Duras, Marguerite (1914– ), French dramatist, film-maker, and novelist, whose plays belong basically to the Theatre of the
Absurd but temper the vision of life as fundamentally ridiculous by means of a surface realism. Her first play
Le Square (1956) deals with the impossibility of direct communication between human beings. In
Les Viaducs de la Seine-et-Oise (1963) and
L'Amante anglaise (1968) she dramatizes the same true murder story. As
The Viaduct, the first of these was seen in England in 1968. The second version, as
A Place without Doors, was seen in New York in 1970, and as
The Lovers of Viorne in London in 1971, starring Mildred
Dunnock and Peggy
Ashcroft respectively. The original version was followed in 1965 by
Les Eaux et les fôrets, a bitter comedy on the theme of ingratitude, and by a study of divorce,
La Musica, which with
Le Square was seen in London in 1966. In that year Duras's first full-length play,
Des journées entières dans les arbres (also 1965), an account of a curious, abortive reconciliation between an estranged mother and son, originally produced by
Barrault at the
Odéon, was staged by the
RSC as
Days in the Trees with Peggy Ashcroft as the Mother, played in New York in 1976 by Mildred Dunnock. In 1973 the RSC also put on
Suzanna Andler, which portrays the anguish of a woman, married for 17 years, as she debates whether to continue an affair. The play's presentation was due largely to the advocacy of Eileen
Atkins. Duras's later plays include
L'Éden cinéma (1977), set in a French Indo-China plantation in the 1930s;
Vera Baxter (1982; London, 1989), reminiscent of
Suzanna Andler; and
Savannah Bay (1983; London, 1988), an elegant, lyrical encounter between a young woman and Madeleine, an ageing actress. The last role was written for Madeleine
Renaud, who appeared in several of Duras's plays.
