The Misunderstanding
The Misunderstanding (French: Le Malentendu), sometimes published as Cross Purpose, is a play written in 1943 in occupied France by Albert Camus.
His wife Maria says a normal person would simply introduce himself, but Jan intends to observe his family from the outside and find what they really need to make them happy.
Originally the play was to have been entitled Budejovice after the city České Budějovice in Czechoslovakia where Camus stayed briefly during a European trip with his first wife in 1936.
[2] It reflects several aspects of Camus's life: he had left Algeria, to which he was deeply attached, leaving his second wife and friends behind; he was depressed with tuberculosis; as well as living under threat of execution as a propaganda agent of the French Resistance.
[1] The plot of Le Malentendu resembles the newspaper article that the protagonist of Camus' 1942 novel The Stranger finds under his mattress in his prison cell: it is the story of a man who became rich abroad and comes home to his village where his sister and mother have a hotel.
The plot is also an ironic reversal of the classical theme of the recognition of the brother, from the ancient Greek Electra plays and the New Testament story of the Prodigal Son.
[2] Through the necessity of writing while under occupation, “the play is cloaked in metaphor, trailing a train of symbols, with Camus styling the drama with all the inevitability of a Greek tragedy.
Thus Camus is able to air his thoughts on innocence, grief, guilt, betrayal, punishment, integrity, and silence, wrapping all these in what is essentially an existential debate.
Although Camus' arguments come thick and fast, the play moves at a deliberate pace as it develops into more of a treatise than an organic drama".
Le Malentendu is “so heavily laden with ambiguities and multiple levels of meaning that it borders on caricature, a fact that may explain its relative failure as a tragedy”.
These difficulties create the drama – Jan's choice to conceal his identity, Martha's insistence on impersonal conventions, her misinterpretation of his determination to stay, Maria's bewildered response to her cold confession, and the Old Man's indifference.
[2] The play expresses an antipathy to religion, but also a strong concern with religious ideas, including the parable of the prodigal son.
[7] The return of Jan from happiness in Africa to a murderous home, and the yearning of Martha to be in the sun, reflect an antithesis between Northern Europe and the Mediterranean, which informs all of Camus’ work.
The sense of constantly living in a state of exile produces a profound skepticism or distrust in the myths and universal systems of belief, which are alleged to give meaning and purpose to existence but in fact devalue and even negate it” [8] “Although seen by a number of critics as a bleak piece of work, Camus did not regard Le Malentendu as pessimistic.
[9] Le Malentendu was staged for the first time at the Théâtre de Mathurins in Paris on 24 August 1944, directed by Marcel Herrand, who also played the part of Jan and with Maria Casarès as Martha.
“The French public were ill-prepared in 1945 to appreciate such multi-faceted allegories and such philosophical implications in the absence of rational cogency and psychological realism.
Its tragic tone, its refinement, its poetic presentation were no compensation to the audience which insisted – particularly in those days – on clarity of statement and precision of thought”.
Produced by AM Media Productions, Jamie Birkett starred as Martha with Christina Thornton as Mother, David Lomax as Jan, Melissanthi Mahut as Maria and Leonard Fenton as the Old Man.
