It's not everyday one gets to see a play by the distinguished fiction writer Guy de Maupassant, and this one, like so many of his stories, is absolutely modern. Because of its interweaving of desire and infidelity as they affect a marriage, La Paix Du Menage ("The Peace Of A Household") has been compared to "Eyes Wide Shut," the film also based on a 19th century story, that one by Schnitzler. Relationships unfold within high walls, the back inset with light from long-curtained windows falling on an intimate dining table, while a down front banquette holds stuffed pillows, Oriental style.
Intimacies are shown both in action (formal to romantic) and talked about by wife, her lover, and husband. Neither decor nor dress mark the domestic drama as 19th century. The husband and handsome, if bespectacled, lover, wear nondescript, contemporary clothing (e.g.,respectively, a raincoat and a black suit with no tie and shirt collar unbuttoned). Sabine Haudepin as the woman is gorgeous in muted red velvet gown, languorously spreading out on the pillows, eating chocolates before kissing, or drifting when she walks. She hardly bothers to cover up her affair when the maid appears, although that almost automaton of a domestic (a man in the original script) imparts a sense of mystery; with her interest but only periphery involvement, does she represent the audience?
The wife makes clear that her husband too has a lover, though she and hers try to keep up appearances when Monsieur returns. He, after the lover leaves, appears suspicious and tries for a bit of romance that she spurns, though she's soon changed into silky black pajamas, expressing her desire to be his equal in sex and money. But the sex game they play is violent; neither wins.
As she is about to leave town in act two, her lover visits, and they plan to run off together. When the husband returns to seduce his wife, he gets a chance to talk to her lover and they work out an arrangement...ironic, unsuspected, but not psychologically unprepared for. In all, a fine study that has been well taken out of the study.
