The Satin Slipper

What can one say about a play that is 11 hours long? I refer to Paul Claudel's "The Satin Slipper" which has just been staged in its entirety at the Theatre de l'Odeon. The play was first performed during the war, but since then it's only been put on two or three times -- for obvious reasons. Making a radio report about it, I watched the first hour and a half, and then the last hour and a half. If what I saw is representative, then all I can say is that anyone who sat through the whole thing has my fullest admiration. It makes one ponder on the vast difference that separates the French and the British cultural worlds. The idea of this being put on in a West End theatre is laughable. As far as I could make out, "The Satin Slipper" is a long, long, long series of philosophical and poetical discursions about love and God. Of plot, I could identify very little -- certainly no dramatic tension. To my view, it was the embodiment of tedium. And yet the theatre's 700 seats were all taken, and it has had a packed four week run. People I spoke to in the audience were ecstatic. I interviewed the director Olivier Py, who said the play had changed his life. And the actress Jeanne Balibar said that for her it was like an American TV mini-series like Lost or The West Wing -- full of hidden themes. But the answer to that is surely that in the Anglo tradition we write tight exciting stories which engage the attention, and then use them to evoke deeper themes. The French way seems to be to go straight to the deeper theme, and then talk about it - ad nauseam. Personally I find it effete and elitist.