Resurrection

Resurrection can refer to two plays produced in South Africa

Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy, Henri Bataille and Michael Morton (1903)

The original text

The play is based on Воскресеніе, the last novel by written Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)[1], and on the version first published in 1899, not the complete text that was only published in Russian in 1936 and in English in 1938. It is known in English translation by various names, including Resurrection and The Awakening)[2].

The novel and the play tell the story of Katusha, a country girl, who is seduced and abandoned by Prince Nekludov. Nekludov finds himself, years later, on a jury trying the same Katusha for a crime he now realizes his actions drove her to. He follows her to imprisonment in Siberia, intent on redeeming her and himself as well.

In 1902 Henri Bataille (1872-1922)[3] adapted Tolstoy's novel as a French play called Résurrection and styled it an "Épisode Dramatique" in five acts and a prologue. It was first performed at the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe on 14 November 1902. Later revived at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin on 25 January, 1905 and again at the Théâtre National de l'Odéon on 24 February, 1923.

The French text was also produced in its original French at His Majesty's Theatre, London on 17 February, 1903, at the same timed that an English version - translated into English from Bataille's French version by Michael Morton (1864-1934)[4] - also opened in the Victoria Theatre, London, on 17 February, produced by Beerbohm Tree and his company, directed by Percy Nash (Beerbohm Tree apparently advertised the English versions as "less shocking than the French play to the sensibilities of Mrs. Grundy"[5]). It played there till 30 April, 1903.

A typescript copy of the English text held in the New York Public Library collection[6] and the text itself was published by F.J. Wildman, 1903. The text is often credited to Batialle and Morton, or even Tolstoy, Bataille and Morton.

Other translations and adaptations

In 1930 Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko also did a stage version of the novel for the Moscow Art Theatre.

It has also seen a number of operatic versions, early ones such as French composer Albert Roussel's 1903 tone poem Résurrection and Italian composer Franco Alfano's Risurrezione (1904), followed by later versions include Vzkriesenie (1960) by Slovak composer Ján Cikker, and Resurrection by American composer Tod Machover.

Filmed a number of times

Performance history in South Africa

1905: Performed as Resurrection by the William Haviland and his company in the Opera House, Cape Town, in June, most probably using the published Bataille and Morton version.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_(novel)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy

Copy of the French text in Henry Bataille Résurrection, Théâtre Complet, Ernest Flammarion, 1922, Tome III (p. 9-193)[7]

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Bataille

https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-cast-staff/michael-morton-7740

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Morton_(dramatist)

https://books.google.co.za/books?id=sB_BQwAACAAJ&sitesec=reviews&redir_esc=y

https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/88024/resurrection#overview

https://www.nytimes.com/1903/02/18/archives/tolstoi-at-fourth-hand-resurrection-seen-through-a-glass-darkly-at.html

Rebecca Beasley and Philip Ross Bullock (eds). 2013. Russia in Britain, 1880-1940: From Melodrama to Modernism. Oxford University Press[8]

D.C. Boonzaier, 1923. "My playgoing days – 30 years in the history of the Cape Town stage", in SA Review, 9 March and 24 August 1932. (Reprinted in Bosman 1980: pp. 374-439.)

F.C.L. Bosman. 1980. Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika, Deel II, 1856-1912. Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik: p.422

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Resurrection by Richard Rive (1966)

The original text

A one-act play, adapted by Richard Rive (1931-1989) from his short story of the same name, it deals with the ambiguities of the "coloured" designation - a theme which Rive will return to in Buckingham Palace, District Six.

The play was first performed in April 1966 by Experimental Theatre at the University of Columbia and published in Short African Plays (Ed: Cosmo Pieterse, 1968 ) by Heinemann and later again in Selected Writings (Johannesburg: Ad Donker, 1976).

Performance history in South Africa

1985: Presented by the University of the Witwatersrand as part of a double bill with All's Well at the National Arts Festival Student Drama in 1985 starring Jacquiline Dommisse, Gilda Blacher, Niel Lessick. Directed by Graeme Messer, stage manager Mary Gill, lighting Paul Abrahams, company manager Morag Todd.

Sources

Sydney Paul Gosher. 1988. A historical and critical survey of the South African one-act play written in English. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Pretoria: University of South Africa.

National Arts Festival programme, 1985.

Go to ESAT Bibliography

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