Reviews 2000
Reviews 2000
✭✭✭✩✩ / ✭✭✭✭✩
by Alfred de Musset, directed by Joseph Saint-Gelais
Théâtre français de Toronto, Berkeley Street Theatre Upstairs, Toronto
March 31-April 15, 2000
“A Fine Introduction to Alfred de Musset”
In North America we seldom see any of the works of of the 19th-century writer, Alfred de Musset (1810-1857), even though he is one of the “three M’s” of French comedy along with Molière and Marivaux. The Stratford Festival last performed his most famous work, “Lorenzaccio”, back in 1972. Therefore, I was very pleased when, Guy Mignaut, the artistic director of the Théâtre français de Toronto chose Musset, rather than the usual Molière, to close their 1999-2000 season. While the neo-Shakespearean tragedy “Lorenzaccio” is better known, the two one-act comedies chosen by Mignault and directed by Joseph Saint-Gelais, are far more typical of Musset’s work. The French view of Musset is that he combines the insight into emotion of Racine with the wit of Marivaux. Someone outside the French tradition would immediately be struck with the resemblance to Chekhov. Musset, in fact, did strike a chord with the Russians about 20 years before Chekhov was born: only after the great success “Un Caprice” in St. Petersburg was it performed in Paris.
In “Un Caprice” (written 1837), Mathilde (Colombe Demers) has already come to feel neglected by her husband, Monsieur de Chavigny (David Danzon), after only one year of marriage. For two weeks she has been making a needlework coin-purse for him only to find, when she is about to surprise him with it, that he is carrying a coin-purse given him by one of the more infamous coquettes of Paris. A mutual friend, Madame de Léry (Lina Blais) arrives, senses the situation and when M. de Chavigny leaves, devises a scheme to return him to his wife and cure him of erring ways. As any student of “Othello” knows, trivial things can be imbued with great psychological meaning, and so it is in “Un Caprice”. The two purses symbolize what a character holds most dear--true love or feigned love.
Musset’s focus is the double standard between the sexes--a married man, like M. de Chavigny, may be allowed the “caprice” of a dalliance outside of marriage; a married woman, like Mathilde, may not. By feigning interest in M. de Chavigny, Madame de Léry entraps him and shows him his gullibility and the hollowness of these “caprices” he uses to drive away boredom. As usual in Musset, lurking behind the witty banter is the fear that life, no matter how we fill it, is empty. Mathilde asks herself at one point the Chekhovian question, “Why do we have dreams that can never be fulfilled?”
“Il faut qu’une porte soit ouverte ou fermé” (“A Door Must be Either Open or Shut”, written 1845), is an example of the French form of comedy known as the “proverbe”, in which the action of the play serves to illustrate the statement in the title. Just as the purse was a symbolic object in “Un Caprice”, so is door in this play indicating the state of the relationship of the two characters. The Marquise (Colombe Demers again) is a widow holding her usual Tuesday “At Home”. She has become bored with the incessant compliments she receives from men, especially from her neighbour across the street, the Comte (David Danzon again), compliments that never seem to lead anywhere. The play consists entirely of the verbal battle between the Marquise and the Comte, the latter so frustrated by the Marquise’s cynical attitude toward love (for indeed he is in love with her) that he tries several times to leave only to be brought back into conversation by the Marquise.
Most people, like those in the audience the night I attended, will be quite surprised to hear a character from 1845 taunting men for their ineptness in love and dissecting their ulterior motives in a way that is amazingly modern. Musset has created a delicious dialectic between the two--the more the Marquise taunts the Comte to prompt him to say something authentic, the more the Compte is frustrated and tries to give up. When the Comte finally blurts out a marriage proposal to prove his sincerity, the Marquise accepts and all is well. The door which the Comte had left half-open to the Marquise’s annoyance is now finally closed.
The two plays make an excellent double bill, since roles of the male and female in each couple are reversed from one play to the next. The one who is haughty and self-possessed in the one play is humble and frustrated in the second. Having seen Colombe Demers on the main stages of both the Shaw and Stratford Festivals, I was pleased to see her in a more intimate space where she is shown to better advantage. Her change from the unhappy Mathilde of the first play to the cynical Marquise of the second was not as extreme as her male partner’s because she seems to have made an unhappiness like Mathilde’s a subtext for the Marquise’s aggressiveness.
David Danzon struck me as rather a cold fish in the first play, warming rather tentatively to Madame de Léry’s flirtation and not quite managing the contrition he should feel at the end. In the second play he was so different one might think he were another actor. He expertly managed the quite difficult transformation of the Comte from someone who at first seems like a buffoon to someone with quite sincere emotions, so that our support shifts from what seems like the Marquise’s justified disdain to his pleas to be heard. Lina Blais was absolutely delightful as the vivacious Madame de Léry in the first play. She moved from at first seeming so flighty as be of no use to anyone, to showing a genuine concern for Mathilde, to consciously using the very flightiness we first saw to entrap Mathilde’s husband to teach him a lesson.
Danielle Ross’s set consisted of five screens and a fan motif on both the floor and back wall--appropriately reflecting the theme in both plays that words and poses are used as much to hide the truth as to reveal it. It may have been her idea to have Demers’ fussy costume as Mathilde weigh her down just as Mathilde is weighed down by her worries, but it resulted in costume unpleasant to look at and awkward for Demers to act in. Otherwise, Ross’s period costumes worked quite well.
For me, it was a great pleasure finally to see these rarities and to hear Musset’s wonderfully elegant and subtle language so well spoken by all three actors. While this double bill is a must-see for all those in the area with enough French, I do wish an enterprising theatre company would program them in translation in so they could reach a wider audience. Anyone who enjoys the melancholy humour in Chekhov would certainly enjoy Afred de Musset.
©Christopher Hoile
Photo: David Danzon.
2000-04-04
Un Caprice / Il faut qu’une porte soit ouverte ou fermé