Word: guignol
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Antigone's. And with a temerity as notable as her talent, Actress Anderson (Macbeth, The Three Sisters) brought those emotions spectacularly out into the open. She flung aside both classic control and realistic restraint. She played Medea half in the grand manner, half in the Grand Guignol manner; she used every wile of body and face, every art of voice and gesture, to produce something possibly mixed or impure-but definitely, undeniably overwhelming...
That is about what Grand-Guignol audiences hope to see in the most-famed, most-repeated plays...
Such realism is a passion with the Grand-Guignol. The stop-at-nothing tradition was established by Founder Max Maurey, who died last week. It was carried on by the late Andre de Lorde, "Le Prince de la Terreur," the man who wrote the two favorite plays and many other Grand-Guignol classics. Says an old De Lorde fan: "He was a mild, sweet little man, always smiling...
...makeup, especially, Grand-Guignol-eurs excel. Their piece de resistance is a boiled, partly skinned head (the actor is wrapped in a silk stocking and daubed with putty, sponge, cloth and "blood"). The theater has a secret recipe for blood; when the stuff cools it coagulates and makes scabs. Thrill-hungry customers in the small auditorium get a dividend when they overhear the hoarse backstage whisper: "Vite, Edmond! Warm up the blood...
Died. Max Maurey, 77, French playwright and founder of Paris' famed Grand-Guignol (see THEATER) ; in Neuilly, France...