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| Lou Trapani, Maia Danziger, Linda Bowden, Christopher Lloyd, Michael Finn, Dorothy Chace. |
Originally produced in London, in 1968, when playwright Christopher Hampton was only 22, Total Eclipse received generally bland reviews when presented by Brooklyn’s Chelsea Theatre. It pictures in documentary detail the impassioned gay love of two famous French symbolist poets of the late 19th century, Paul Verlaine (Christopher Lloyd) and Arthur Rimbaud (Michael Finn).
Written in a naturalistic style and encompassing the love
affair in an episodic sequence of 12 scenes located in Paris, Brussels, London, and Stuttgart, the play covers the years
1871-1875, with an epilogue set in 1892. It reveals how Verlaine, the older,
married man, and his 16-year-old (in 1871) lover threw the devil to the winds
and engaged in a fervent romance that involved them in violent,
booze-stimulated encounters; Verlaine went to prison after shooting Rimbaud in
the wrist.
Their sexual adventures were graphically depicted through
stage action in which the men grappled affectionately in the nude, a feature
Clive Barnes felt was “entirely relevant” within the context. Barnes enjoyed
the production more than the play, lauding the direction, acting, and design.
Staged in an environment whereby the audience viewed the action from unexpected
angles, the play had an intimacy that would have been lost in a proscenium
theatre.
In contrast to Barnes's approval, Edith Oliver thought that Total Eclipse was “[T]edious. . . . [T]hree solid
hours . . . of alcoholic bickering and teasing and fighting and coupling are
too much.” She found “no life either in its action or characters,” nor was she
convinced by the performances. And John Simon, while pronouncing positively on
the drama’s “earnestness, literacy, and rapid movement,” nevertheless admitted
that “it fails to ignite.” The play, he noted, stayed too close to its historical
facts and failed to provide sufficient dramatic invention.
