About Eugene Scribe
“Scribe? Scribe? Never heard of him… Oh, wait a tick! Isn’t there a rue Scribe in Paris? Yes, there is. Also a Hôtel Scribe. Both are named after Eugène Scribe, France's leading playwright in the nineteenth century. His plays were put on in the Theatres of the Boulevard, all gilt and crimson plush, during the Second Empire. Audiences flocked to see them.
Scribe's output was phenomenal. He wrote literally hundreds of plays several of which, because of their superb plotting, were taken up by leading Italian opera composers and adapted as librettos. Scribe created roles for legendary performers like Rachel (the former Jewish street-singer who dominated the French stage of her day)and Sarah Bernhardt who once played the title role in Hamlet.
Scribe insisted that everything in a play down to the smallest detail must work to maximum effect. He was like a car-designer obsessively concerned with what happened under the hood to give power-performance as much to achieve elegance of styling and body-work. Thus Scribe has rightly been called the father of the well-made play. Come for a drive in one of them and you will not forget the experience!
Scribe deployed his superlative technique to lay bare what he conceived to be the basic springs of human motivation. He believed that there were two primary drives in human affairs, sexual attraction and the attraction of wealth. In Golden Opportunities, one of his comic masterpieces brilliantly adapted by Anthony Curtis for the Warehouse Theatre, these two motive-forces are hilariously at war among a sextet of larger-than-life characters.
Scribe’s wicked take on what makes people tick is an acquired taste, but it is one that, after you have seen this show, you are unlikely to regret acquiring.