The View From Above: 'The Balcony'

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BANNED BOOKS GET a lot of attention — everyone wants to know what all the fuss is about.

Yet "The Balcony," the play by French provocateur Jean Genet, hasn't received as much notice as other forbidden works. Genet's 1951 play was originally banned in the United States as obscene and subversive, although it was later adapted into a movie starring Shelley Winters and became an off-Broadway mainstay.

Although the ban has since been lifted, Scena Theatre's production of "The Balcony" at the Warehouse Theatre is the play's first professional production in the nation's capital. It's odd, since the play aims to question the legitimacy of the power and influence so many Washingtonians crave.

"It's one of the great plays that everyone knows about but no one has seen," director Robert McNamara said. "I hope we can rectify that."

The play is set in a brothel where men live out fantasies of power and prestige. One man gets off on dressing like a priest and pretending to absolve women of their sins. (He muses aloud about the source of a priest's authority and power while ... his hands are busy.) While a revolution rages, the men inside the brothel are elevated into the powerful figures they emulate after their idols are killed.

The play throws jabs at the church, the state, the courts and conventional sexuality. McNamara said Genet's political critiques endure, even though the play was written more than 50 years ago.

"He was a very politically sided writer — we don't have too many of those anymore," McNamara said.

Written by Express contributor Gabe Nelson
Photo courtesy Scena Theatre