Dürrenmatt's Die Ehe des Herrn Mississippi: The Revision of a Play

DURRENMATT'S DIE EHE DES HERRN MISSISSIPPI: THE REVISION OF A PLAY EVEN A CURSORY READING OF Diirrenmatt's plays reveals that he is by no means a traditional dramatist. His first published work, Es steht geschrieben (1946), is not divided into acts; time and place change, but no pauses or intermissions are indicated. The scenes flow uninterruptedly one into another from the beginning of the play to the end. The same technique was used in Der Blinde (1947): the entire drama is one unit which flows from scene to scene without a pause, changes in time and place notwithstanding. In the play, Die Ehe des Herrn Mississippi (1950, 1957), the action is divided into two parts, the first of which is much longer than the second. Here again the element of time is treated unconventionally. The play begins with the end; the character who is to be shot at the end of the play is actually executed as the curtain rises. He then gets up and proceeds to speak directly to the audience, giving the background necessary for the action to follow. In Romulus der Grosse (1948, 19.56), Ein Engel kommt nach Babylon (1953), and Der Besuch der alten Dame (1955) Diirrenmatt makes use of the normal act structure, but within the individual acts of these three plays, normal time and space relationships are disregarded, scenes sometimes change without benefit of a curtain, flats are raised and lowered, and props changed before the eyes of the audience-techniques reminiscent of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of our Teeth and Brecht's epic theater. No attempt is made to create and maintain an illusion of reality. It is not difficult to see how directors and producers could take liberties with such plays, liberties which could leave the author bewildered and the public confused. For Diirrenmatt there is an absolute interdependence between the written word and the theater. These plays were never intended merely to be read; they are not cabinet pieces but rather dramatic works for the living theater, and they can only be fully realized and experienced as works of art in actual performance. Diirrenmatt believes that the dramatist can and should learn from the actual staging of his works; and, if necessary, he should revise the works, because it is only in the light of actual performance that the author gains the proper perspective on his own dramas. Not only has Diirrenmatt worked closely with pro- (156) 1965 Die Eke des Herrn Mississippi 157 ducers; he has supervised productions of his own plays and profited greatly from such experience. He believes that the stage can correct the writer.l. The play, Die Eke des Herrn Mississippi, presents an interesting case for the consideration of the problem of Diirrenmatt and the theater . The first version of this play, Diirrenmatt's fourth work for the stage, was finished in 1950. The premiere took place in Munich in 1952, and the author himself supervised a production of the play in Bern in 1954. Three years later, in 1957, he revised the play and produced the revised version that same year in Ziirich. This controversial play attracted a great deal of attention and was performed many times. That some of these productions were not satisfactory can be seen from the need Diirrenmatt felt to revise the work five years after the premiere and three years after he had produced the earlier version in Bern. The major difference between the two versions is to be found in the directions for the setting of the play. Die Eke des Herrn Mississippi has only one setting; all action takes place in one room, a room which is an integral part of the play. It does not just form the stage environment for the action; the room plays an actual role. In the course of the action it undergoes drastic changes, gradually falling into ruin until at the end of the performance everything in the room has been destroyed except one piece of furniture, a Biedermeier table, which Diirrenmatt calls the main character of the play. The course of the destruction of the room parallels the action. In the play, the forces of Christian love...