Contemporary Arts

French Leave

assembly. Forty or fifty discreetly

THERE gathered this August in the

charming mediieval town of Sarlat in the Dordogne a curiously assor- ted but admirably organised picked students from various European centres were treated (for a trifling sum) to a fortnight of

all 'lost unabated lectures, readings and discussions 04 the French theatre. Added to these attrac- li°ns was the possibly overrated privilege of lis ening to ten hours or so of high-flown argu- mentation by a group of authors, critics and Pr/ducers from various countries (of which your servant was an insignificant member). Don't run away with the idea that this gather- was merely an excuse for an extremely eoTifortable holiday in France; it was conducted Wi high intellectual seriousness. At the lectures, Presented by incontestable experts with the Pe 'suasiveness and painstaking scholarship of 'a Sorbonne course, everyone from Jodelle to tudel was placed carefully in his historical 4iche; there was a daily session of explication de re. rte which scrutinised with devastating rigour very millimetre of a couple of hundred lines of M )4,-re or Racine. In other words the French niirld embarked with its accustomed efficiency °n the task of categorising, ordering, instructing ahl sending away its pupils with a fair working kn3vvIedge of the history of the French drama. It ovas something of a relief to come down in the Morning to play-readings, where a babel of Co11lictilv producers and tongues made logical theMght, or any thought at all, almost Impossible. By way of inspiration there was also 1,

he Sarlat Festival to watch, at which Maurice Jaequemont put on in the golden-stoned market pl

1:ce a very passable Hamlet, a brilliant Georges ndin and a catastrophic Maria Pineda. Amid flood of evidence only the most insular cretin could fail to get a reasonable idea of the str !ngths and weaknesses of the Gallic approach lo

the theatre (though I must ,admit I came Pre ;

c,ous near it, thanks to the sickly inefficiency °f Iny French). ts strong points can be gauged pretty accur- atelY by comparison with the vivid mental picture one has of a probable English equivalent. Three • 43r four bright young producers and designers Would hold forth casually about their personal successes and- difficulties, there might be a little ilrenteel voice-production or make-up tuition tr001 an old trouper and the students would give Very adequate performance of The Lady's not foj Burning on the last evening as a vindication Of 13ritish empiricism. In France theory comes first and practice a long way second.

rhe limitations, of this approach are pretty ob

iious. I have no doubt in my own mind, for Instance, who has a better idea of what the theatre IS about—the man who takes a minor part in le Bathroom Dpdr at the village hall or the in,an who ploughs through the works of Corneille a heavily annotated edition or tracks down the ZeirReist through the thickets of a dozen existen- 1st plays. Theories, moreover, are the kind of f Pe s Which grow up and get out of hand.

Rood deal of the time allotted to the critics tO be given in this way to wringing the neck

of the not-so-tame lion cub harboured by our very able host, M. Gilbert Gadoffre. He had mentioned in his invitation that we were in search of a 'Theatre of Avant-Garde'; a passing men- tion of Beckett and lonesco should have warned' us where he expected it to be found. His notion was that the effects of the war had taken far longer to wear off in the theatre than in any other branch of the arts, but that with Qeckett, lonesco and Adamov (a French playwright of whom we ought to hear a good deal before long) something quite new had blown on to the French stage. When the same writers seemed to be making a stir in England the breeze naturally assumed gale force—a gale, moreover, carrying invigorating gusts of the zeitgeist. Could one not, he argued, find something in common between this trio, the new dramatists of other countries and the signs of the times? It was vain to assure him that the London success of Fin de Partie or The Chairs could hardly be called popular; that, say, Mr. Osborne would probably be extremely angry (bless his heart) at being associated with them; that if you asked a British playgoer if he was conscious of 'Nausea' he would tell you sharply not to be disgusting. The disappointment and disbelief with which the similar tales told by a German critic and a Spanish impresario were received was piteous to behold, and I suspect that M. Gadoffre is still harbouring thoughts which weave the whole of modern drama into a dazzling golden web, complex and perfect.

I should hate it to be thought that the confer- ence was anything but extremely worth while and absorbingly interesting; but however much ,one tries to remember valuable views on trans- lation or the nature of tragedy, the ' mind cannot help sneaking back to this same over- whelming impression — the almost fanatical intensity with which the French con their plays for 'significance' and a key which shall betray their place in an occult pattern. Whether this kind of criticism is a cause or effect is anyone's guess, but since it exists one can't be surprised that French plays do fall into cliques and schools, and that they are very often statements rather than inquiries or arguments. In Beckett and lonesco we can see the .latest and most extreme products of this tradition. ' Both give pictures, static, not moving, pictures, of what it is like to be

a human. Their characters do not develop; how could they? They are tiny flies caught and frozen in the amber of being alive; they are examined microscopically and photographed from a few striking angles. And this is a kind of drama which French intellectuals are likely to fall upon with whoops of joy since it is definite and uncompro- mising; more important, since several pe

are using this method now it constitutes a move- ment, and where there is a movement there must be `significance.'

These thoughts certainly do not put either Beckett or lonesco out of court, for they have other virtues of a very real and durable sort, but it may perhaps explain why their intellectual success in France has been so prodigious and why at Sarlat a faint suspicion prevailed that the French were much more interested to hear approval of their latest enfants terribles than to hear about developments anywhere else. It was a pity, perhaps, that M. lonesco himself, who was daily expected to arrive, should have been forced towards the very end of the . conference to send a telegram peppered with 'deso/es,' but one could not altogether blame him. A prophet honoured in his own country had better cep