Break of Noon

Break of Noon (Partage de midi) is a collaborative attempt, edited by Anthony Rudolf, at preparing an English-language edition of Paul Claudel's remarkable and complex play, an unstable text which gave Claudel many problems throughout his life. These are explored in essays by David Furlong of Exchange Theatre in London, which put on a production of the play in 2018 and John Naughton, a leading authority on Claudel. The critical apparatus is completed by the late Susannah York's essay on her own involvement with the play and recounts her interaction with her fellow translator, Jonathan Griffin. The instability of this strange and compelling work in its various original versions is mirrored by the three critical essays in the present work, which do not always see eye to eye. It is thirty years since Jonathan Griffin died and nearly fifty years since Pierre Rouve's Ipswich production of Jonathan's translation, starring Ben Kingsley and Annie Firbank.