Word: genet
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...director Leo Garen had other plans. He has given us, as Stephen Aaron did in Cambridge, a vigorous, straightforward, realistic, Methodical performance. Genet is much interested in the nature and relationship of illusion and reality; his idea of a dream-Deathwatch probably has something to do with this hobby of his. It is a dangerous hobby, however, likely to lead an author into arid jiggery-pokery. Probably both directors were wise in refusing to sacrifice to it the excitement we derive from watching people act and suffer onstage, rather than dream-phantoms. A proudction directed along Genet's lines might...
Garen might, however, have paid some attention to certain specific directions that Genet has incorporated into the text. They indicate a rawer, more theatrical, gutsier approach than Garen has used--and gutsiness is needed in a play that depends on tension and violence for its effectiveness and for the conveyance of its meanings...
...frequently said that he is "the man," somehow also is the woman--the woman whom Maurice, while vowing loyalty to Green Eyes, at one point volunteers to murder. This theme of Green Eye's woman, Green Eyes as woman, runs through the play--one of the paradoxes of which Genet is fond. It is dramatized, summarized, in one moment of action, where Green Eyes "opens his shirt brutally and reveals his torso to Maurice. On it is tattooed a woman's face." In Garen's production, instead of a brutal gesture there is only a discreet peek...
...murder, Genet's directions read...
...Garen's version, the murder had not enough of the strange excitement these directions indicate. Green Eyes did not dominate the stage, and one of Genet's characteristic enigmas was dodged instead of posed: why does Green Eyes countenance the murder of Maurice, when Maurice is his friend, and when he had already stopped at least one previous attempt of Lefranc to murder Maurice...