Crommelynck and Meyerhold: Two Geniuses Meet on the Stage

On April 25, 1922, Crommelynck's The Magnanimous Cuckold opened at the Actors' Theater in Moscow, directed by Meyerhold. Although the initial response to the production was far from unanimous, most of the critics and theater professionals, such as Mayakovsky, Gvozdiev, and Tretiakov, ultimately agreed that Meyerhold's staging of Crommelynck's play was both exceptional and revolutionary in all respects. "I can't remember when or indeed if I ever saw such a pure rendition of the agony and torture of the almost physiological suffering caused by jealousy," wrote the critic P. Markov, Meyerhold saw in the production of Crommelynck's play both the manifesto of his constructivist theories on the theater and the laboratory in which to test their validity and feasibility onstage.