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| Caligula’s
Initial Reception E. Freeman, The Theatre of Albert Camus. |
| The play made an immediate impact when it was first performed in 1945. It opened on 26 September at the Theatre Hebertot, ran for nearly a year, and was revived professionally at least three times during Camus's lifetime, in 1950, 1957 and 1958. It seems clear that the initial success was due at least in part to the 'creation' of the role of Caligula by the brilliant but at that time unknown Gerard Philipe, under the direction of Paul Oettly -- no small stroke of luck for Camus. Yet at the same time the play possessed an intrinsic appeal for the spectators of 1945. It dealt with a theme which appeared clear-cut and relevant in its political implications (if at times difficult and obscure in its metaphysical premisses): the dangers of philosophical absolutism. This theme is put across in a play with a simple and linear plot which nevertheless holds a very great theatrical appeal. It combines on the one hand, particularly in those scenes in which Caligula is alone with just one of the four other leading characters, moments of very effective and legitimate pathos, and on the other hand the most powerful verbal and scenic rhetoric of the sort that is virtually inescapable in any play about Gaius Caligula. |
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| Caligula’s Consequent
Lack of Popularity Philip Thody, Caligula |
| It would ... be misleading to regard Caligula as an outstanding success in purely theatrical terms. It has never had anything like the number of revivals as Sartre’s Huis Clos [No Exit], and even in 1945, at the height of Camus’ fame, it ran for only two hundred or so performances ... In spite of the potentialities inherent in the role of Caligula himself, in spite of the possibilities for stage effects offered by the banquet scenes or the murder of Caesonia, in spite of the changes of pace, tone, and language detectable even when the play is read, Caligula has not so far received the ultimate accolade without which no play can be considered a success: long, repeated and successful runs on the professional stage. If it is still read -- and it is still very much worth reading -- it is primarily for its language, its ideas, the relationship which it has with Camus’ other works, and the light it throws on Camus the man. Whatever reluctance theatrical directors may nowadays show in putting it on, it has a permanent place in French literature as the expression of a particular mood in mid-twentieth century France and of a particularly important set of problems in contemporary thought. |
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| Caligula On
Broadway Harold Clurman, Caligula |
| In reviewing Stuart Gilbert's translation of Camus' plays last
year (Justin O'Brien's translation for the stage is much better) I wrote that they were
important rather than good. I meant that while Camus' plays -- to me Caligula is
the most interesting -- are the emblem of a generation and a clue to much that has been
thought, written, painted and happened not only in France since the war but to some extent
almost everywhere in the West, they are not completely realized works. The writing --
while distinguished -- does not achieve the white heat or specific imagery of poetry; the
characters and scenes attain only a general or moralistic definition. Camus himself seems to have sensed this, for he acknowledged the play's shortcomings and spoke of Caligula as an actor's and director's play. To this and to all I have already said I should add that, for all its flaws, I found that the play merited and got my absorbed attention: that it is in short a superior piece with trenchant passages throughout. The production -- simple to the point of emaciation in Paris 1945, where it was a tremendous success with Gerard Philipe -- here leans to the spectacular. I have been told that Camus advised Sidney Lumet, who directed the play, to eschew the obligatory austerity of its original production. Perhaps Camus thought our audiences might find a stark presentation forbidding. But I am not at all sure that there is not some other style for the play which would be neither bare in the manner of an impoverished Paris nor costly in keeping with our prosperity. I am sure that Broadway with its high prices -- behind and in front of the curtain -- does not provide the most favorable conditions for the mounting of such a play. The Nation, March 5, 1960. |
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| Caligula’s Plays-Within-A-Play Edward Savage, "Masks & Mummeries in Henrico IV and Caligula" |
| The inability of both critic and popular audiences to accept
Pirandello’s Henry IV and Camus’ Caligula as traditional theatre
arises, perhaps, from the utilization in both plays of currently unfamiliar theatrical
devices which are artificial and stylized rather than realistic. ... Since his identity as the Emperor Henry IV and his one excursion into reality have both been forced upon him by the supposedly real people around him, Henry himself has no part in revealing his own character. Caligula, on the other hand, seems to have as his prime objective the understanding of his inner self and the understanding of that inner self by those around him. Thus, after Caesonia has graphically described to Scipio the death of his father at the hands of Caligula, she ends with the intense plea, "Try to understand him." Hence, the plays-within-the-play which Caligula engineers (the mountebank booth which displays Caligula in the garb of the goddess Venus, the shadow play in which Caligula dances in the costume of a ballerina and the recitation of the poets), have as their purpose the gradual revelation of Caligula's true nature. That is, these histrionic displays, though they mean very little in terms of concrete reality during their performance, act as the main agents in revealing Caligula's inner being by their after-effects upon Caligula himself. Thus, after the mountebank show, Caligula says that he worships as his only god, though "false and craven," the human heart. After the shadow play when Cassius is dragged screaming to his execution, Caligula's only serious comment is, "Life, my friend, is something to be cherished." Finally, after the recitations of the poets, he is softened into admitting the truth of Scipio's definition of Death: "Pursuit of happiness that purifies the heart, Skies rippling with light, 0, wild, sweet, festal joys, frenzy without hope!" The allusions in this description to the bacchic dance as well as the danse macabre are obvious. The apparent contradiction, that the bacchic dance represents the pursuit of life and that the danse macabre represents the pursuit of death, is just as obvious. The importance of the contradiction, however, lies in the application to Camus' purpose of gradual revelation of Caligula's inner self. For if Scipio in describing death as "wild, sweet, festal joys, frenzy without hope" also describes life, does not Caligula, though he pursues death, also pursue life? It should be noted at this point that the phrase, "frenzy without hope," does not necessarily mean "frenzy without meaning." "Hopelessness" and "meaninglessness" (or, to leap into the lion's mouth and substitute the term "absurdity") are not synonymous. In this respect, both Henry IV and Caligula have been dealt a great injustice in being catagorized as dramas depicting the absurd in life. Rather, Caligula's statement about the drama and dramatic art must be taken quite seriously: he says to Scipio the poet: "The great mistake you people make is not to take the drama seriously enough. If you did, you'd know that any man can play lead in the divine comedy and become a god." |
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| The Elements of "A
Right Production" of Caligula E.H. Freeman, The Theatre of Albert Camus |
| Incommunicable metaphysics,
disparity of form and theme, faulty theatrical judgement, philosophical complexity and
abstraction, cloying didacticism and failure to develop a sufficiently personal and
artistically appropriate language to bear the weight of the play: these are the principal
criticisms of Camus's theatre. Yet it would be quite wrong to regard it as a failure. Like
other 'difficult' theatre - that of Claudel, for example - Camus' theatre possesses an
undoubted resilience and a tendency, given the right production, to succeed at moments which seem
frankly unstageworthy on the printed page. Les Justes, Le Malentendu and Caligula
(Camus' best play) all have their champions, but the crucial reservation must always
be 'given the right production'. This requires carefully stylized movement, lighting,
grouping, gesture and delivery to establish a total rapport between actor and
audience. One is reminded of Cocteau's famous mot: "ce que le public te reproche, cultive-le. C'est toi." It is a controversial formula for the development of the human personality which also points to the best way of putting Camus over in the theatre. Camus's plays are reproached (especially in the English and American theatre world as a result of bad, inept or casually naturalistic productions) with being 'eternal debates'. So let them be debates. Debates in which the philosophical implications are stressed and a high degree of tension is maintained. Sets should be minimal and stylized, lighting artificial and focused rather than natural. Gesture, movement and stage business likewise must be tightly controlled and sufficiently stylized to focus, punctuate and support the dialogue. A slackening of tension in mid-debate is fatal. Camus's dramatic style is the end of a long line of evolution: Caligula was written exactly 300 years after the first great French tragedy, Corneille's Horace. In a subtle and unspectacular way he has experimented with what the contemporary French avant-garde would consider to be a basically old-fashioned type of theatre to perfect and refine an articulate form for his ideas. The director's duty is to be faithful to these ideas, and this requires a considerable degree of artistic self-discipline. He must do everything possible to make his audience listen, for it is only this way, by being completely absorbed into the philosophical tension of the plays, that an audience can fully respond to the passion and originality of Camus' moral arguments. The author does not make the task easy. Unlike Anouilh, Giraudoux and Sartre, he does not provide any short cuts, either morally or artistically. |
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| The Fascinating
Connection Between Caligula and Jimmy Porter Philip Thody, Caligula |
| There is, for the thirty- or forty-year-old English or American theatre-goer, more than a passing, anecdotal interest in the fact that the part of Caligula, in both London and New York, was played in the 1960s by Kenneth Haigh. The first actor to play John Osborne's Jimmy Porter was to some extent an obvious choice for Camus's more metaphysically motivated "angry young man." Like Caligula, the hero of Look Back in Anger is essentially a self-dramatizing rebel, often more concerned with the figure he cuts in the eyes of those around him than with any permanent effect which his actions are likely to have on the outside world, and obviously unable to use his revolt to create a society which he himself would find satisfactory. He also presents the audience with much the same type of problem as Caligula as soon as any attempt is made to analyse his relationship with the author of the play. Both Caligula and Jimmy Porter are men who seem at first sight to enjoy the approval and even the admiration of their creator, while behaving for the most part in a way almost deliberately calculated to destroy any sympathy which the audience might have for them. Both plays also offer the possibility of overcoming this problem by underlining the element of self-indulgence which characterizes the emotional outbreaks of the hero, and Caligula lends itself particularly well to an interpretation which emphasizes how fully the histrionics of the the leading player absorb his initially more complex personality. Whether this particular effect was deliberately intended by Camus or not, it certainly fits in with his final emphasis on Caligula's failure - "Je n'ai pas pris Ia voie qu'il fallait, je n'aboutis a rien. Ma liberte n’est pas la bonne"- while at the same time offering what is perhaps the most fruitful way of preventing the play from becoming a static discussion of abstract philosophical questions. |
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| From Two Reviews of
A 1993 Caligula Ray Conlogue and Pat Donnelly |
| Camus loved the theatre, but theatrical action did not come
naturally to him ... . Of the two plays at hand, it is Le Malentendu that suffers
more from Camus’ uncertainty. Rene-Richard Cyr, a young director, has imposed the
impatience of his generation on the play: he cut a half hour of what he felt was
repetitive dialogue and has tried to treat it as a thriller. One can’t say he’s
wrong -- the play is no masterpiece -- and yet one feels instinctively that it is a
mistake to take the philosophy out of a philosophical playwright ... Brigitte Haentjens
has had better luck with Caligula for two reasons: it is a better play and she has
a stupendous leading actor, Marc Beland ... . He does irresistible parodies of himself and
then kills anyone who appreciated it. He takes the theatrical metaphor to elegant heights,
and then he never missteps ... . Haentjens has said that she meant to take the play
seriously, something that Cyr perhaps failed to do. It was the right choice. Where Le
Malentendu invites viewers to consign Camus to the museum, Caligula leaves the
disconcerting impression that he, and humanism, are unkillable. The Globe & Mail, April 4, 1993. At a recent weekend performance of the Nouvel Compagnie Theatrale's Caligula by Camus at Thatre Denise Pelletier, the largely teenage crowd cheered and applauded the cast like they'd just seen Prince at the forum. And when it was announced that director Brigitte Haentjens and the actors would be coming out to talk after curtain call, my teenage daughter, who'd usually rather be at the movies, insisted on staying. As the students gave their own personal reactions to the play, it became evident that the writing itself, with its highly cerebral yet passionate angst, has a special appeal ... . The last time I saw the play was in the late '70s. It was directed by Alexander Hausvater at the Saidye Bronfman Centre. Anyone who was there will remember a Roman orgy of a production with Caligula (Jack Wetherall), baring his all to be bathed from a basin. Compared to that wild, and obviously memorable experiment, the NCT Caligula is pretty tepid stuff ... . Haentjens has trusted largely to the text and actor Marc Beland, formerly a dancer with La La La Human Steps, to bring Caligula into the era of safe sex ... . The play is essentially a prolonged, occasionally interrupted, mad scene by Caligula. Everyone else is incidental. Beland does well with it. He's got a body that knows how to talk and doesn't always say the same thing. But one would wish him a more imposing, emotive presence. Caligula demands a larger-than- life portrayal. Putting Beland on platform shoes, wearing fake breasts, for the scene in which the emperor demands deification, doesn't quite do the trick. Still, it's a solid, stylish production with a steady dramatic build. The Montreal Gazette, April 3, 1993 |
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| Caligula Nominations |
| "Expatriate Russian stage director Vladimir Mirzoev, 34, is
artistic director of Horizontal Eight Theatre Company, a hand-to-mouth troupe dedicated to
the revival of works by Oscar Wilde, August Strindberg and other important dramatists. His
production of Albert Camus's Caligula - opening tonight at Actor's Lab Theatre, 8 Britain
St. - is the company's fourth in the past year. The fledgling troupe maintains this
ambitious program through the largely volunteer efforts of its core ensemble of eight to
10 actors." The Toronto Star, January 31, 1992. The Horizontal Eight Theatre Company’s production of Caligula received nominations for best director and best production in the 1992 Chalmer’s Awards. Reviews at the time usually turned on the highly physical performances by the actors in a play usually renown for its intense philosophical debates. |
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