So Constant Reader... how do you round off a day when your second work computer died on you in as many weeks and your ma had her purse stolen out of her bag while shopping? Why you go and see a remarkably depressing play about French 19th Century poets of course you big silly.

TOTAL ECLIPSE was written by Christopher Hampton in 1968 , his second play, at the age of 22. It is based on the tortured relationship between the poets Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud which strangely predestined the relationship between Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas to say nothing of echoing stories like THE BLUE ANGEL, LULU or CARMEN where a seemingly ordinary man is reduced to the lowest of the low by his love for a mercurial, capricious lover.

Verlaine (Daniel Evans), a relatively successful poet in his late twenties invites the teenage Rimbaud (Jamie Doyle) to his home after he is contacted by him for help. Already chafing at having to live with his pregnant young wife in her parent's house, Verlaine is delighted and excited by the anarchic teenager who revels in upsetting the bourgeois household, a relationship that soon becomes sexual under Rimbaud's tutelage. Soon they are living a peripatetic life, moving from France to Belgium to London, all the time their relationship turning sour with Rimbaud becoming more restive - at one point he stabs Verlaine's hands in a bar. When Rimbaud announces he is returning to Paris this time it's Verlaine who lashes out, firing a gun at Rimbaud wounding him in the hand. This results in his arrest and imprisonment for two years. He trails Rimbaud to Germany but his hoped-for reunion is violently rebuffed. They have now travelled far from each other emotionally - Rimbaud has stopped writing poems and Verlaine has become a Catholic. 16 years later, Verlaine now a down-at-heel teacher, is visited by Isabelle Rimbaud who tells him of her brother's death from cancer. She asks Verlaine to return her brother's letters to the family so they can better manage his legacy. On her departure he tears up the mother's address as Arthur appears before him and Verlaine persuades himself that they were happy together.

Christopher Hampton is one of my favourite playwrights - TALES FROM HOLLYWOOD and LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES easily making my favourite plays list - and I had never seen this play before. I must admit to being disappointed in the production. For some odd reason it was designed for a traverse stage which dictated that each scene invariably resulted in the dialogue being used like a tennis ball between the actors standing at either end of it. It also leads to awkward scene changes which take place against mood music broken through with the wail of an electric guitar - a lazy shorthand for "look, he's like a youth rebel"!

Hampton has re-worked the play four times over the years and it sometimes betrays his shifting emphasis - he has admitted that the spur for writing the play was his love of Rimbaud's poetry but while writing it he found Verlaine's emotional complexity more interesting. One can imagine Rimbaud being hugely appealing to the counter-culture of the late 1960s.

It has other problems - for a play about two male poet lovers there are none of their poems and no scene showing any physical affection between them (the play was written when the Lord Chamberlain still acted as a censor for British theatre). This would be less noticeable I think in a production with a surer hand and with performances of equal strength. Daniel Evans can't quite get to grips with Verlaine's shifts of character but he has some very effective moments towards the end of the play when his character is released from prison. The trouble is he is having to bounce his performance off Jamie Doyle's. Doyle speaks all his lines as if each word has a capital letter "I Am Leaving Whether You Like It Or Not" etc. with absolutely no variation in tone - he has a speech where he is explaining to Verlaine his reasons for writing his style of poetry and as he was saying it the thought crossed my mind he probably didn't understand a word but knew that it had to sound 'impassioned'. I suspect a better actor would have found more nuance in the role as there are obvious places in the script which suggest Rimbaud's own disguised frailty.

The supporting cast didn't impress much apart from Wendy Nottingham as Isabelle, Rimbaud's loving sister who will go to any lengths to keep her brother's reputation unsullied by scandal.

Life imitating art imitating life:
The first production of TOTAL ECLIPSE starred Victor Henry as Rimbaud and John Grillo as Verlaine. Victor Henry was one of the most exciting young theatre actors of late 1960s with a string of acclaimed performances at the Royal Court and west end. A fierce drinker, he could be notoriously difficult, arguing with directors and co-stars. Indeed he disliked Grillo so much that on particularly fractious nights the actor was scared of having to play the penultimate scene where Rimbaud beats up Verlaine.
Victor Henry at 29 was the victim of a hit-and-run driver in 1972 which left him in a vegetative state eventually dying 13 years later.