Roger Planchon (1931-2009)

Looking out from the balcony at the confusion of a biblically sodden Paris- like ants drunk on jam, commuters twist and twirl around the metro exit – the news of the death of Roger Planchon is announced on France-Inter. Planchon was a key figure in the post-War decentralisation of French theatre, best known for his work at Villeurbanne, which became the TNP (National Popular Theatre) in 1972. Planchon directed Pinter’s No Man’s Land at the TNP in 1979, a production David Bradby highlights as having "treated Pinter's bleak text with a kind of visual literality that has never been seen in Britain". The curtain line, apparently, involved the whole set rising slowly into the flies, accompanied by the alarming noises of thousands of bottles being released, crashing and smashing into each other as they rolled across the stage surface. It’s a wonderful image, highlighting the importance of the alienating alcoholic miasma engorging the characters. Planchon’s death was greeted with respect and affection in France, a country whose media honours its creative writers and practitioners in a way the English seem uncomfortable with. Patrice Chérau talked at length about Planchon’s inexhaustible learning, while Libération devoted an in-depth article between its otherwise increasingly desultory pages.