"The third and definitive edition". 12mo. 205 pp. Cream card wraps, lettered in black by Giacometti to covers and spine. Former ownership claim to front cover verso, faint foxing and pencil underlining in places, else Very Good.
Édition troisième et définitive, en 9 tableaux, tirée sur papier d'alfa, après l'originale à l'Arbalète en 1956, en 15 tableaux. In-12, 205 pp., broché, titre imprimé (dessiné par Alberto Giacometti). Achevée d'imprimer le dix mars 1962 sur les Presses d'Audin à Lyon. Bon état, non coupé.
Play set in an upmarket brothel amidst a revolution that has wiped out the stakeholders of power except the Chief of Police, who now enlists its patrons to play out the fantasy roles, that destiny has denied them. Le Balcon exists in three distinct versions, published in French in 1956, 1960, and 1962. The first version consists of two acts of fifteen scenes; the second is the longest and most political, while the third is the shortest and less politically engaged. Genet worked on this definitive version between April and October 1961, during which time he read Friedrich Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy (1872), a work of dramatic theory that was to become a formative influence on his ideas about the role of myth and ritual in post-realist theatre.
The play premiered in the West End on 22 April 1957, in a production directed by Peter Zadek at the Arts Theatre Club, a "private theatre club" that enabled the production to get around the Lord Chamberlain's ban on public performances of the play. It featured Selma Vaz Dias as Irma and Hazel Penwarden as Chantal. Genet himself participated in the opening-night theatrics by attempting to physically obstruct the performance and accused Zadek of the "attempted murder" of his play, objecting to what he called its "Folies Bergère"-style mise en scène. "[O]ne of the masterpieces of our time." –Martin Esslin