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The Good Soup
by Felician Marceau adapted by Garson Kanin
Directed by Kyle Fabel
January 24 to 26, 2004
Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th Street
NYC
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| SYNOPSIS |
Around the roulette wheel of a Monte Carlo casino, a woman of a certain age looks back over her life and her pursuit of love, happiness and, most importantly, security ? the good soup!
?Frothy and saucy and frequently hilarious.? Woman?s Wear Daily
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| CAST/CREW |
Delphi Harrington
Marie Paul I
James Prendergast
Monsieur Gaston
Margaret Nichols
Marie Paul II
Darrie Lawrence
Marie Paul's Mother
Francesca Di Mauro
Madame Roger
Greg McFadden
First Patron
James Prendergast
Second Patron
Sean Arbuckle
Monsieur Alphonse
Joel Hurt Jones
Fourth Patron
James Prendergast
Raymond
Francesca Di Mauro
Minouche
Greg McFadden
Customer #1
Darrie Lawrence
Armand's Mother
Francesca Di Mauro
Madame Desveaux
Nora Chester
Madame Thonnard
Kelly Hutchinson
Jeannine
Rachel Easterwood
Clarinet
Dawn Dunlop
Production Stage Manager
Arron Wilton
Assistant to the Director
David Toser
Costume Consultant & Designer
Mary Louise Geiger Lighting Designer |
| PRESS |
Show Business
CAMPBELL?S OR PROGRESSO? Any theater company whose motto includes celebrating "language, the actor... [ read more]
Backstage.com
Garson Kanin's adaptation of Felicien Marceau's Parisian hit "La bonne soupe" opened on Broadway in... [ read more]
Wolf Entertainment Guide
TACT (The Actors Company Theatre) has performed another service in introducing its fans to a play... [ read more]
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| DRAMATURGY |
F?LICIEN MARCEAU & GARSON KANIN
FELICIEN MARCEAU was born ?Louis Carette? on September 16, 1913, in Kortenberg, Belgium, (he has written in detail about his youth there in the novel Les Ann?es Courtes [The Brief Years]). The village of Kortenberg had come into it?s own in the years 1706-1709, with the construction of a road from Brussels to Leuven. It is there, in Leuven where Carette studied, initially at the College of the Holy Trinity and then at the University of Leuven. He began working for the Belgian National Institute of Broadcasting in 1936, but resigned in 1942?two years after the German occupation?following allegations of collaboration, and soon fled the country. He took refuge first in Italy where he was a librarian in the Vatican, and then in France where he eventually obtained his naturalization.
He adopted the pen-name, F?licien Marceau, in time for the publication of his first novel, Chasseneuil in 1948. ?I took a pseudonym because my legal name ? Louis Carette ? was not very exciting. In 1944, I left Belgium where I had been born and took refuge in France. I was a fugitive ? an exile. A few months later, I was condemned to fifteen years of hard labor by the Belgian courts because of a political lawsuit regarding my work at a radio station during the Nazi occupation. It was a turning point in my life ? and I wanted to start over again from zero. I did not want to exploit the judgment of this lawsuit, I did not want to have the air of a martyr. Carette was only a legal name ? it is not who I am any longer. I am Marceau, a name I found in thirty seconds when the time came to sign my contract with the publishing house Gallimard. I wanted a name with seven letters (my lucky number ? and a casino number). As for the first name, I wanted something with character. Felicien (from Felix, ?happy? in Latin), fit the bill. You see, to take a pseudonym in my case was meant neither as a literary joke, nor to fool the authorities. It was a way of challenging the past, to own myself completely, to again be a virgin?like my astrological sign... When my first French book was published, friends wrote, ?Dear Louis to me...? Since then, though, everyone has become accustomed to calling me F?licien.?
More novels followed, but he soon turned to playwriting, and while he had success in various other forms, it is his work in the theatre for which he is most well known. His play The Egg (1957) was the first of several hits in France. The Good Soup followed in 1959, L?Etouffe-Christian in 1960, and Babour in 1969. All were well received by the critics and the public.
In all of Marceau?s work there is a bittersweet quality ? a sad mischievousness and a darkness that is very reminiscent of the plays of Jean Anouilh. And while his reputation for comedy and sentimentality suggests a post-war reaction against the ?literature of the black thoughts?, there is a melancholy seen in novels like The Light Shepherdess (despite it?s title) and Creezy, and a misanthropy in plays like The Egg and The Good Soup which is particularly Anouilh-like.
His avant garde comedy La Bonne Soupe (The Good Soup), had a long successful run in Paris in the late 1950?s. The production starred Jeanne Moreau and Marie Bell. The play, which centers on roulette, ends with the words ?Et hop! Par ici, la bonne soupe!?; which suggests: ?step up (to the roulette tables), and put your money down, which will give you winnings and ensure you the good life.? The play was such a success, it was followed in 1963 by a Twentieth Century Fox Film bearing the same title and based on Marceau?s original 1958 play, adapted by Robert Thomas. The film features Annie Girardot, Jean-Claude Brialy, Claude Dauphin and Franchot Tone.
On Broadway, even with Garson Kanin as adaptor/co-director, David Merrick as producer and Ruth Gordon in the leading role, the play lasted only 21 performances. The issue of Marceau?s wartime activities rose again to the surface, and though he wrote an explanatory letter to the New York Times a week before opening, it seems that the American audience was not yet ready to embrace a play so?arguably?ambivalent in it?s morals, written by?arguably?a collaborator.
Despite this lingering controversy, Marceau was elected to the French Academy in 1975.
GARSON KANIN was born on November 24, 1912, in Rochester, New York, to Russian immigrant parents. As a young man he utilized his talents with the clarinet and saxophone to secure work with a jazz band. This lead to radio performances and to vaudeville. And vaudeville lead him to New York City and to Broadway. He studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and upon his graduation in 1933 landed his first Broadway role, in Little Ol? Boy. Steady work on the boards followed with feature roles in such productions as Three Men on a Horse; Boy Meets Girl; The Body Beautiful and Star Spangled.
In 1937, Samuel Goldwyn hired him as a director of his production staff. But things didn?t work out with Goldwyn and he soon moved on to RKO. His first assignment there, A Man to Remember, written by Dalton Trumbo, was such a hit the studio quickly started handing him bigger and better projects.
In 1941, Kanin entered the Army and was stationed in Fort Monmouth, NJ, with the Training Film Laboratory where he directed the short Night Shift and Ring of Steel. He served for a year during WWII as a sergeant in the Air Force and in 1943, became a captain in the OSS where he and British director Carol Reed co-directed the Oscar winning documentary The True Glory. In December 1942, Kanin married actress-writer Ruth Gordon, who was 16 years his senior. Gordon was already well established on Broadway (she debuted in 1915 in Peter Pan) where she played both classical and contemporary roles. Kanin directed Gordon?s play Years Ago on Broadway in 1946.
Kanin?s first collaboration with Gordon, however, was not as a writer nor as an actress, but as a costume designer. She did the clothes for what was to be Kanin?s biggest success: Born Yesterday. The show ran for more than 1,600 performances, and brought stardom to Judy Holiday. Kanin spent the next few years on Broadway directing such plays as How I Wonder and The Leading Lady.
Gordon and Kanin?s first screenwriting collaboration, A Double Life, brought an Oscar to its star, Ronald Colman. The duo were nominated for an Oscar for their marital comedy Adam?s Rib, and also wrote another successful Hepburn/Tracy comedy, Pat and Mike, among others.
Kanin returned to the stage to direct such Broadway productions as The Diary of Anne Frank and Funny Girl. Following Gordon?s death in 1985, Kanin married actress Marian Seldes.
Besides the Oscar for the documentary, The True Glory, he was the recipient of the Donaldson Award for Best Director, the Mr. Abbott Award from the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation and was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 1985. He was the president of The Authors League of America at the time of his death. He died in 1999 at the age of 86.
MARCEAU WORKS
1948 Chasseneuil, novel
1951 Capri petite ?le, novel
1951 Chair et Cuir, novel
1952 L'Homme du roi, novel
1953 En de secr?tes noces, novella
1953 L'?cole des moroses, one act play
1953 Berg?re l?g?re, novel
1954 Caterina, play
1955 Les ?lans du c?ur, novel
1957 Les Belles Natures
1957 L'?uf, play
1959 La bonne Soupe, play
1960 La Mort de N?ron, one act play
1960 L'?touffe-chr?tien, play
1962 Les Cailloux, play
1964 La Preuve par quatre, play
1965 Madame Princesse, play
1967 Diana et la Tuda, de Luigi Pirandello, play
1967 Un jour j'ai rencontr? la v?rit?, play
1968 Les Ann?es courtes, memoirs
1969 Le Babour, play
1969 Creezy, novel
1972 L'Homme en question, play
1972 L'Ouvre-bo?te, play
1975 Le Corps de mon ennemi, novel
1975 Les Secrets de la Com?die humaine, play
1977 Le Novel en libert?, essay
1977 Les Personnages de la Com?die humaine
1978 La Trilogie de la vill?giature, de Carlo Goldoni, play from an adaptation by Giorgio Strehler
1979 ? nous de jouer, play
1984 Appelez-moi Mademoiselle, novel
1985 La Carriole du p?re Juniet
1987 Les Passions partag?es, novel
1989 Un Oiseau dans le ciel, novel
1992 Les Ing?nus, novella
1993 La Terrasse de Lucrezia
1994 Le Voyage de noces de Figaro
1997 La Grande Fille, novel
2000 L'Affiche, novel
2002 L'homme en question |
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