Transforming George Moore

Simone Benmussa's adaptive art in the singular life of Albert Nobbs

Bibliographic Data

ID12370095
AuthorsSharon Ammen (University of Maryland, College Park, corresponding author)
Year1991
Volume11
Issue4
Pages306-312
Publication date1991-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueText and Performance Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1046-2937 • E-ISSN: 1479-5760
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10462939109366021
OpenAlexW2092963588
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited8

ERHAPS in response to dearth of desirable vehicles for female performers in drama, women have been increasingly turning to other forms of literature and art—the short story, poetry, paintings, and epistolary collections—to create their own theatre pieces.1 One such contemporary stage adaptation of great interest to feminist critics is Simone Benmussa's The Singular Life of Nobbs, based on George Moore's short story,2 and first performed in Paris in 1977. Set in Victorian Ireland, Albert is tale of a poor woman who lives disguised as a waiter in a large hotel in Dublin in order to secure economic freedom. Encouraged by a chance, brief meeting with another disguised woman (Hubert), decides to court Helen, a hotel maid, in order to add companionship to her lonely life. But courtship ends when is unable to disclose her sex, and she lives rest of her life in Morrison Hotel and dies alone. Critic Ruby Cohn points out that Benmussa retains much of original story's and, indeed, that she seems attracted to this precisely because it is in past and, therefore, ill at ease with present, which is, of course, material of theatre.3 Benmussa herself states that she found a dialectic between the distance implied by and with characters demanded by theatre, an identification created by very sentience of actors, by their living existence.4 This collision between here-and-now of theatre and elsewhere of narration in The Singular Life of Nobbs is viewed by Elin Diamond as forcing audience to understand female identity as a historical and cultural construction whose causes and consequences constitute drama being enacted.5 Diamond emphasizes foregrounding of narrative in Benmussa's text as coercive and clearly identifiable with shackles of gender code.6 In agreement with Diamond's analysis, both Sue-Ellen Case and Jill Dolan add a consideration of gender as an essential message contained in Benmussa's play. According to Case: assumed gender makes traditional roles of other women—with their long skirts and coy looks—seem as imposed and artificial as Albert's gender identification.7 Dolan adds idea that Moore's functions as male gaze

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Drama · George (robot · Literature · Narrative · Order (exchange · Performance art · Sociology · History · Human Behavior and Motivation · Irish and British Studies · Theatre and Performance Studies