The Paris Stage

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 514, 17 November 1928, Page 22

The Paris Stage

Transformation Since Before the War JEAN-JACQUES BERNARD AND HIS TREATMENT OF SEX Since the war the Paris stage has undergone a complete transiormation. From one of the most stereotyped and insular of European theatres it has flowered into cosmopolitanism. There are various phases of this widespread change. Before the war. for example, in the season of 1914, the list of Paris productions included about three foreign dramas, as against a Berlin season which presented Shakespeare, Wilde, Strindberg, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hamsun, Synge and a number of French playwrights. When the stream of European dramatic literature was at high tide with an influx of new plays from Russia, Italy, Germany, and Spain, France filled its play-houses with home-made drama, regardless of its mediocrity. It was not until three or four years ago that French producers became completely aware that other countries and other eras also had their plays a*id play wrights and that many of these were worth looking into. But the adavnee of the French theatre is not entirely due to the introduction of dramatic material from without. It has been aided considerably by the flowering of a younger school of playwrights, whose woi’k, conceived in the experimental, probing spirit of the post-war generation, has necessitated a corresponding advance and experimentation in order to produce it effectively. A prominent member of a group which includes Charles Vildrac. Jules Romains. Paul Geraldy and Alfred Savoir is Jean-Jacques Bernard, whose play. “L’lnvitatipn au Voyage,” was produced recently. Theory of Silence Much has been written of M. Bernard’s “theorie du silence.” It is based upon his understanding of the fact that the real conflicts of human life go on inwardly, often wordlessly; that the greater part of the thoughts which influence human action is never expressed; that people—‘'-veil those bound to each other by the most intimate ties —often remain inexplicab'e to each other, revealing themselves by no word or gesture. An example of the way in which he lias succeeded in mastering his selfimposed restrictions is to be found in “I,’invitation au Voyage,” wherein secret ryhthm of a romantic woman’s mind is implicitly unfolded to the audience, although between the husband and wife —the principal figures of the play—no word of the shadowy conflict is or can be exchanged. Another characteristic of M. Bernard as a playwright is his revolt against the earlier erotic emphasis of the French theatre as expressed in the comedy of Intrigue, daring and explicit. No less a person than Georges de Porto-Riche once commented upon the Parisian situation by saying, “The characteristic of this age is obscenity triumphant upon the French stage under the indulgent eye of criticism.” If that was true of the older generation of French playwrights, it is hardly applicable to the work which M. Bernard has done. He is a Frenchman whose attitude toward sex is one of full understanding of it as an inescapable factor of life. Sex is the underlying motive in each of Bernard’s finest plays—“L’invitation au Voyage.” “Martine” (which the American Laboratory Theatre has produced), “L’Ame en Peine” and “Le Feu qui Reprend Mai.” Hero and Heroine Never Meet In “L’Ame en Peine,” in which the hero and the heroine never even meet, a sex situation is distilled into its very essence. To quote John Palmer, the English critic, “We are to imagine two lovers, each of whom is necessary to the other, but who ne-ver succeed in meeting or discovering their identity. . . . Every now and then in the course of the play their paths cross for a moment. . . . We know, as they meet for an instant and then go their different ways, that their affinity should have declared itself. They themselves, however, pass on unaware, except for a faint premonition which is not sufficiently clear to arouse in them a really dynamic impulse.” In “Le Feu qui Reprend Mai,” M. Bernard presents another shadowy triangle. A French prisoner, released from Germany upon the signing of the armistice, returns to his village to find that his wife has had to take into their home an American officer who was billeted upon her by the village authorities. Though the American falls in love with her, Blanche’s loyalty to her husband is unswerving. The American officer had gone, the danger had passed, when Andre returns home. Tortured by the thought of the stranger living in his home, Andre’s insistent brooding over the matter revivifies the memory of the officer, clothing him with desirability in Blanche’s mind, as an escape from the relentless probing of her husband. From this sketch it may have been ascertained by now that M. Bernard presents a very real departure from the older generation of playwrights, of whom his father, Tristan Bernard, is a happy and typical example.