" L'ETRANGERE," AT THE GAIETY THEATRE.
WHEN, in 1876, L'EtranOre was produced in Paris, with extraordinary eclat, when every one was talking of the costumes designed by Carolus Duran, for his sister-in-law, Mdlle. Croizette, the tremendous competition for admission to the dress rehearsals, and the new epithet with which M. Alex- andre Dumas had enriched the Parisian vocabulary by his scientific-satirical " vibrion,"—a wriggling insect of the in- fusorial species,—it was said of the comedy, "Tout cela manque de motif, et u'a pas de consistence ; mais les situ- ations sont superbes, et L'Etrangre est tenement bizarre et fascinatrice, qu'on ne pent pas s'empecher d'être occupe d'elle." Of all the opinions which the play evoked, this is the most strongly recalled by the performance of L'EtrangZ,re, for the first time in London, with the original cast, M. Got only ex- cepted. It is not a good play, according to any standard of dramatic excellence ; it is only an odd episode in the life of an impossible adventuress ; no genuine, well-founded sympathy is aroused by any one of the personages. The sentimental portion of it is utterly artificial, and occasionally borders dangerously on the ridiculous, as, for instance, when the father of the Duchesse de Septmonts, who has complacently married his daughter to a man with whose vices he is thoroughly acquainted, exclaims, when the crash conies,—" Je suis calme, maintenant qu'elle m'a embrasse, et que j'ai pleure ; mais j'eu avais bieu besoin," and the next moment is ceremoniously presenting the virtuous lover to " Madame la Marquise ; " and if the intended moral is that love-marriages are safest, after all, it is strangely entrusted to the inculcation of the Clarksons, whose own matri- monial relations are of so " mixed " a description. The adventuress, who, as a whisper and a bow just before the piece concludes reveal to us, has also secret relations with the police, and the outraged young wife of the " Vibrion " are equally emancipated from the ordinary common-place notions of duty and right, and the idea of suicide is treated with levity and readiness which seem to pervade all modern French writers' notions on that subject, even those who differ so widely as M. Dumas and M. Victor Hugo. Yet is L'Etrungi,re de- lightful, and it would be difficult to rate too highly the intel- lectual pleasure and refreshment conferred upon the audience by such a performance as that of that of last Tuesday evening.
A considerable element in the enjoyment of a play performed by the famous actors at present at the Gaiety Theatre is its absolute unlikeness to anything which our own Theatres can give us. The play, the players, the methods, the motives,—all are as foreign as the language ; and a charming sense of completeness, un- known to our system, with its few " stars " and its many incapables, its absence of education and its generally low standard of taste and aim, takes possession of us ; we are absorbed in looking at and listening to those exquisitely polished ladies and gentlemen, who are totally uninfluenced by us, who converse with each other and move about as if there were no audience, who are intent only on the perfection of the entire effect, on the accurate rendering by all at their very best of the author's conceptions at his very best ; and we have no intervals of boredom, because it is not somebody's scene, and so-and-so is getting through his part somehow. We know all about why the Comedie Francaise is what it is, and that we have not the conditions, if the materials were in existence, under which alone any similar artistic corps could be organised ; we know that we might as reasonably grumble because we can- not grow the wines of France. Nevertheless, we grumble. When M. Coquelin sits with his back to the audience through a long scene, and Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt talks to her visitor with concentrated earnestness, and not so much as a glance at the boxes, or a squint at the set of her gown ; when the servants announce visitors, not to the gallery, but to their mistress ; and M. Garraud, as Remonin, chats easily from a divan at the back of the stage, an incidental, accidental philosopher of the wittiest order, we have a doubly keen perception of the high art of all this, be- cause we know there is nothing like it here. It is quite a new experience to wish to see a play for the sake of the play, not only because one particular actor or actress performs a part in it, to listen to one and all with equal interest and pleasure, and to feel, at its conclusion, that the author's work does not admit of any better interpretation. Of the study, the labour, the willingness, the concord, which all must bring to add to the in- dividual talent of each for the production of such a result, it is, pf -haps, impossible for outsiders to form an adequate idea, but at least we can recognise and admire them.
Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt, concerning whom more non- sense has been talked and written than about any other distin- guished woman of the present day—for she could not possibly be so clever as she is, if she were so foolish as her flatterers make her out to be—was very impressive as Mrs. Clarkson ; her languid insolence, her calm audacity, her disdainful malice, her
entire unscrupulousness, her underlying ferocity, and her utter callousness of nerves—she receives her quondam husband fresh from the killing of the " vibrion " duke with the quietest com- posure--all these came up to what was expected of this great actress's representation of an ungracious part. Her manner was almost perfect throughout, only in the latter part of the narra- tion of her career to the Duchesse de Septmonts did she border on rant ; but just there she did, and in that one point was in- ferior to Mademoiselle Croizette, whose expression of counten- ance lacked variety, probably because her lips were painted an impossible scarlet, -like a clown's, but whose intonation, gesture, and movements were simply faultless from first to last, and who conducted her fierce quarrel with the "Vibrion " with admirable sincerity, vehemence, and loathing. Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt overcomes certain physical defects with re- markable skill, she drapes an attenuated form with equal taste and success, and she uses her arms, which are too long and too lank, with much grace and expressiveness ; her carriage is fine, her walk is dignified, and not stagey, her voice is peculiar and pleasing, and her face, though not handsome, is full of power and mobility. If she did not adopt the hideous, Skye terrier-like fashion of wearing her hair down on her forehead—a fashion which is a boon to fools—she would look more like the woman of genius she undoubtedly is, and none the less like Dumas' Mrs. Clarkson. Of her acting of the part there can be only one opinion ; it is quite admirable, for it fulfils the author's intention ; it makes a mean, mercenary, malicious woman, with a strong dash of the savage in her, irresistibly interesting ; but it is easy to understand why she objected to making her first appearance before an English audience as the Etrangere ; it is a true test of her art, indeed, but not an ade- quate exemplification of her genius. The play is gemmed with epigrams, of which the greater number fall to the share of the male personages, and the exquisite unconsciousness with which they are uttered is a marvel of acting. There is a vitriolic flavour about M. Dumas' style, which renders it en- tirely dissimilar from Sheridan's ; but there is so much likeness between the two that each distributes esprit to his dramatis personce with reckless prodigality ; that their dialogue is like file-firing or lamp-lighting, flash after flash, jet after jet ; and that the incongruity is not felt, although it cannot fail to be seen. The " vibrion " says delightfully clever things, and Mauriceau, the father of the Duchess, is a repertoire of wit and -wisdom. The role of Mauriceau was admirably filled by M. Thiron ; nothing could be more perfect than his self-satisfied garrulity, his easy immorality, his shallow paternal vanity, his bourgeois vulgarity, just modified by contact with the "world," of which he says,—" Ce monde est charmant ; et il a cela d'agreable, qu'au bout d'un certain temps qu'on y est, on croit qu'on en est ;" his shrewd judgments, his estimate of his son- in-law, and yet his sense that the bargain is a fair one, especially as Septmonts, who is "de premiere force ?t l'epee," has nothing to fear from the ridicule of his male acquaintances ; his perfectly candid expose of the situation to Remonin, and his ludicrous grief at the end. Nothing could possibly be more humorous than his lamentation :—" Ma fille aimait un honnete homme, cet honnete homme l'aimait ; it fallait les warier, c'etait bien simple. Je n'ai pas trouve ca, imbecile ! Et je suis cause que cet honnete homme va etre tue, pent-etre, et que ma fille en mourra ; et il se trouve encore des gens pour me plaindre ! Je ne suis pourtant pas interessant ; mail je suis bien malheureux ! " Without the very faintest touch of buffoonery, M. Thiron makes Mauriceau keenly comic, and skates over some very thin ice indeed with marvellous dexterity. While we feel that if we miss a word, or a gesture, or a look of any of the actors, it will be a real loss, the sense of attention is never strained, the entire harmony of the smooth, courteous, conversational tone throughout prevents that, and point after point tells with unhurried ease and accuracy, especially,—if there be a special excellence in the performance,—in the long, sprightly conversation between Remonin and Madame de Rumi- eres—the latter role filled by Madame Madeleine Brohan, with re- fmement of esprit, with dignity and ease of manner, and exquisite enunciation, which recall the days of Sanson,Regnier, and Plessy. In that conversation, the famous comparison between the Septmonts of society and the " vibrion " occurs. The entire worldliness, yet kindliness, of the " femme inattaquable," the clear-sightedness of the woman who has never loved anybody except her son,—that typical French son, of whom she says, " II me raconte sea peines de coeur ; il tient de son 'Are, qui en
avait beaucoup,"—the candid curiosity of the "grande dame," her slight partiality for the " vibrion " her cousin, which does not prevent her finding his wife's lover " tree-bien ;" all these, and innumerable other shades of character and meaning which could not be defined, but make themselves distinctly percep- tible, are rendered by this consummate actress with a perfection as delightful as the more striking achievements of the more- important personages.
The deadly antagonism of two women, the one armed with the keen weapon of social superiority, the other with that of un- scrupulously used influence, is a motive for dramatic action which, developed in the actresses who represent the Duchesse- de Septmonts and Mrs. Clarkson respectively, could hardly be surpassed in efficiency. Notwithstanding the forced and impro- bable manner in which M. Dumas sets this agency to work, by the request of the Etrangere to be admitted to the private salon of the mansion devoted for the nonce to the purposes of a charitable fête, it acts with naturalness and consistency ; and the exit of the adventuress is a defeat, although she brags to the last, for she has not unmade the marriage which she made, though she claims to have done so ; " les dieux qui soot intervenus " are Clarkson and the too clever villainy of the Vibrion.
Mesdemoiselles Sarah Bernhardt and Croizette were over- dressed throughout ; the superb costumes, which were talked of in advance as much as the piece and the actors, strike us as a mistake ; they might make up for inferior acting, they rather distract attention from the actual excellence before us,. and they contrast so strongly with the singularly unpicturesque morning costumes of the men, who carry their hats about in dark-gloved hands—M. Monet-Sully's greenish-brown gloves looked absurd, in contact with the white-satin corsage of Madlle. Croizette—that the general effect is that of a rehearsal which is " dress " for the ladies only. The costume worn by Madlle. Croizette as Celimene on Monday night was a prodigy of extravagance, but those who remember Mdme. .Arnould Plessy in that famous role will not hesitate to award the palm of excellence to that greatest of " graudes dames " and " grandes coquettes," not only in the acting, but in the costuming of the character. She never fell into the• vulgar error of over-dressing, and always so insensibly adorned her attire that it was not particularly observed, until at a leisure- moment one bethought oneself of examining its details. Black gloves and pink gloves, coming almost up to the shoulder, and with elbow-pieces as angular and as ugly as the corresponding items in a suit of sheet-armour, are among the extravagances of the Etrangere costumes. They seem to us to temper the epigrams unwisely, and the bundles of costly satin and cascades of mother- of-pearl which are always trailing and shimmering are blemishes in a great and harmonious work of art.
Unless it be the inevitable necessity in a French comedy that the friend of the husband should make love to the wife, we can- not discern the raison d'être in the piece of Guy des Hakes st- all. He does nothing, except make love to the Duchess, and get snubbed for his pains, until he is unnecessarily made a con- fidant of that virtuous love-affair which the parties concerned impart so freely to everybody. M. Prudhon acted the part of Guy admirably, but it is an excrescence, a superfluity of naughti- ness. Of M. Coquelin as the Vibrion it is impossible to say too much. He must have fully satisfied the expectations of all who were acquainted with his powers, and convinced those who
not that he has not been overrated, by his perfect imper- sonation of the mean, depraved, futile, brave, despicable, gentle- manly, odious, amusing wretch, who never speaks but he says a good thing, who is so blasé with vice and so saturated with falsehood that he can only imagine it possible to be interested in his wife when he reads her love-letter to another man, and is proud to be taken for the lover of Mrs. Clarkson, without any real claim to that dubious distinction ; whose cool insolence is only equalled by his perfect savoir-faire ; who is so incapable of comprehending honour, that he details his villainous designs to Clarkson with captivating frankness, unconscious that they could possibly be met with disapproval; and so sensitive to affront, that he undertakes two duels with passionate alacrity. A more odious character, a more despicable individual, than the Duc de Septmonts has never proceeded from the imagination of any dramatist; and M. Coquelin makes him thoroughly odious and despicable, but so wonderfully real, quaint, incisive, in- tolerable, well-bred, and amusing ; with his sharp, rapid utter- ance, his sudden self-assertion, his cunning malice, and his
characteristic oddities, that it is impossible to be quite in- different to the fate of the " Vibrion," when he fulfils that destiny which Remonin describes, in the most famous passage in the piece :—" Les societes sont des corps comme les anises ; qui se decomposent en certaines parties, a de certain moments, et qui produisent des vibrions k forme humaine, qu'on pseud pour des etres, mais qui n'en sont pas, et qui font inconsciemment tout ce qu'ils peuvent pour corrompre, dis- soudre, et detruire la reste du corps social. Heureusement, la Nature ne vent pas la mort, mais la vie. La mort n'est qu'un de ses moyens, la vie est son but. Elle fait done resistance a ces agents de la destruction, et elle retourne contre eux les principes morbides qu'ils contiennent. C'est alors qu'on voit le Vibrion humain, un soir qu'il a trop bu, prendre sa fenetre pour sa porte, et se casser ce qui lui servait de tete sir le pave de la rue ; ou, si le jeu le mine, ou que sa vibrionne le trompe, se tirer un coup de pistolet dans ce qu'il croit etre son cceur, on venir se heurter contre un vibrion plus gros et plus fort que lui, qui l'arrete et le supprime. Les gens distraits ne voient lk qu'un fait, les gens attentifs voient lit une loi. On entend alors un tout petit bruit, quelque chose qui fait hu—u—u—u [he blows a little air between his lips]; c'est ce qu'on a pris pour rattle du Vibrion qui s'envole dans l'air,--pas tries-lzaut. M. le Due se meurt. M. le Due est mort. Allons, bonsoir !"
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