Alfred Hennequin

Alfred Néoclès Hennequin (13 January 1842 – 7 August 1887) was a Belgian playwright, best known for his farces. Born in Liège, Hennequin was trained there as an engineer, and was employed by the national railway company. In his spare time he wrote plays, and in 1870 had a success in Brussels with his farce Les Trois chapeaux (The Three Hats). He moved to Paris in 1871 and became a full-time playwright. Between 1871 and 1886 he wrote a series of comic plays, including Le Procès Veauradieux (The Veauradieux Trial, 1875), Les Dominos roses (The Pink Dominos, 1876), Bébé (Baby, 1877) and La Femme à papa (Father's Wife, 1879). Most of his plays were co-written with collaborators including Alfred Delacour and Albert Millaud and, in his last play, his son Maurice.

Hennequin, with his intricate plotting and frenetic exits and entrances through various doors, is known as the originator of the bedroom farce and a model for a later master of the genre, Georges Feydeau. In addition to his farces, Hennequin wrote some of the last of the old genre of musical vaudevilles, in collaboration with composers including Hervé and Raoul Pugno. Many of his farces were successfully staged in English versions, usually with the bedroom element toned down for British and American audiences.

In the mid 1880s Hennequin suffered increasingly serious mental illness, and in March 1886 he entered a nursing home. He died the following year at Épinay-sur-Seine at the age of 45.

Alfred Néoclès Hennequin was born in Liège on 13 January 1842. He studied at the École des mines de Liege, and began his working career as an engineer for the Belgian State Railways. In his spare time he wrote plays under a pen name. A two-act comedy, J'attends mon oncle (I'm Waiting for My Uncle) was produced at the Théâtre Royal des Galeries in Brussels in 1869. The following year the same theatre presented his three-act comedy Les Trois chapeaux (The Three Hats), which Le Figaro described as "a play of astonishing comic verve".

Hennequin moved to Paris, where Les Trois chapeaux was produced at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in 1871. There was a brief controversy before the first night: Hennequin, as a Belgian, was accused of having been insufficiently pro-French and anti-German during the recent Franco-Prussian War, but the accusation was quickly withdrawn. The premiere went well. The critic Jules Prével wrote that the audience laughed as much as the excessively hot weather allowed, and "Besides, M. Hennequin's play is funny … a misplaced hat, running from hand to hand, fluttering from head to head, produces quiproquos that are pretty comical, but too long to detail." The main roles were in the expert hands of star members of the Vaudeville company: Auguste Parade, Léopold Delannoy and Saint-Germain, and the piece was a success.

Hennequin had other comedies ready, but, as Le Figaro later commented, "in Paris, the difficulty is not writing amusing plays – it is getting them played". Hennequin's next success was not until June 1875. He collaborated with Alfred Delacour on a three-act farce, Le Procès Veauradieux (The Veauradieux Trial). The Vaudeville was officially closed for the customary summer break, and Paris was in the middle of a heatwave, but the members of the theatre's company decided to stage the play regardless of their management. The authors of Les Annales du théâtre et de la musique wrote:

In Le Figaro Auguste Vitu wrote, "M. Delacour and M. Hennequin won the Veauradieux Trial, with interest, damages and costs; we laughed for two hours, laughed as in the good old days of the Vaudeville, as at the best evenings of the Palais-Royal, we laughed like a herd of madmen". The play ran for 175 performances and established Hennequin's reputation.

The following year Hennequin and Delacour had another success at the Vaudeville with Les Dominos roses (The Pink Dominos), described by Le Figaro as "the triumph of the imbroglio", and by the London theatrical paper The Era as "a triumph" tout court. It ran for 127 performances, and was followed by Bébé (1877, with Émile de Najac) at the Théâtre du Gymnase (214 performances), Le Phoque (The Seal, 1878, with Delacour) at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal and La Poudre d'escampette (The Quick Getaway, with Henri Bocage) at the Théâtre des Variétés.