (Wilbur: “some desert land”) he seeks will appear, or at least threaten to appear, on stage before the very eyes of the spectators. Alceste’s antagonism towards “vos gens à la mode” (“your fashionable people”) (I, 1, 42), “ces vices du temps” (“today’s vices”) (I, 1, 59), and his anachronistic behavior is stressed frequently at the beginning of the play, and opposed to Philinte and Eliante’s attention to etiquette, grace, and Célimène’s hewing to societal conventions of “les moeurs d’à présent” (“present-day behavior”) (I, 1, 220). Philinte states: “Cette grande roideur des vertus des vieux âges/Heurte trop notre siècle et les communs usages” (Wilbur: “The rigid virtues of the ancient days/ Are not for us; they jar with all our ways”) (I, 1, 153–154). Later Eliante, perhaps more favorably disposed because of her feelings towards Alceste, remarks: “la sincérité dont son âme se pique/A quelque chose, en soi, de noble et d’héroïque./C’est une vertu rare au siècle d’aujourd’hui” (Wilbur: “This honesty in which he takes such pride/ Has—to my mind—its noble, heroic side. /In this false age, such candor seems outrageous”) (IV, 1, 1165–1167). The “art de plaire” (“the art of pleasing” [others]), which Jean Mesnard (1972) argues forms the thematic crux of the play, is transgressed by Alceste in a third and most important way: he refuses to follow the codes of “galanterie”, that word which describes the norms of courteous behavior of men towards women. Guicharnaud lists no less than twelve errors committed by Alceste towards Célimène (1963, 397–98). By quarrelling with her, by forcing her to declare herself, by his jealousy, by putting her on the spot, by accusing her of duplicity, and doing so publicly, he is showing such outrageous non-courtly behavior that he becomes ridiculous (Cancalon, 1972) and Célimène herself is first taken aback, then recovers and resists his demands. Alceste wants possession of his beloved, in short he wants absolutes where they are the least possible,
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in human interrelations in an age which prized accommodations and appearances above all. Alceste’s longing for absolute love merges with his pride, his sense of innate self-worth, his search for a permanent fixed state of being, and contrasts radically with the mores of courtesy, modesty, adaptation of oneself to others. Eliante’s long speech (II, 4, 711–730), indicating how to praise a beloved even though that beloved may have faults, points to a deep difference between Alceste’s attitude and those of the people around him: whereas the others are willing to live in a world where appearances and reality do not always coincide, Alceste wants truth and permanence. As Clément Rosset states, Alceste’s problem is that he is looking for authenticity, for a state of nature and for essential value in an age which was marked by scepticism towards those values, and which prized relative worth, living in the moment, and social adaptability: Alceste…exig[e] d’elle [Célimène] de la nature que celle-ci… est incapable de lui fournir. Alceste…ignore…qu’il n’y a pas de personnages faux parce qu’il n’y a pas de personnages vrais… [1] es malheurs d’Alceste…sont les malheurs mêmes du naturalisme (1973, 74). (Alceste demands nature from Célimène, which she cannot give him. Alceste does not know that there are no false people because there are no true people. Alceste’s problems are the very same problems as those of the philosophy of naturalism.) Rosset calls “naturalism” the view that there exists a transcendent realm called “nature” viewed as order, necessity, autonomy, which furnishes a fixed point of reference to human thought and action (1973, 9–13); this he calls “le mirage naturaliste” (“the naturalist illusion”) (1973, 9), which generally dominates Western philosophical thought with the exception of a few periods where the contrary view, called by him “artificialist”, comes into prominence: chief among these in the modern period are the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with Montaigne, Molière, Pascal, and Hobbes. There is then a concurrence between this artificialist view of humanity and the type of lifestyle represented by its most significant institution, the court.
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Alceste’s desire to fix a permanent, natural value on people contrasts with the life of the court, which is constantly changing, with shifting alliances between people, with safeguarding of appearances and an artful but apparently casual dissimulation of inner feelings, a state of affairs which Madame de Lafayette described so well in her novel. Alceste’s desire to “block” Célimène in a certain place, to prevent her from playing her role(s) in the spectacle of society, runs counter to the unstable social life of the times. The opposite situation was depicted in Dom Juan, where society’s wanting to immobilize Dom Juan was contrary to the Don’s desire for escape and freedom (Spingler, 1991, 351–352), but the roles are reversed: in Dom Juan society seeks stability and wants to “block” the rebel, thus playing the part of Alceste, while Célimène is the one who seeks mobility. How can society be depicted as shifting and unstable in one play, and on the contrary as seeking stability and “statue-like” immobility in another? In keeping with Rosset’s view of the seventeenth century as an age which was “artificialist”, that is, critical of any essentialist position, I would propose that Molière, by including both attitudes of “blocking” and escape in each play, actually shows how both blocking and escape negate each other, and how the presence of both attitudes is precisely the means to avoid any fixation in essentialism. Alceste’s ultimate exit from the courtly world, after his failure to immobilize Célimène so that each might become everything for the other (“trouver tout en moi, comme moi tout en vous” [V, 4, 1782]), is one of the two principal movements of the play. The other movement is the disintegration and the downfall of Célimène’s salon which is due only partly to Alceste’s critiques and anti-courtly behavior. Indeed, he is merely a tangential cause of this downfall, caused principally by the internal tensions between the characters, their jealousies, and their rivalries: between Alceste and Oronte, Alceste and Philinte, Arsinoé and Célimène, between the two marquis Acaste and Clitandre, and between those two and Oronte. Alceste’s external critique was powerless to change the world he hated; the world he so hated will, however, fall apart due to its own inability to contain the powerful egos, through a failure of its members to play the “honnête” game skillfully enough. The process of that salon’s demise was started by Alceste’s persistent chase of Célimène, which in turn provokes Arsinoé to seek
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revenge upon her social rival. His desire to find fixed values and the circumstance of rivalry between two women expose the world for what it is: duplicitous and harsh. Alceste’s direct confrontation with appearances (with Oronte), with uncertainty (as he questions Célimène’s letter to an unidentified person in IV, 3) and his search for truth and eternal love would have been ineffective without the particular circumstances of rivalry between Célimène and Arsinoé who exposes Célimène as duplicitous—or rather, exposes her as having committed the sin of leaving too much written evidence of her duplicity in the wrong hands. The implosion of her micro-court did not happen for any single reason, but rather was due to a combination of reasons, some based on external values of truth and virtue represented by Alceste, the “outsider” (Gearhart, 1977, Knutson, 1988), some based on a concatenation of personal vendettas. Neither external critique nor internal dissentions are sufficient cause to bring about the downfall of Célimène’s world. But both occur together, and lead to an emptying of the stage. It is time to examine what the play accomplishes at the end. Apart from Philinte and Eliante’s marriage—it too coming almost as an aside at the end—nothing is accomplished in the play, and no clear message emerges concerning morality or immorality. What is clear is the total destruction of this world: there is no refuge either into truth or into game playing, as both are potentially dangerous. Better then, the spectators might conclude, to maintain this world, imperfect though it is, rather than risk its falling apart. Illusions are better than a void, and “honnêteté” at least enables people to co-exist, however uneasily. A comparison with Dom Juan will highlight the particular meaning of the ending and the significance of the play as a whole. The exit of Dom Juan is both a punishment affirming conventional morality, as he descends into hell, and a vindication of his individualism, a permanent escape into the off-stage of the world represented by theatre, as discussed by Spingler (1991, 366) who thus diverges from Guicharnaud’s view that the final triumph “n’est que celui du théâtre…. La satisfaction offerte par le dénouement est bien ténue” (“is merely that of theatre. The satisfaction offered by the ending is quite thin”) (1963, 341). I would like to argue that the Misanthrope’s
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ending is not “mere” theatre because theatre is not “mere” representation but actual action for an audience—it “does” something, to use Reiss’s expression. In Le Misanthrope, the ending in the play, and the ending of the play also question each other, but the opposition is not quite as stark as in Dom Juan where the morality within the play is negated by the triumphal exit of the rebellious nobleman from the stage. At the end, Alceste does what he had stated at the beginning, when he said he sometimes had urges to “fuir dans un desert l’approche des humains” (Wilbur: “flee and find/Some desert land unfouled by humankind”) (I, 1, 144). He renounces all life in the world in order to flee “toús les humains” (Wilbur: “the human race”) (V, 4, 1762), whether or not Célimène will follow him into his retreat. Frightened at the prospect of a marriage to such a man, even after she is abandoned by her friends, Célimène balks and shortly leaves the stage. Rist emphasized her exit forcefully by having her go out by a side door which opened out directly to the outside, into the chill of a cold November night. Shortly afterwards Alceste also leaves and the other characters pursue him, thus emptying the stage contrary to the norms of comedy which usually gathers all the characters in to a final, unifiying tableau. At the end, Philinte, one of the two “honnête” characters, states his request for Eliante’s hand and love in terms of old-fashioned heroism: “Ah! cet honneur, Madame, est toute mon envie./Et j’y sacrifierais et mon sang et ma vie” (my emphasis; “Ah, madam, that honor is what I aspire to. And I would sacrifice my blood and my life for it”) (V, 4, 1799–1800). Alceste also uses the work “honneur”, but in his mouth it has other connotations: he is seeking a spot on earth “Où d’être homme d’honneur on ait la liberté” (“where a man of honor might live in freedom”) (V, 4, 1806). Honor, however, does not triumph: Alceste goes into solitude, and Philinte’s honor is deprived of any strong moral or aristocratic force and transmuted into a galant love term. Thus the play rehearses for the spectators the void that results from the double assault on the norms of society, the assault from the hostile outsider Alceste, and the assault of the members on each other. Theater does perform an experiment here, which Duvignaud (1965) suggests is the function of theatre. However, here we do not see the
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simulation of another possible or future world, “the mourning of old values and the trying out of new values” as Apostolidès says (1989, 101). This play does not present solutions, save maintaining the current social norms, thus fulfilling the more conservative function Reiss (1980) and Knutson (1988) indicate. Given the fact of the hierarchically ordered world of the social élite, Molière’s audience is left with a warning to accept it, with the examples of Philinte and Eliante who are able to be flexible enough to be both lucid and polite, sincere and accommodating. What is disastrous for all the other characters is a positive object lesson for the audience. We are far from the triumphalism of a Dom Juan punished by God and yet eternally victorious on the stage. Molière too, like Alceste, was in the court but not of it, and after having challenged it powerfully in Dom Juan, one year later in Le Misanthrope he again questions its illusions, its performance ethic. Theatrical illusion, so powerfully present in the social context, finds a somewhat reluctant and ironic defense through theatre itself, showing how to live with the “sorry truth…of a splendorous but corrupt civilization” (Brody, 1969, 575–76). 11 These two plays, taken together, suggest that there are only two choices: either reject and destroy this world and be punished, or put up with it and navigate skillfully within it. After having envisaged its destruction Molière lets it stand, but not before having shaken this society up to, but not including, its foundations.12
11
This contradiction in turns points to a fundamental “double bind” posed by humanistic civilization, as suggested by Defaux (1976, 670): ‘l’incompatibilité du monde et de la valeur, de l’éthique et du politique” (“the incompatibility of the world and of value, of ethics and politics”). Court society provided not a solution, but an accommodation to this basic dilemma that our modern industrial, bourgeois societies still struggle with; but society being much more fragmented than in the days of the centralized court, perhaps that dilemma does not appear so sharp and visible. On the difference and continuity that obtain between court society and our own, see Elias, 1939, vol. 2, especially Part Two, Chapters V and VII.
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References Works Written Before 1900 La Bruyère (1962) Caractères. 1696. Ed. R.Garapon. Paris: Garnier La Fayette, Madame de (1966) La Princesse de Clèves. 1678. Ed. Antoine Adam. Paris: Garnier-Flammarion Molière (1971) Le Misanthrope. 1666. Ed. Georges Couton. Paris: GallimardPléiade Wilbur, Richard, trans. (1954) The Misanthrope and Tartuffe. By Molière. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World Works Written After 1900 Apostolidès, Jean-Marie (1985) Le roi-machine. Paris: Minuit Apostolidès, Jean-Marie (1989) “Molière and the Sociology of Exchange”. In Literature and Social Practice, Eds. Philippe Desan, Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, and Wendy Griswold, pp. 98–113. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Bénichou, Paul (1948) Morales du grand siècle. Paris: Gallimard Brody (1969) “Dom Juan and Le Misanthrope, or the Esthetics of Individualism in Molière”. PMLA 84:559–76 Cancalon, Elaine (1972) “L’inversion de l’amour courtois dans trois comédies de Molière”. Neophilologus 56:134–45 Defaux, Gérard (1976) “Sagesse et folie d’Erasme a Molière”. Modern Language Notes 91: 655–71 Dickson, Jesse (1989) “Honnêteté et idéologie dans Le Misanthrope”. Cahiers du dix-septième 3:71–81 Duvignaud, Jean (1965) Sociologie du Théâtre: Essai sur les ombres collectives. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France Elias, Norbert (1939) The Civilizing Process. Vol. 1: The History of Manners. Vol. 2: State Formation and Civilization. 1978. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Oxford, Basil Blackwell Elias, Norbert (1969) The Court society. 1974. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. New York: Parthenon Books Falls, Robert, dir. (1989) The Misanthrope. With David Darlow, Kim Cattrall. Goodman Theatre, Chicago Gaines, James F. (1984) Social Structures in Molière’s Theater. Columbus: Ohio State University Press Gearhart, Snzanne (1977) “The place and sense of the ‘outsider’: Structuralism and the Lettres persanes”. Modern Language Notes 92:724–48
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Greenblatt, Stephen (1980) Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Guicharnaud, Jacques (1963) Molière, une aventure théâtrale. Paris: Gallimard Gutwirth, Marcel (1966) Molière ou l’invention comique: la métamorphose des thèmes, la création des types. Paris: Minard Javitch, Daniel (1971) “The Philosopher of the Court: A French Satire Misunderstood”. Comparative Literature 23:97–124 Knutson, Harold C. (1988) The Triumph of Wit: Molière and Restoration Comedy. Columbus, Ohio State University Press Lougee, Carolyn C. (1976) Le Paradis des Femmes: Women, Salons and Social Stratification in Seventeenth-Century France. Princeton: Princeton University Press McBride, Robert (1988) “From Inflation to Deflatioń—Molière’s Changing Vision of Court Life”. Seventeenth-Century French Studies 10:53–71 Mayer, C.A. (1951) “L’honnête homme: Molière and Philibert de Vienne’s ‘Philosophe de Court'”. Modern Language Review 46:196–217 Mesnard, Jean (1972) “Le Misanthrope: Mise en question de l’art de plaire”. Revue d’Histoire Littéraire de la France 72:863–89 Mongrédien, Georges (1950) La vie de société aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Paris: Hachette Parish, Richard. (1991) “Le Misanthrope: des raisonneurs aux rieurs”. French Studies 45: 17–35 Reiss, Timothy J. (1980) Tragedy and Truth: Studies in the Development of a Renaissance and Neoclassical Discourse. New Haven: Yale University Press Reiss, Timothy J. (1982) The Discourse of Modernism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press Riggs, Larry W. (1992) “Another Purloined Letter: Text, Transparency, and Transcendence in Le Misanthrope”. French Review 66:26–37 Rist, Christian, dir. (1991) Le Misanthrope.With Philippe Müller, Irène Jacob. Le Studio Classique. Northwestern University, Cahn Auditorium Rose, Mary-Beth (1988) The Expense of Spirit: Love and Sexuality in English Renaissance Drama. Ithaca: Cornell University Press Rosset, Clément (1973) L’anti-nature. Elements pour une philosophie tragique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France Scaglione, Aldo (1991) Knights at Court: Courtliness, Chivalry, and Courtesy from Ottonian Germany to the Italian Renaissance. Berkeley: University of California Press Smith, Pauline M. (1966) The Anti-Courtier Trend in Sixteenth Century French Literature. Geneva: Droz Spingler, Michael (1991) “The Actor and the Statue: Space, Time, and Court Performance in Molière’s Dom Juan”. Comparative Drama 25:351–68
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Stanton, Domna (1975) “The Ideal of ‘repos’ in the Seventeenth-Century French Literature”. In From Humanism to Classicism: Essays by his former students in memory of Nathan Edelman. L’Esprit Créateur 15:79–104 Stanton, Domna (1980) The Aristocrat as Art: A study of the “Honnête Homme” and the “Dandy” in Seventeenth- and Nineteenth-Century French Literature. New York: Columbia University Press Sweetser, Marie-Odile (1976) “Structure et signification du Misanthrope”. French Review 49: 505–13 Sweetser, Marie-Odile (1981) “Domaines de la critique molièresque”. Buvres et Critiques 6: 9–28 Whigham, Frank (1983) “Interpretation at Court: Courtesy and the Performance-Audience Dialectic”. New Literary History 14:623–39 White, Hayden (1978) Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press Woodhouse, J.R. (1978) Baldesar Castiglione, A Reassessment of The Courtier. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press Yarrow, P.J. (1959) “A Reconstruction of Alceste”. French Studies 13:314–31
Contemporary Theatre Review 1997, Vol. 6, Part 1, pp. 1–11 Reprints available directly from the publisher Photocopying permitted by license only
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Notes on Contributors
Scott T.Cummings received his Master of Fine Arts in playwriting from Carnegie Mellon University and His Doctor of Fine Arts in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism form The Yale Drama School. He was Co-Editor of Theatre Three (Carnegie Mellon) and Resident Dramaturg for the City Theatre Company of Pittsburgh. His writing has appeared in Theatre Journal, Performing Arts Journal, Modern Drama, and The Journal of Popular Culture. He teaches Theatre and Drama at Boston College. Jean-Michel Lanskin is Assistant Professor of French at Dusquesne University where he teaches 19th and 20th century literature and theatre. He has published articles on Molière, Dumas Fils, Hugo Zola, and Pierre Magnan. His book, Le Scénario sans amour d’une file de joie on Zola’s Nana is scheduled to appear in December 1995. Sylvie Romanowski teaches at Northwestern University and specializes in the Freneh literature of the seventeenth, eighteenth and twentieth centuries. She has published a book, L’illusion chez Descartes: la structure du discours cartésien (Paris: Klincksieck, 1974) and articles on Molière, Racine, préciosité, Montesquieu, Colette, and Malraux. Michael Spingler is Associate Professor of Freneh and Adjunct in Theatre Arts at Clark University. He is also Associate Director of
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Clark’s Center for Contemporary Performance. Professor Spingler has directed numerous plays in French and English and his publications include studies on Molière, Jarry, Ionesco, and Anouilh.
Contemporary Theatre Review 1997, Vol. 6, Part 1, pp. 1–11 Reprints available directly from the publisher Photocopying permitted by license only
© 1997 OPA (Overseas Publishers Association) Amsterdam B.V. Published in The Netherlands by Harwood Academic Publishers Transferred to Digital Printing 2004
Index
acting techniques, in Vitez’s Molière, 20–30 actors: in Lewis’s production of Le Misanthrope, 48, 50–52; own costumes supplied by, in 17th century, 23; response to costumes by, 23; in Robinson’s production of Le Misanthrope, 45–46; Vitez as, in Molière tetralogy, 28– 30; in Vitez’s Molière, 23–41 American Conservatory Theatre, 18, 41 anti-court critique, 55–72 Apostolidès, Jean-Marie, 59n, 62 “artificialist,” 68 “Atelier permanent de farce et de tragédie,” 14, 17 audience: and “dusting off the classics,” 18; “elitist” audience of Vitez, 16–17, 30; of molière, 52;
of Vitez’s Molière, 30 L’Avare (Molière), Planchon’s staging of, 8–9 Avignon Festival, 14–30 Baltimore Waltz, The, 41 Baltimore’s Center Stage, 43–44, 48–55 Baudelaire, Charles, 4 Bénichou, Paul, 55n2 Benjamin, Walter, 7n Berk, Philip, 9–12 Berkeley Repertory Theatre, 48 Bermel, Alfred, 2 Book of the Courtier, The (Woodehouse), 64n10 Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (Molière), 9–12 Brecht, Bertolt, 8, 9, 41 Brody, Jules, 57, 71 Burgraves, The (Hugo), 16 Cancalon, Elaine, 67 Cassidy, Orlagh, 46–48 Castiglione, Baldassare, 63–64, 64n9 Center Stage (Baltimore), 43–44, 48–55
78
INDEX 79 Chaillot Theatre, 30 Chekhov, Anton, 41 Christmas Carol, 41 Le Cid (Corneille), 62 Classic Stage Company, 41 classical literature and theatre, vii–2, 13, 17, 18, 21, 41 Claudel, Paul-Louis-Charles-Marie, 30 Cleveland Play House, 41 Collins, Pat, 49 Comédie Française, 14, 30 comedy: as genre, 52, 61; physical comedy, 2–3, 4, 21; romantic comedy, 52 commedia, 4, 8 Communist Party, 17 Conservatoire National d’ Art Dramatique, 14, 28 Conversations (Méré), 63 Copeau, Jacques, 17 Corneille, Pierre, 17, 62 costumes: actor’s response to, 23; modern costumes for classical theatre, 21; in Robinson’s production of Le Misanthrope, 44; supplied by actors in 17th century, 23; for Vitez’s Molière, 21–23 courtly life, 55–72, 59n, 71n cultural change, in Le Misanthrope, 7–8, 55–72 Cummings, Scott, 3, 5–7, 8, 41–55, 75 Dallas Theatre Center, 41 Defaux, Gérard, 71n Delsaert, Marc, 24 directing approaches, in Vietz’s Molière, 2–3, 20–23
Dom Juan (Molière): Alceste compared to rebellious hero of, 57; Brechtian “adaptation” of, 8; cast of, in Vitez’s Molière, 16, 24, 27; compared with Le Misanthrope, 70– 72; costumes for, 23; cultural change in, 7–8; ending of, 70–72; photographs of Vitez’s production of, 33–34; role of Commander in, 28–30; role of Elvire in, 27; role of society in, 68; Vitez as actor in, 28–30; in Vitez’s tetralogy, 18–20 drama: function of theatre, 12, 71; and so ciety, 61–62 dueling, 62 Dullin, Charles, 17 Durand, Jean-Claude, 24 Duvignaud, Jean, 61–62, 71 Dux, Pierre, 30 L’Ecole des Femmes (Molière): cast of, in Vitez’s tetralogy, 16, 25; costumes for, 23; photographs of Vitez’s production of, 31–32, 35; regional theatre production of, 41; role of Georgette in, 25; in Vitez’s tetralogy, 18, 24 Edmunds, Kate, 48 Elias, Norbert, 57, 58, 63, 71n fabliaux, 4 Falls, Robert, 7, 57, 58, 58n4 farce:
80 INDEX critics’ bias against, vii–3; Jarry on, 2; as theatre’s ultimate truth, 3; Vitez’s use of, 21 female characters, in Molière plays, 27– 28 feminist theories, 7 Ferguson, Lynnda, 48, 50–51 Ferran, Peter, 8, 13 Fingerhut, Arden, 44 Fontana, Richard, 24 Friday (Tournier), 16 Fronde, 63 Gaines, James F., 66 García Lorca, Federico, 41 Gastaldi, Jany, 24 Gearhart, Suzanne, 70 Goodman Theatre, 7, 57, 58, 58n4 Greenblatt, Stephen, 57, 59 Guicharnaud, Jacques, 4, 58n5, 67, 70 Harrison, Helen, 8–9 Harrison, Tony, 44 Hartford (Conn.) Stage, 41, 43 Henry IV, 66 Hobbes, Thomas, 68 “honnêteté,” 62–63, 66, 68–71 Hugo, Victor, 16, 25 Ibsen, Henrik, 41 Imaginary Invalid, The (Molière), 18, 20 Indiana Rep, 41 individualism, 59, 63 Ivry Theatre, 14, 16, 17 Jarry, Alfred, 2 Jealous Husband, The (Molière), 14, 17 Jouvet, Louis, 17, 28 Kamnitzer, Pierre, 58n6
Knutson, Harold C., 70, 71 Krass, Michael, 44 La Bruyère, 55, 61 La Fayette, Madame de, 61, 68 La Grange, Charles Varlet de, 21, 25 Lamos, Mark, 43 Lanskin, Jean-Michel Charles, 2, 14–30, 75 Lauper, Cyndi, 46 Learned Ladies, The (Molière), 18, 41 Lemaire, Claude, 23 Lewinson, Ewa, 16 Lewis, Irene, 5–7, 43–44, 48–55 lighting, in Lewis’s production of Le Misanthrope, 49 Long Wharf Theatre, 41 Lorca, Federico García, 41 Lougee, Carolyn C, 62 Louis XIII, 62 Louis XIV, 55, 57, 58n4, 62, 66 Lucrèce Borgia (Hugo), 16 Marivaux, Pierre, 17, 28 Markle, Stephen, 48, 51–52 Marvin’s Room, 41 Mayer, C.A., 63 McBride, Robert, 55n1 Medea, 16 Méré, Chevalier de, 63 Mesnard, Jean, 67 Miller, Arthur, 41 Le Misanthrope (Molière): Alceste’s rebellion in, 57, 59, 61, 62n, 63–72; cast of, in Lewis’s production of, 48, 50–52; cast of, in Molière’s tetralogy, 16, 24, 25–27; cast of, in Robinson’s production of, 45–48;
INDEX 81 Célimiène at center of, 5–7, 44–55; compared with Dom Juan, 70–72; confrontation between Arsinoé and Célimène in, 25–27; costumes for, 21, 23; courtly life and anticourt critique in, 7–8, 55–72; cultural change in, 7–8, 55–72; disintegration and downfall of Célimène’s salon in, 68–70; ending of, 70–72; Falls’s Goodman Theater production of, 7, 57, 58, 58n2; first production of, 55; Harrison version of, 44; Lewis’s production of, 5–7, 43–44, 48–55; marginalization of Alceste in, 7, 8, 51–53; photographs of Vitez’s production of, 36–41; regional theatre productions of, 41; Rist’s production of, 57, 59; Robinson’s production of, 5–7, 43– 48, 52–55; Vitez as actor in, 28; in Vitez’s tetralogy, 18–20 mise-en-scène, in Le Misanthrope, 7 Les Misérables (Hugo), 25 Misers, The (Molière), 41 modern staging approach, to Le Misanthrope, 43–48, 52–55 Molière: in American regional theatre, 41; Baudelaire on, 4; and critics’ bias against farce, vii–2; emphasis on money in, 9–12; female characters in plays of, 27–28; and going beyond the limits, 12; institutional taboos surrounding, vii– 2;
life of, reflected through works, 18– 20; prose used by, 9; reconsideration of teaching of, 12– 13, 13; recuperation of physical Molière, 4; relationship with the King and court, 55, 55n2, 71; Robinson’s versus Lewis’s productions of Le Misanthrope, 5–7, 41–55; tradition concerning, 9, 17; “Vitez’s Molière,” 14–30. See also specific plays money: Molière’s emphasis on, 9–12; for theatrical productions, 9 Montaigne, Michel, 68 Moyer, Allen, 5, 44 National Theatre, 44 naturalism, 67–68 O’Neill, Eugen, 41 Parish, Richard, 66 Le Partage de Midi (Claudel), 30 Pascal, Blaise, 68 performance, as dangerous, 2 Performance Theory (Schechner), 2 Phèdre (Racine), 14, 21 Philadelphia Drama Guild, 41, 43–48, 52–55 physical comedy, 2–3, 4, 21 Pirandello, 41 Pittsburgh Public Theatre, 41 Planchon, Roger, 8–9, 20 Playmakers Rep, 41 popular theatre: critics’ fear of, 2–3;
82 INDEX stifling of, in 18th and early 19th centuries, vii; postmodern staging approach, to Le Misanthrope, 43–44, 48–55 La Princesse de Clèves (La Fayette), 61 props, for Vitez’s Molière, 21 Racine, Jean, 14, 17 Reiss, Timothy J., 59, 61, 62, 70, 71 replicated copies, 7, 7n Riggs, Larry W., 66 Rist, Christian, 57, 59, 70 Robinson, Mary B., 5–7, 43–48, 52–55 Romanowski, Sylvie, 7–8, 12, 55–72, 75 romantic comedy, 52 Romero, Laurence, 3, 12–13 Rose, Mary-Beth, 61 Rosset, Clément, 67–68 Saint-Simon, 61 Sandre, Didier: acting roles in Vitez’s Molière, 24; first meeting with Vitez, 16; on recupation of physical Molière, 4; on tradition concerning Molière, 9, 17; on Vitez as teacher, 12; professional career of 14–16; Vitez’s Molière cycle for 1978 Avignon Festival, 2–3, 14–30 Saxe-Meiningen, 44 Scaglione, Aldo, 57, 61, 62, 63 Scapin (Molière), 41 Schechner, Richard, 2 School for Wives, The. See L’Ecole des Femmes (Molière) “self-fashioning,” 59 set design: Lewis’s production of Le Misanthrope, 5–7, 43–44, 48–55;
Robinson’s pro- duction of Le Misanthrope, 5–7, 43–48, 52–55; for Vitez’s Molière, 21 Shakespeare, William, vii, 2, 41 Shaw, George Bernard, 41 Simon, Alfred, 2 Smith, Pauline M., 63 social norms, critique of, 55–72 society and drama, 61–62 Sondheim, Stephen, 41 South Coast Rep, 41 Spingler, Michael, vii–13, 59n, 68, 70, 75 Stanislavsky, Konstantin, 44 Stanton, Domna, 63 Strancar, Nada: acting roles in Vitez’s Molière, 5, 5n2, 25–27; on attempted rape in Tartuffe, 4–5, 18; personal response to costumes, 23; professional career of, 14–16, 25; on recuperation of physical Molière, 4; and staging of Molière, 2, 3; as student of Vitez, 16; on tradition concerning Molière, 9, 17; Vitez’s Molière cycle for 1978 Avignon Festival, 14–30; on women’s guilt in Molière, 27–28 Sum of Us, The, 41 T.N. P. (Théâtre National Populaire), 14, 17 Tartuffe (Molière): cast of, in Vitez’s tetralogy, 16, 24– 25; costumes for 23; critic’s cautions about, 2;
INDEX 83 photographs of Vitez’s production of, 31; props used in staging of, 21; regional theatre productions of 41; role of Dorine in, 25; Tartuffe’s attempted rape of Elmira, 4–5, 18; Vitez as actor in, 28; in Vitez’s tetralogy, 18–20 theatre, function of, 12, 71 Théâtre de Chaillot, 14 Théâtre des Quartiers d’Ivry, 14, 16, 17 Théâtre National Populaire (T.N.P.), 14, 17 theatrical production: actor’s insights on characters, 5; Falls’s production of Le Misanthrope, 7, 57, 58, 58n4; Lewis’s production of Le Misanthrope, 5–7, 43–44, 48–55; money for, 9; and physical heritage of farce, 2–3; Rist’s production of Le Misanthrope, 57, 59; Robinson’s production of Le Misanthrope, 5–7, 43–48, 52–55; uniqueness of each production, 4; of Vitez’s Molière, 20–41. See also specific plays Tournier, Michel 16 Utah Shakespeare Festival, 41 Valadié, Dominique, 24 Veillon, Olivier-René, 3 “Le Vieux Saltimbanque” (Baudelaire), 4 Vilar, Jean, 14, 17, 18, 21, 28 Vilhon, Gilbert, 25, 28 Vitez, Antoine: acting parts for, in Molière tetralogy, 28–30;
audience of, 16–17, 30; casting for Molière tetralogy, 23– 25, 28; choice of plays for tetralogy, 18–20; death of, 14; directing career of, 14, 30; directing techniques of, 2–3, 20–23; first staging of Molière by, 17; Molière cycle for 1978 Avignon festival, 2–3, 4, 14–30; and physical comedy, 2–3, 4; as teacher, 12, 14, 16, 18, 28 Wilbur, Richard, 64, 64n10, 66, 70 Wilder, Thornton, 41 Williams, Tennessee, 41 Witkiewicz, Stanislaw, 16 Woodehouse, J.R., 64n9
