Two Plays by Billetdoux

TWO PLAYS BY BILLETDOUX THE CHARACTERS IN Fran~ois Billetdoux' plays utter the faint and anguished cries of men and women whose illusions have been shat· tered by the brutal forces of life which envelop them. Billetdoux in· troduces us to human beings searching to realize their dreams and aspirations, to fix and to hold on to something solid, and by so do· ing, to give themselves faith in living. But these intangibles in which his characters believe and which serve to propel them onward, are too abstract and too fleeting to be satisfying. A fundamental feeling of futility overcomes even those who seemingly inhabit a contented world in which religious and political questions are never baflling. Billetdoux' theater is pessimistic. For his characters, living is a difficult struggle between how they wish to live and how they actually live. At times, he brightens his bleak world with light touches of humor. But his humor leaves a sting since it merely masks the dis· satisfied yearnings which his creations cannot face and from which they constantly seek escape. Billetdoux, a master of orthodox theatrical technique, fashions his plays with skill, leading us forward to climax and final denoue· ment. His style is taut and rapid, at once romantic and realistic; prosaic, yet with the counterforce of bold and tender images, frighten· ing silences, periods of delirium. As his characters converse, their personalities are slowly revealed to us in all their grandeur and degradation . Billetdoux never manipulates his creations; he lets them glide and talk willy-nilly, responding to their inner compulsions. He tries to remain objective, an outsider peering in, a doctor studying a patient through a microscope, or a botanist fascinated by the thousands of small lines and hollows in a piece of vegetable. Yet, in spite of his efforts at detachment, Billetdoux still looks upon his characters with humanity and compassion. In Tchin-TchinJ first produced on January 26, 1959, at the Theatre de Poche in Paris, "lost love" is the pivotal point around which two unhappy individuals revolve. It demonstrates the play's principal theme: man's inability to cope with reality. The opening scene finds Cesareo meeting Pamela in an Englishtype tea room. Cesareo confides in Pamela and tells her how hard he has worked to provide comfort and luxury for his wife, Margaret, who has just left him, and how his driving ambitions have come to an 199 200 MODERN DRAMA September end. After several drinks, Cesareo wonders whether he really had been working for Margaret, or had she merely been the excuse! A humorous note is now interjected. "I worked until I practically had a nervous breakdown, but my associate was the one to get sick, the engineer...." Billetdoux thereby avoids oversentimentality and undue poignancy. In a more intimate vein, Cesareo tells Pamela of his loneliness: "I moan for hours alone in my room." His lonely room represents his life which he had never learned to share with another. He recalls his wife: "I would have held her hand and walked two steps in front of her, just to look at her set her little foot down like a queen." His wife then was an object to be fetishly admired and nothing more in his world of make-believe. In his childishness, Cesareo had built an edifice without a foundation which he could admire at a distance, remain aloof and put off the time when he should share his aspirations with another and confide his fears and limitations. Cesareo tells Pamela that he does not drink in order to forget, but to "acquire color." This is humor which poorly masks the truth; indeed, it invites curiosity about the emotions of which Cesareo is most ashamed and which he finds too painful to confess. His conflict, ranging between the dream and reality, loses precision as the alcohol takes effect. "I burrow within myself and I sleep better than anyone else." Cesareo is a willess being, incapable of freeing himself from his own incapacities. Despondency follows as he floats alone on his lonely way until he sinks deep into the meshes of futility. Pamela, Cesareo's foil, is a fellow sufferer who has never emerged from...