Roger Planchon: director and playwright by Yvette Daoust (review)

Book Reviews dealing with the historical and aesthetic connections (and differences) between Brecht's poetry and that of GOnter Kunert, Wolf Biermann and Hans Magnus Enzensberger demonstrate that intelligent and useful comparisons between Brecht's work and that of more recent writers can be made. MICHAEL HAYS, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY YVETIE DAOUST. Roger Planchon: director and playwrighl. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1981. Pp. xi, 252, illustrated. One of the laudably original features of Yvette ~oust's thorough, perceptive study about this phenomenally independent and eclectic ani;;wteur is her careful thematic analysis of Roger Planchon's own dramatic works as well as the collective creations of his company. The thematic approach also dictates the organization of the book as a wholej it serves to clarify Planchon's development as artist, thinker, theoretician, practitioner and ideologue, and to trace the evolution of his company. The Theatre de la Comedie started as a small provincial troupe composed of friends, amateur actors who made ends meet by working at menial jobs or lowly white-collar occupations. They performed in makeshift halls, always at the mercy of their hosts - a neighborhood church, the municipality. The fact that this troupe became the nucleus of the new Theatre National Populaire (TNP) at Villeurbanne, a working-class suburb oflyon, is due not to magic, but to the immense self-discipline, strength of will, and dedication ofits director. Plancbon forced the French government to proceed further along the path of decentralization when he refused to move to Paris to assume the directorship of a company which had been led by Jean Vilar for ,wen'y years. In March '972, 'he TNP was transferred to the Cite de Villeurbanne to be run by the two codireclors who had worked out this association a short while earlier: Roger Planchon and Patrice Ch6reau. Daoust begins her study of Planchon the director with a chapter on contemporary drama, in particular drama with a social message. She emphasizes correctly Plancbon's debt to Brecht. Today the French director-dramatist no longer considers Brecht the greatest pl.aywright, but he still states that he believes him to have been the most extraordinary director he ever met. In 1954, Planchon produced The Good Woman of Setzuan. At that time Planchon had not traveled to Paris to meet Brecht, and the latter was virtually unknown in France. Brecht's communist sympathies, and the young company's leftist views, seemed subversive to the lyon authorities. Daoust tells how "after rehearsals for the play had started, Planchon had to make an abrupt change in the season's programme" (p. 32): a comic version of Les Trois Mou.rquetaires was substituted. Later, however, the company was allowed to present Brecht's play, but press coverage was discouraged. For a long time the names of Brecht and Planchon were associated in the French public's mind. Planchon's 1961 production of Schweyk in the Second World War, presented first at Villeurbanne and brought later to Paris, remains one of his greatest artistic triumphs. Rene Allio's sets, the revolving platform on which the poor soldier (admirably played by Jean Bouise) seemed to march endlessly through Russia's snowy wastes, are unforgettable to anyone who was fortunate enough to have seen this production. Planchon's fascination with the cinema caused him to invent a new stage Book Reviews 447 language, rapid and fluid. Planchon's Schweyk, the descendant of HaSek's antihero. was indeed, as Daoust points out, a popular character like Lyons's Guignol, a likable survivor. In the same chapter, Daoust groups together Vinaver (Today or The Koreans), and Adamov, both Brecht's disciples. PlanchoD created a number of Adamov's plays, and there existed between the two men a special Idnd of understanding not unlike that between Jouvet and Giraudoux, but with the added element of political commitment: Adamov became for a while the "house dramatist." Planchon believes that Adamov will be to Beckett what Lenz is to BOchner, a less polished stage poet whose influence nevertheless is growing among younger writers. What Daoust does not say, however, probably because she espouses the literature of engagement, is that Planchon came to admire more and more the oneiric aspects of...