This was a very dramatically based play about a set of actors before, during, and after a key performance. The characters were interesting and vivid and the plot-line was easy to follow and fulfilling. I quite liked it and feel that it offered a lot for me as a reader. For those interested in Sartre, don't skip this one. It may not be his best, but it's still a nice treat.

3.75 stars. ( )

This was a delightful romp, witty and thought-provoking at the same time. I had never even heard of this play until I was in London when it was at the Old Vic, in around 1990/91, and I was at a loose end on my last night there. Ended up with 1/2 price tickets, and was blown away, by the play and by Derek Jacobi in the lead role. It's based on something by Dumas, so perhaps that accounts for the lightness of touch that is there that doesn't feature in Sartre's better-known works, like Huis clos.

As the drama opens, Kean is in love with an ambassador's wife -- and a young woman runs away from her guardians, enamored of the stage and of Kean himself. The two relationships collide, and Kean's fragile ego and sense of self take a beating at the hands of all, including that of the Prince Regent. (the future George IV.) There's a lot of truth in this -- Kean did drink too much, he led a scandalous life, he did travel to NY in the 1820s -- but Sartre takes liberties with history by introducing the character of Anna Danby, the impeturbable young woman who appears to be incapable of playing off-stage tragedies in the way that others in his life does. In one scene she taxes him with his drunkenness, reeling off a list of his mishaps. "You were drunk again on December 18th, and you spoke the Fortinbras soliloquoy so beautifully you had the whole house in tears." KEAN: "You see!" ANNA: "Yes. Only that night, the play was Lear."

Sartre uses the play to explore issues of class and role-playing, which come out much more clearly reading the text than they did watching it. There's a hilarious recurring riff on the idea of cheese as a proxy for social status: Denmark, home to Kean's innamorata, is a nation of cheesemongers; Anna's father made a fortune from cheese. Ultimately, Kean cries out of exasperation, "Now I know: Shakespeare is a cheese ... and I sell him by the pound."

Ultimately, Kean reaches a kind of epiphany, telling Elena they are all victims, she as a woman, the prince as too highly born, and Kean because he was born a bastard. "We live all three on the loves of others, and we are all three incapable of loving ourselves." Decompensating on the stage, he tells his audience, "I am a character who has found himself in the wrong part." I'm so glad I read this, and will dash out and find a copy pronto since the library wants their returned to them. ( )