Pirandello and His French Echo Anouilh

PIRANDELLO AND HIS FRENCH ECHO ANOUILH "I CAN JUST HEAR A CRITIC whispering into his neighbor's ear that he has already seen this in Pirandello,"l anticipates 'The Author in the opening scene of Jean Anouilh's recent play La grotte-a plotless play which has yet to be written and which depends largely on audience cooperation, according to Anouilh. La grotte's point of departure is a fait accompli: the apparent murder of the cook. An investigation of the real cause of death ensues . The Author, a combination of Pirandello's Director in Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore and Hinkfuss of Questa sera si recita a soggetto , poses, before his audience, the problems of staging an "improvised " play. He wrangles with unruly characters and capricious stage technicians. He dramatizes the conflict between an author's illusory creation and his characters' living reality. The Pirandello plays which may be considered as having no plot are those plays which present the problems of multiple personality (Trovarsi, Quando si e qualcuno, etc.) and those which present the relationships among life, art, and interpretation (Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore, Questa sera s; recita a soggetto, Ciascuno a suo modo, etc.). These plays are developed through the actions and reactions of the characters and those with whom they come in contact, and through audience participation. A combination of these plotless Pirandello plays is what Anouilh has striven to achieve in La grotte. In constructing their plays, both Pirandello and Anouilh generally use one of two methods. The first method is construction in true commedia dell'arte style, with much physical movement, popular joking, games, songs, and dances (La giara, Liola, L'Uomo, La bestia e la virtu, Le bal des voleurs, La valse des Toreadors, Leocad,ia). The procedure is simple: the plot is exposed in direct language by the characters who exit and enter from one scene to the next either to add to the jocosity of events or to intensify the seriousness or mockseriousness of a scene. In Liola, for example, the scenes in which Liola appears or exits, singing and dancing with his three children, take the form of commedia dell'arte lazzi which delight the children lLa grotte (Paris: La Table ronde, 19G1), Act I, p. lI. All translations into English of this and subsequent non-English quotations are my own. 346 1964 PIRANDELLO AND ANOUILH 347 and peasants who call for more songs and capers from LioIa, just as the commedia audiences demanded encores until poor Harlequin became quite exhausted. The second method of play construction is the detective story style: deeds are committed prior to the opening of the play, the problem to be solved is posed at the outset and developed during the play like a psychiatric case history (Sei personaggi, Cos! e(se vi pare), Ciascuno a suo modo, Questa sera si recita a soggetto, La morsa, Il davere del medico, Y avait un prisonnier, Le voyageur sans bagage, La grotte, La foire d'empoigne). The movement in these plays is mental rather than physical, the only lively scenes being those involving a crowd or group of personages whose movement is intended to contrast with the stability of the central character. The acts are linked by cerebral manipulations, as opposed to the lazzi of the first group; and the construction of the "detective" play is such that it progresses smoothly, though not outwardly serenely. towards a fixed destiny. The better to complicate their plots, the better to play with their marionettes, the better to create theatrical kaleidoscopes, both Pirandello and Anouilh construct plays with a play within them. Pirandello employed the technique of the play within a play five times, Anouilh nine times. In some cases, the interpolated play is an actual or imaginary piece of literature; in other cases, it is improvised , directed, or evoked by the characters of the outer play. Of the first group, Ciascuno a suo modo, Questa sera si recita a soggetto, I giganti della montagna, La repetition and Colombe may be cited. Ciascuno a suo modo includes a Pirandello play within a Pirandello play. The construction of the drama is very unusual, and the dramatist himself declares...