La Ville dont le prince est un enfant (play)
La Ville dont le prince est un enfant is a 1955 play by French dramatist Henry de Montherlant. The title, literally translated, The City Whose Prince is a Child, is taken from Ecclesiastes 10:16: "Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child, and thy princes eat in the morning!"
Progress of the theatrical work
Henri de Montherlant was born 20 April 1895, and one of his first works was started in 1912 under the title Serge Sandrier, and continued to be transformed for four decades before being published in 1951 and the definitive version in 1967. It was inspired by the adolescent years of Montherlant, particularly his formative years in Institution Notre-Dame de Sainte-Croix commonly known as Collège Sainte-Croix de Neuilly in 1912. It looks at the difficulties in the life of André Sevrais as a young man 15–16 years of age in a Catholic school in France, his friendship and love for a younger boy aged 11–12 years.
An amended version would be republished in 1969, before Montherlant's death on 21 September 1972 under the title Les Garçons (literally The Boys), that takes a fresh look on the story with André Sevrait becoming the character Alban de Bricoule, who already served as a double in Montherlant works Le Songe et Les Bestiaires.
Plot
Philosophy student André Sevrais attends a Catholic boys' school in Paris, where he becomes fast friends with his younger schoolmate, a little rebellious boy named Serge Souplier. This friendship between the two youngsters does not go unobserved by the Abbot of Pradts, who harbors a secret obsession with Souplier and uses his position of authority to try to handle the adolescent Servais, with the pretext of protecting the youngster Souplier; ultimately, however, he is undone by his own hand.
Stage acts
- Montherlant presented the play for the first time in 1952 in Geneva (Switzerland) through an amateur group of actors, in order to test the public's reaction to the play.
- In 1963, the first act of the play was presented at Mathurins Theater, in Paris, as a curtain raiser for another of his works entitled Fils de personne.
- The play was presented in its entirety in 1967 at Michel Theater in Paris, with Paul Guers in the role of Abbot of Pradts, and Didier Haudepin playing the role of André Sevrais.
- A full presentation of the Michel Theatre act was broadcast in 1969 on the first channel of the official French television network Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française (ORTF).
- In 1974, it was staged again at the Mathurins Theater.
- In April 1994 it played again at the Hébertot Theater. In this version, Christophe Malavoy played the role of Abbot of Pradts. He also played the role in an adapted television version.
- In 2006, yet another version was played at the Théâtre du Nord-Ouest with a remarkable role of Sevrais by Maxime Raoust.[1]
- In 2007, the part is assembled in Brussels, Belgium with the "Comédie Claude Volter" group.
Publications
- 1951 - Paris by Gallimard
- 1952 - Paris by Plon
- 1967 - Paris by Gallimard (with reworked definitive text)
- La Pléiade - Volume II, with the outlines of the parts
- 1971 - as Le Livre de poche (pocket book)
- 1973 - Folio (re-edited in 1994)
French film adaptation
Christophe Malavoy directed in 1997 a film entitled La Ville dont le prince est un enfant, also known by its English language release title The Fire That Burns. In the movie version Malavoy played the role of Abbot of Pradts and Naël Marandin the role of André Sevrais and Clément van den Bergh in the role of Serge Souplier. The film also featured Michel Aumont the role as superior of the school.
English play adaptations
The play was first translated for broadcasting as The Land where a Child is King by Henry Reed and broadcast by the B.B.C. in 1962 and later translated as The Fire that Consumes by Vivian Cox with Bernard Miles, and staged at the Mermaid Theatre in 1977.
Issues
The play deals with the complex relations in a Catholic school. The abbot is torn between his human desires and his religious obligations of abstinence. He tells the superior of the college that God has created men more sensitive than the fathers, as they see how these children who are not ours are not loved. He also tells André Sevrais who refuses this fate: "You will smile about this when you are twenty years old"; to which the boy answers: "Not me, I will never smile!". Indeed, Montherlant would be haunted throughout his life with this experience at a young age in 1912 at Collège Sainte-Croix de Neuilly in 1912.
However Montherlant would take huge precautions to approach the touchy troubled topic of the taboo subject of friendship between children and adults, especially in a Catholic environment genuinely fearing not to write a text which would devalue the religion as he carefully explained in the long foreword to the play and the appendx published with the part.