During 2018, the Finborough Theatre celebrates 150 years of the Finborough Theatre’s building – and its birthday also coincides with the 150th anniversary of the birth of French symbolist playwright Paul Claudel. As part of the #Finborough150 celebrations, the London premiere in English of Paul Claudel’s Break of Noon (Partage de Midi) plays for six Sunday and Monday evenings and Tuesday matinees from Sunday, 27 May 2018.
The cast comprises Elizabeth Boag, David Durham, Matt Lim and Connor Williams.
Set in Hong Kong and China at the turn of the 20th century, against the backdrop of the age of Empire and the first whispers of revolt and decolonisation, Break of Noon follows the inner journeys of four people who together depict all the multifaceted faces of Love.
Written in 1905, Break of Noon is a semi-autobiographical romance, based on Paul Claudel’s own real love -affair with a married woman, and his experiences as French consul in China. A modern French classic, it is a unique poetic and symbolist manifesto, in verse, on the human frailty of ambivalence and the conflicts and contradictions between physical love and spiritual faith.
Break of Noon was banned from the stage by Claudel himself for forty three years (following a recommendation from his priest during confession), until his friend, famous actor and director Jean-Louis Barrault, after he’d successfully created the epic Soulier de Satin, convinced him to allow him to produce the play in 1948. Barrault’s production, in French, for the famous Renaud-Barrault Company was seen in London in 1951. It was revived at the Comédie Francaise as recently as 2007.
