Human Voice (Acting Edition) [Paperback]

Jean Cocteau (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

Product Details

• Paperback: 24 pages
• Publisher: Samuel French Ltd (September 4, 1992)
• Language: French
• ISBN-10: 0573033811
• ISBN-13: 978-0573033810
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,456,176 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hard to love, October 19, 2009

By 

J. Kara Russell "Actress/Artist/Musician/Writer" (Hollywood - the cinderblock Industrial cubicle) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Human Voice (Acting Edition) (Paperback)

This is an excellent piece of drama, a one-woman one-act, that is hard to love precisely because it is a bout a woman who is hard to love. Not only is this character in a "bad emotional space" - dealing with recently being dumped, this character is self-focused, overly dramatizing, manipulative and basically dishonest with herself. This is, of course, what makes the character interesting and challenging to play.

My personal feeling is that this is Cocteau on the page more honestly than perhaps any other piece of his work. He was rather posey, artificial, self-dramatizing person, who had lived the act of being the "artiste" for so long that he forgot how to be a natural, unaffected person. I have always felt that for this play to REALLY be done properly, it should be done by an older gay male; and that would be a fascinating piece of theatre. (Even being set in the 50's doesn't quite explain the despair unless you view it this way.)

Fortunately, it does withstand the transition to being written for a woman to play the part. (After all, many of our great women's roles were written by gay men.) So she becomes a very affected, dislikable, artificial woman... hard to love... but then doesn't that just bring verisimilitude to the whole piece? The audience understands exactly why a man would get tired of this woman. Then the director and actresses job is to give her enough levels that the audience isn't also screaming to get away from her.

The famous recording of Ingrid Bergman's production is problematic basically because Bergman is essentially NOT this kind of woman. The essential quality of Bergman is her calmness, her honest, open vulnerability, her solid earthiness. Of course she wanted the challenge to play a character so essentially different from herself... but just imagine someone like dancer/actress Zizi JeanMaire in this role and you see exactly who this person is, and the essential oddness of her character which makes it very easy to see why a younger man would be swept up with her grandeaur and then quickly realize "there is no THERE there." With Bergman in the role the only reason to leave is lust, and given her great beauty and essential qualities, the guy would have to be nuts. (This choice, of course, flattered Cocteau.)

It's almost impossible to mine this piece for audition material because the character is so dislikable that auditors would wonder at the personality who would choose to do this as a self-presentation... so I think this piece will remain both important and widely underperformed, except for actresses who have the clout and financial resources to produce it themselves. (And even then, it's a hard publicity sell, it would have to be paired with something very different... francophile theatres would get a bump from Cocteau's name.)

4.0 out of 5 stars "I've never had anything to live for but you.", August 15, 2008

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Human Voice (Acting Edition) (Paperback)

Jean Cocteau's landmark "voice play," published in 1947, is dated after sixty years, a reflection of a society which has changed irrevocably. A middle-aged woman, devastated because her five-year relationship has ended and her lover has moved on, tries to come to grips with her future and largely fails. When her lover calls to offer whatever support he can--and to ask for his belongings by tomorrow--his call becomes her lifeline. "I knew you would give me a ring," she says, with ponderous irony, then adds to herself, "A wring of the neck," or "a boxing ring" from which there is no escape.

The entire play consists the woman talking with her former lover in a series of increasingly fraught phone calls, as the connection keeps getting lost. Though she tells him she is "absolutely calm," she has taken fourteen sleeping pills the previous night, and though she also says "It is all my fault," the viewer sees that the lover has lied to her. Yet he has cared for her, repeatedly calling back to be sure that this increasingly hysterical woman will somehow go on--and that he will be able to pick up his belongings the next day.

The play contains a number of dramatic effects which are now clichés--the constant ticking of the clock, the frantic smoking of the woman, a basket full of empty pill bottles, a photo of the new, much younger, woman, and especially the telephone itself, which offers the only chance for communication here. The focus is almost completely on the actress at center stage for about an hour, however, a change of style for Cocteau, whose plays until then contained carefully circumscribed roles.

Obviously, the play calls for an actress of extraordinary ability to make the role come alive, one who can use body language, gesture, and facial expressions to convey her pain without hysterical emoting into the telephone. The play itself reflects its society, which offered little place for a rejected middle-aged "wife" whose "career" consisted of promoting her lover's happiness. To make this play work in the present day, only an actress capable of enormous subtlety will be able to create empathy, as her role is intrinsically over-the-top in emotion, considered excessive for the present day. n Mary Whipple

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