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| Joseph Della Sorte, Osceola Archer, Robert Jackson. (Photos: Alan B. Tepper) |
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| Grayson Hall. |
The Chelsea Theatre’s monumental staging of this
controversial four-and-a-half hour, 17-scene epic drama about characters embroiled in
the Algerian war of independence against France was one of the theatrical
landmarks of the early 70s. It was written in 1959, published in 1961, and
first staged in Paris by Jean-Louis Barrault in 1966, after five years of being
officially barred from production. Barrault’s staging led to riots by those who
claimed it to be an anti-French depiction of the strife.
Genet’s nihilistic black farce was more than just
anti-French. It was anti “all of modern civilization,” noted Harold Clurman,
being an attack on the conventional morality of goodness and decency and a
paean to evil, “a celebration of the elegance of vice,” as John Simon phrased
it. During its nonlinear, episodic, fragilely constructed plot, Genet shoots
scorching satiric fireballs at the decadence and corruption of French
imperialism, at the pederasty of the French army troops, and at multiple other
targets.
The surrealistic tale is told with dynamic and poetically
charged language, often profoundly scatological, with a barrage of theatrical
inventiveness carried out by a company of over 40 actors handling more than 80
roles.
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| The Europeans. |
The Screens, called
by Clive Barnes “an elongated strip cartoon of a civilization in the process of
death,” tells of the oppressed young Algerian farmhand Said (Robert Jackson), a
poverty-stricken misfit so poor he must obtain money by wedding Leila (Janet
League), an ugly, foul-smelling girl, thus relieving her father of her. He is
guided in his actions by his equally repulsive mother (Julie Bovasso). Said
treats Leila with sadistic contempt, turns for sex to whores, and sinks ever lower
into a life of thievery, which continually sends him to prison. Leila, who
responds ecstatically to Said’s sadism, is his willing partner in crime. In his
perverted desire to achieve transcendent guilt, Said betrays his nation to the
French, and eventually is slain by the Algerians.
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| The Revolutionaries. |
What Simon dubbed an “endless, sticky, mazy, maddening
marathon of a play” moved effortlessly through its many scenes via the use of
10-foot high screens that set the locales, disbursing the actors on the floor
and on platforms of varying levels situated before a long wall in the rectangular
space, with the audience facing the action on tiers of bleachers. Clurman
suggested that these titular screens were also “symbols of the false front
behind which we hide our villainies.”
Although most critics were intoxicated by the sheer scope of
this “tidal wave of total theatre,” in Jack Kroll’s words, there were those,
like T.E. Kalem, for whom it more closely resembled “a roiling, debris-clotted
river in flood.” Kalem saw “the flaw . . . in the script’s grandiose
pretensions, which dwarf interest in any individual.” Barnes noted the
difficulty of sustaining concentration on this rambling work: “its picturesque
wanderings at first amuse and then rather annoy.” Walter Kerr said, “If there
were a thousand ways of expressing any given thought, Genet has here used all
of them at once.”
The great majority felt that director Minos Volanakis had
created what Kroll called an “amazing” production, one that was helped
enormously by Willa Kim’s costumes and Robert Mitchell’s sets. Clurman was awed
by the director’s “fidelity and understanding of the script” in which every
nuance and intention was made clear and “theatrically visualized.” However,
Michael Smith thought the work “earthbound.” The acting was not particularly
inspired, but Julie Bovasso as the Mother and Despo as Kadidja were
superlative.
The huge company included Grayson Hall, Marilyn Chris, Barry Bostwick (!), Sasha von Scherler, Marilyn Sokol.
Several honors recognized this show’s achievements, among
them the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Play. Willa Kim’s
costume designs won the Maharam Foundation award, the Drama Desk Award, and
Variety’s Off-Broadway poll for Best Costume Design.