The First Avant-Garde (1887-1894) by John A. Henderson (review)

1972·· BOOK REVIEWS 107 THE FIRST AVANT-GARDE (1887-1894)J by John A. Henderson. London: Harrap and Co., 1971. 165 pp. $4.80. The dearth of studies on French theater between 1887-1894 is striking and certainly Mr. Henderson's finely researched volume fills, in part, such a void. The various productions given at Antoine's Theatre Libre and Lugne-Poe's Theatre de l'Oeuvre,· among other avant-garde groups, ate listed; the plots of the plays in question are frequently summarized and the theories enunciated by the theatrical innovators are explicated. Missing are descriptions of the startling sets painted by such artists as Toulouse-Lautrec, Munch, Bonnard and Vuillard; nowhere to be found is the novel manner in which the naturalistic and poetic plays were directed , nor the ingenious lighting and acting techniques used by these imaginative groups. More serious, however, is the lack of fire with which the text is written. Andre Antoine's captivating and engaging personality is nowhere evoked. Lugne-Poe's highly sensitive and compelling ways never enter into the picture. The word "avant-garde," as Mr. Henderson explains, is far from new. It was first applied to theatrical groups in Paris in the 1890's and was directed more specifically toward Antoine's naturalistic Theatre Libre and to Lugne-Poe's Theatre de l'Oeuvre, as opposed to the commercial, stereotyped and pedestrian Boulevard theater. Andre Antoine, one of the most important theatrical directors "responsible for everything done in France from 1888 to 1914," came to the theatre when a gas company clerk. He sought to make a tabula rasa of preceding theatrical endeavors and most particularly the artificial and highly charged romantic dramas and their commercial counterparts. When Antoine established his "slice of life" theater , he produced adaptations of the novels and short stories of such well known writers as Zola and Goncourt. In 1888 he gave Les Bouchers by Fernand Icres. The action of this drama of passion and jealousy centers in and around a country butcher shop. Carrying naturalism to its extreme, Antoine included all details and used real chunks of meat as props. Plays by Brieux, Lavedan, Metenier, PortoRiche , Bergerat, Courteline, Brieux, Becque were also included in his programs. Accustomed to the light farces of Feydeau and the gay and flippant operettas of the period, audiences were startled and shocked by the anguishing cries of despair , the seamy-side of life Antoine was forever depicting on his stage. His production of Tolstoy'S Power of Darkness created a landmark in the theater of his day. It began what was to become an important vogue, the featuring of foreign plays in France: Ibsen, Hauptmann, Strindberg, etc. Antoine also encouraged many new writers such as Jullien and Ancey to express themselves. Always the butt of merciless attacks by conventional journalists, Antoine closed his theater in 1894. He continued to work at the Theatre Antoine and later became director of the Odeon theater. Antoine's Theatre-Libre inspired young directors to found their own theaters: Theodore de Chirac produced seven plays at this Theatre Realiste (1891); Gabriel de la Salle and the Theatre d'Art Social (1891-1893) gave only one, etc. In time, the ultra realistic manner became conventional and stereotyped and gave rise to counter movements. A desire to escape from the sordid world of reality into a domain ol fantasy, idealism, symbolism, mystery came to the fore. The most prominent theoretician of the symbolist school was the poet Mallarme. Inspired by Wagner, in part, he believed in expressing the poetic nature of man's universe by means of a synthesis of movement, color and sound. A play, he maintained, should express the poet's tragic life, and the theater should be a ritual made up 108 MODERN DRAMA May of a combination of words, action, choreography and music-all intuitively perceived and then transformed into a concrete entity-the drama. The poet Paul Fort was seventeen years old at the time he founded the Theatre d'Art (1890). Though his goal was to create a symbolic, mystical and poetic theater where imagination and the senses would hold full sway, his productions were heteroclite and included Maeterlinck's symbolic...