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Why the Grand Guignol was so shocking

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(Image credit: Alamy)

By Holly Williams 5th March 2019

Hidden in an old chapel in Paris, the Grand Guignol was the home to on-stage
horror, with grisly, lo-fi special effects – plus sex – to tantalise the crowds.

Article continues below

here is one reliable way for theatre to make headlines: fainting. We have an

T
insatiable appetite, it seems, for stories about audience members being
overcome in aisles due to horror and violence onstage. Recently, a play at the
National Theatre turned up in the news pages after someone swooned during a
preview show – despite it being an isolated incident, and the production of When We Have
Sufficiently Tortured Each Other, which stars Cate Blanchett, is in fact rather tame.

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An audience member fainted during a preview of London’s National Theatre production of When
We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other (Credit: National Theatre/Gillian Hyland)

Why are we so luridly fascinated by such full-body reactions? These news stories often
feature some sneering towards the soft sorts who pass out at fiction and fake blood.
Personally I sympathise, having been among their number myself – I managed to conk out
cold at a particularly gruesome bit of tongue-and-handchopping while reviewing Titus
Andronicus at the Globe once, to the apparent amusement of many readers.

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But our ghoulish interest in people fainting at a show surely reveals an underlying ghoulish
interest in seeing nasty things at all. Very violent shows are actually pretty rare in the
theatre these days – film is the place we expect to get our scares – so the slathering
attention given to gore-fests is surely also partly down to novelty: fancy theatre having such
an impact! It is still often seen as rarefied, highbrow or just a bit bloodless.

In fact, there is a rich tradition of chillingly gruesome stage shows – and the name that
looms largest belongs to one tiny Parisian theatre: the Grand Guignol.

The Grand Guignol was where queasy realism met gaudy

melodrama
The theatre opened in 1897 in an old chapel in Pigalle, a disreputable district near
Montmartre, alongside the Moulin Rouge. It began as a theatre of realism – showing short,

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one-act ‘slice of life’ plays about ordinary Parisians. But the show that really got audiences’
tongues wagging was an adaptation of a Maupassant short story set during the Franco-
Prussian War, where a French prostitute kills a German officer.

Max Maurey, the Grand Guignol’s second owner, developed a unique brand for the theatre
(Credit: Getty Images)

Spotting this blood-lust, the theatre’s second owner Max Maurey quickly developed a
unique brand for the Grand Guignol: it became the home of grotesquely convincing horror
stories, often based on real-life examples of sickening violence. With clever staging
techniques for realistically suggesting gouged eyeballs and spurting blood, and plots drawn
from newspaper reports of real-life crime and depravity, the Grand Guignol was where
queasy realism met gaudy melodrama. And all this proved much more terrifying – and
popular – than your traditional horror narratives of ghosts or monsters.

In the 19th Century, as in the 21st, rumours of fainting are

good for the box office.
“Max Maurey decided to move the theatre from the ‘slice of life’ to the ‘slice of death’,”
laughs Richard J Hand, professor of media practice at the University of East Anglia, who
held a workshop for the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies on the Grand Guignol. “It
became a horror theatre, but not a supernatural theatre – they were interested in serial
killers, escaped lunatics, revenge attacks. Which no doubt drew people in: they’d read about
it in the newspaper, then see it enacted on stage.”

Part of the cunning myth-making of the theatre was to put about the rumour that audiences
fainted at every show (Credit: Getty Images)

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Horrifying special effects

One actor, Paul Ratineau, who was also a stage technician, pioneered grisly, lo-fi special
effects. “He was very famous for his invention of stage blood that apparently congealed
under the lights,” says Hand. “He developed terrific illusions, often based on magic tricks –
the kind of thing Penn and Teller would do in a magic show, but building that into a horror
show, so the eyeballs come flying out, or heads get chopped off, or acid melts a face.”

Acid attacks were in the news then, as now, and proved a source of horrible inspiration. The
actors of the Grand Guignol would use an early form of latex to suggests a gooey, melting
face. And in one famous short play, The Torture Garden, someone was skinned alive. “They’d
get a long strip of Elastoplast, but the sticky side was painted red; when that was pulled off
you get that ripping sound” says Hand. “A simple effect, but apparently when it was acted
well it was extraordinary, people couldn’t quite believe what they’d seen.”

The short horror plays were interspersed with one-act sex farces (Credit: BBC)

There were loyal locals, as well as more bourgeois audiences

who’d be lured across town by the promise of elicit, vicious
thrills
For audience members of a delicate disposition, help was on hand. Part of the cunning
myth-making of the theatre was to put about the rumour that audiences fainted at every
show, and so they always had their own doctor there to revive them. In the 19th Century, as
in the 21st, rumours of fainting are good for the box office.

Lest things got too grim, the short horror plays were interspersed with one-act sex farces.
“It’s a structure for a good night out, that kind of patterning,” adds Hand.

And a good night out it apparently very much was: audiences flocked to the Grand Guignol.
There were loyal locals, as well as more bourgeois audiences who’d be lured across town by
the promise of elicit, vicious thrills, the fact that it was down a dodgy alley in an edgy
district all adding to the frisson of danger. It became quite the tourist attraction, too, Hand
says, up there with the Eiffel Tower for a time.

The venue, which had about 150 seats, had its own special atmosphere too. The 7ft-high
(2.1m) carved stone angels that had been part of the chapel remained, looking down on
audiences in apparent judgement, while the smell of incense reportedly still hung in the air.
“As a place for taboo spectacles it was inadvertently perfect,” says Hand.

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There were private boxes at the back of the theatre which allowed patrons to see out, but no one
could see in (Credit: Getty Images)

At the back of the theatre there was a series of private boxes with grids that allowed
inhabitants to see out and watch the show, but which prevented anyone from seeing in – a
feature that many carousing couples took full advantage of.

“Apparently, people would get up to all sorts of things behind the grill,” says Hand, “to the
extent of the actors having to say ‘have you finished yet?’” Whether they were more turned
on by the sex farces or the torture is a matter of speculation, but it seems the Grand
Guignol’s patrons were certainly alive to the erotically charged juxtaposition of sex and
violence.

Why are audiences so drawn to watching unspeakable acts, though? From public hangings
through to blood sports, we’ve long had an appetite for violence. It’s still alive today, Hand
points out: from newspapers picking over nasty incidents to the current vogue for true-
crime dramas. People know they shouldn’t, Hand says, but they have the urge to see it with
their own eyes.

There’s a lurid fascination there, for sure, but the desire to actually witness a horror may, in
a funny way, also be a technique for neutralising our fears. “That’s what’s interesting with
the repertoire of the Grand Guignol: its possible horrors, or things people had heard about.
They would go and strap themselves in and then come out with that adrenalin rush – they’d
seen it happen to somebody else,” suggests Hand.

The theatre was attacked by critics for feeding our basest instincts, despite being respected
artistically (Credit: Alamy)

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It was a concern that the Grand Guignol was feeding our basest instincts that saw the
theatre attacked by critics. Still, artistically, the Grand Guignol was mostly quite respected.

“You had great acting, performers who were able to go from realism to all-out melodrama
really without the audience seeing the joins,” says Hand. “A lot of critics admired Paula
Maxa, who was the great ‘scream queen’ of the Grand Guignol; she was a must-see in her
day. And it was a theatre where you had great writing – even critics who denounced the
morality said the plays were well-written at least.”

Gaston Leroux, author of The Phantom of the Opera, wrote for the Grand Guignol (Credit: Getty
Images)

It drew major writers, including Gaston Leroux, author of The Phantom of the Opera, and
Maurice Renard, who wrote The Hands of Orlac. And in a brief foray to London, the Grand
Guignol continued the tradition: Noel Coward wrote a short play for it; Joseph Conrad tried,
and was turned down.

Fine in France; banned in Britain

The Grand Guignol opened at the Little Theatre on the Strand in London in 1920 – but only
lasted until 1922. This should not, however, be interpreted as a lack of interest, Hand insists:
the audiences were there, the actors – including a young Sybil Thorndike – were in, and the
famous playwrights were up for it, but the Lord Chamberlain was not. The British theatrical
censor didn’t like stage blood, so there were a lot of strangulations and other inventively
non-splattering forms of death. “In one, an adulterous couple were trapped in a flat when
the ceiling came down and crushed them – so over the top, but that was the sort of thing
they could get away with instead of eye-gouging,” says Hand.

It was maybe too continental for Britain at that time - Richard

J Hand
But they ran into real problems with the sex farces. Fine in France; banned in Britain.
“Censorship made it impossible for them, with plays being banned outright or tinkered with
by the Lord Chamberlain’s office. It was maybe too continental for Britain at that time.”

In France, the Grand Guignol did a roaring trade through the 1920s – but after World War
Two hit, the theatre struggled. It had stayed open throughout the war – controversially
becoming popular with the occupying German forces.

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After World War Two, the theatre’s popularity dwindled, eventually closing in 1962 (Credit:
Getty Images)

Although shows went on until 1962, after the horrors of occupation, and the stories of what
happened in the concentration camps, the love affair was over for the locals. “I think, for
Parisians, watching these playful displays of horror and torture maybe was not quite so
much fun in that context,” says Hand. “The theatre of horror they were so proud of took on a
bitter taste after Auschwitz, and the fact that it made its money with the occupying forces.”

But it was also down to another factor, Hand suggests: the rise of cinema. In the early
1960s, if you wanted a scare you’d go to the cinema for Psycho or Les Diaboliques. “The
audience goes to see the close-ups and zoom shots and shower scenes of cinema – and the
Grand Guignol suddenly seems a little quaint and a little antiquated,” says Hand.

He does, however, think its spirit is still alive today. Horror movies certainly learnt from it, he
says – especially in that need to build up to a scare, or to switch between terror and comedy.
But its influence can also be seen in live theatre, he suggests, in everything from
Washington DC’s Molotov Theatre who explicitly draw on the Grand Guignol’s techniques,
to commercially popular fare like The Woman in Black and Ghost Stories – or even in the
immersive, atmospheric world-building of companies like Punchdrunk. It seems that, even if
there were no ghosts on stage, this unusual little Parisian theatre continues to haunt us
today.

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