REVIEW: The Ermine

Broadcast: BBC Radio – Saturday, 2^nd April 1955

Character: Franz

Synopsis

The Ermine, although the first of Anouilh’s plays to attract widespread recognition, is perhaps the least innovative in its presentation, its originality residing primarily in Anouilh’s announcement and treatment of themes that would soon come to characterize his theatre. Cast in a naturalistic mold, The Ermine contrasts the wealthy Monime (Beth Boyd) with the underprivileged, ambitious Frantz (Peter Wyngarde), who will stop at nothing, even murder, in order to win her hand. Monime, however, does not decide that she loves Frantz until after he has claimed responsibility for the crime and turned himself in to the authorities. Such hopelessness, usually polarized between rich and poor, would continue to haunt Anouilh’s would-be lovers throughout the rest of his career as a playwright.

From The Radio Times

It was by now become almost a tradition that a play by Jean Anouilh should first be broadcast and then be staged in this country. That was true of Point of Departure which was staged in 1950 having been produced for radio by Raymond Raikes. It was true of Léocadia which Raikes produced for radio last July and which, as Time Remembered, is now running in London.

This week Raikes produces The Ermine, the first of Anouilh’s pièce noires, which he wrote when he was only 21. It will be interesting to see whether this, too, finds its way to the theatre.

The leading role will be played by Peter Wyngarde, who played the Prince in Léocadia. We met this handsome young actor last week and found him excited, on the one hand, about The Ermine (“an astonishing play for one so young”), and on the other, with the prospect of seeing Spain for the first time on Sunday, when the play is to be broadcast in the Third Programme, you will be on his way to Madrid where he is to appear in a film being made the about the life of Alexander the Great. This will be his first film appearance, so he’s spending much time reading about film making and making sketches of the character he is to playful stop

“I always do that,” he said, “and particularly for radio where I think an actor must have a clear idea of the physical appearance of the man is representing.

Plays and Players

This month has brought the first performance in England of the earliest Anouilh play on the latest Gabriel Marcel. No two plays could be further apart.

The Ermine contains all the bitterness which he developed in his later days. The importance of money, the insistence on the transient transients of love, all very personal; while Marcel writes his play on a theme and moulds the play into Catholic dogma.

Anouilh’s The Ermine was written in 1931 and was the first play to set Paris talking about this young man who was then Louis Jouvert’s secretary.

His characters are not causey or complacent, but full of their own savage vitality. Even at this early stage of Anouilh’s philosophy was apparent, with this defiance of the normal social code.

The theme, of a young man who commits murder to gain sufficient money to make his love for a pure young girl possible, is reminiscent of Dostoievsky, but carried out only as Anouilh could any purge of purity through suffering.

The passage where Monine offers herself to Frantz is wonderfully sensitive and alive.

The translation by Miriam John is not very fluid, but is faithful enough to give an idea of the original. The production by Raymond Raikes had not enough atmosphere to come alive without the visual element.

However, Peter Wyngarde as Frantz had all the variety of pace and tempo which makes a long, difficult part possible. He had a false and quality which is right for this sort of playful stop best boys lack the depth which makes an Anouilh heroine so pathetic, but was good enough. Dorothy Homes-Gore made the Duchess who is murdered, into a pathetic creature, in spite of her behaviour. Raymond Raikes production was most effective and the cast played with absolute sincerity.

‘The Ermine’ Written by the translator of the play, Miriam John.

One recurrent theme in the work of Jean Anouilh cannot be ignored. It is the theme of pureté. The characters who plead for it are normally aiming at a kind of perfection, not compatible with the moral and social tenants the size if they live in. At least, the means to it are not compatible. They’re not out to reform society, but to ‘perfect’ themselves or some emotion they are involved in.

Frantz, in The Ermine, Anouilh’s first published play, described such people, as ‘constantly battling against hordes of hidden forces that attacked them from within or from the world outside’. The forces attacking Frantz from the outside world are those of poverty; from within, those of pride.

Anouilh’s writing has been described as the ‘explosion of a passionate rancour’. This description, although harsh, bears the seeds of truth, a may also explain, curiously enough, why Anouilh has more attentive and sympathetic audiences in England than his contemporaries have done. Anouilh is emotionally ‘involved’ with his main characters.

The title of The Ermine is the key to its author’s attitude towards his ‘hero,’ Frantz. I was convinced the title add a dual suggestion, and after some discussion with the producer, I was asked to find out from Anouilh what he really had intended. Luckily. For I had been barking up the wrong tree. In his reply Anouilh said that he had given the play this title because the ermine, confronted by a muddy stream, will, no matter what the consequences, refuse to dirty its fur. Whether or not this is a fact about the ermine (a symbol of purity), it is interesting as pointing the extent to which the author is emotionally ‘involved’ with Frantz. The Ermine shows us Anouilh with one foot in melodrama and the author taking the first stride on the road to Antigone.

Notes: When Jean Anouilh wrote ‘The Ermine’ in 1931, he was employed as secretary to the French actor, Louis Jouvet – the latter of whom was Peter’s uncle.

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