The Balcony

Excellent

Many people have seen the play "The Maids" or the realistic mid-70's movie with Glenda Jackson and Susannah York. But most of us are unfamiliar with "The Balcony."The opening scenes with ordinary men pretending to be The Bishop, The Judge, and The General in the brothel are very interesting and set up high expectations. But this potential was not fulfilled. I think that it was fine that the play remained ambiguous about the outside revolution and the play acting with the prostitutes. But by the end of the play, the speeches aren't very informative and didn't contribute to the plot or to understanding the characters. This is one case where the lack of popularity for the play is reflected by the ineffective ending. Like "The Maids," it starts out jokey and turns absurd, but without a stronger more tragic and involving ending it just doesn't seem as good.

Recently, in reviewing the text for the plays "The Maids" and "The Blacks' by French writer and playwright, Jean Genet, I wrote the following first two paragraphs that apply to an appreciation of the play under review, "The Balcony", as well:"There was a time when I would read anything the playwright Jean Genet wrote, especially his plays. The reason? Well, for one thing, the political thing that has been the core of my existence since I was a kid, his relationship to the Black Panthers when they were being systematically lionized by the international white left as the "real" revolutionaries and systematically liquidated by the American state police apparatus that was hell-bend on putting every young black man with a black beret behind bars, or better, as with Fred Hampton, Mark Clark and long list of others, dead. Genet, as his somewhat autobiographical "Our Lady Of The Flowers" details came from deep within a white, French version of that same lumpen "street" milieu from which the Panthers were recruiting. Thus, kindred spirits.That kindred "street" smart relationship, of course, was like catnip for a kid like me who came from that same societal intersection in America, the place where the white lumpen thug elements meet the working poor. I knew the American prototype of Jean Genet, up close and personal, except, perhaps, for his own well-publicized homosexuality and that of others among the dock-side toughs that he hung around with. So I was ready for a literary man who was no stranger to life's seamy side. His play ,"The Maids", was the first one I grabbed (and I believe the first of his plays that I saw performed)."As I have mentioned elsewhere once I "discover" a writer I tend to read through everything else that he or she has written to see if there is anymore gold in store. That is the case here with "The Balcony" . If "The Maids' centers on the sexual fantasy and the social distortions that the class struggle accentuates, and "The Blacks" delves deeply into the "masks" worn to survive in the class and racial struggle, then "The Balcony" underscores the centrality of the real and illusionary in Genet's work. Here he tackles theme of revolution and counter-revolution as seen and felt through the characters who inhabit a brothel, clients and customers alike. That struggle, real enough in our world, is what drives the plot here. This is not, however, some quirky Marxist interpretation of revolutionary struggle, win or lose. It is not Leon Trotsky's theory of revolutionary tensions between the old and new societies and degeneration of the latter but it is a nice theatrical, stripped down look at those interpretations. If the play is acted and directed correctly it is well worth seeing. In the meantime read the text.

There is no final version of this . Genet revised it often . A filmed version is incomplete . So you have to use your imagination as you read the dialogue . The theme seems to be why attempts to overthrow institutions lead to new institutions that mimic the earlier ones . In other words , new ways of thinking are needed but we all have been damaged by society's brainwashing .

A great play about the continuum of illusions and reality and power as a result of positioning heheIt is especially relevant now when our world "where everything -- you can be quite sure, is falser than here"