Marguerite Duras: Savannah Bay; (1982; repr. with new version 1983)

This edition of Savannah Bay contains the original version of the play, plus the later version – somewhat shorter than the first and with slight alterations but essentially the same – written the year after and performed in 1983 at the Théâtre du Rond-Point: this was produced by Duras assisted by Yann Andréa: there were just two actors, Bulle Ogier as the Jeune Femme and Madeleine Renaud (in her last performance) as Madeleine.

Many of Duras’s usual themes are present here: age and youth, life and death, madness, suicide, passionate sex, different kinds of love, memory and forgetfulness, a sprinkle of lying, and of course the presence of water, particularly in the title.

Madeleine (a Durassian wink to Proust) is the Jeune Femme’s grandmother, closer to death than life, at a stage when she no longer fears death, and whose memory is failing. The Jeune Femme has brought a record for them to hear and sing or speak along to – Édith Piaf’s ‘Les Mots d’amour' – which is an important part of the beginning of the play.

The Jeune Femme coaxes Madeleine to speak – as she has spoken many times before – of her daughter, the Jeune Femme’s mother, who willingly lost her virginity at sixteen to an unnamed man on a rock in the sea, and who killed herself after giving birth to the Jeune Femme.

There is a feeling of myth to the whole business, but of course I couldn’t help mentally comparing and contrasting Jeune Femme and Madeleine to Beckett’s Vladimir and Estragon and Hamm and Clov.
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Marguerite Duras: La Pute de la côte normande
Marguerite Duras: L'Homme assis dans le couloir
Marguerite Duras: Agatha
Marguerite Duras: Emily L.
Marguerite Duras: Les Yeux bleus cheveux noirs
Marguerite Duras: L'Amant | The Lover
Marguerite Duras: Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein
Marguerite Duras: L'Amante anglaise
Laure Adler: Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Duras: Cimetière du Montparnasse
Marguerite Duras: Un barrage contre le Pacifique
Marguerite Duras: L'Après-midi de Monsieur Andesmas
Marguerite Duras: Les Petits Chevaux de Tarquinia
Marguerite Duras: Le Marin de Gibraltar | The Sailor from Gibraltar
Marguerite Duras: La Douleur | The War: A Memoir
Yann Andréa: Cet amour-là
Marguerite Duras and Xavière Gauthier: Les Parleuses
Marguerite Duras: Savannah Bay
Marguerite Duras: Détruire, dit-elle | Destroy, She Said
Marguerite Duras: L'Amour
Marguerite Duras: Dix heures et demie du soir en été
Marguerite Duras: Le Square | The Square
Marguerite Duras: Les Impudents
Marguerite Duras: Le Shaga
Marguerite Duras: Oui, peut-être
Marguerite Duras: Des journées entières dans les arbres
Marguerite Duras: Suzanna Andler
Marguerite Duras: Le Vice-Consul | The Vice Consul
Marguerite Duras: Moderato cantabile
Marguerite Duras: La Vie matérielle
Marguerite Duras: La Vie tranquille
Marguerite Duras: La Pluie d'été