Fernand Crommelynck was a Belgian dramatist. His work is known for farces in which commonplace weaknesses are developed into monumental obsessions. He was born into a family of actors, the child of a French mother and a Belgian father and he himself was also an actor. His son Aldo Crommelynck, 1931?2009, was a renowned master printmaker, who worked with many major artists of the twentieth century. In his earliest works Crommelynck already demonstrated the grasp of style and content that in his maturity culminated in works of great poetic force. The dramatic structure in Nous n'irons plus au bois, Le sculpteur de masques and Le marchand de regrets, was already based on the logical development of an absurd premise. Crommelynck's masterpiece was Le Cocu magnifique, a 'lyrical farce' on the theme of a lover's jealousy. Staged with constructivist sets by Vselvolod Meyerhold - the first of their kind - the theatre play was such a hit that Crommelynck was able to give up acting and devote himself to writing. [More at Wikipedia]

November 19th, 1886 in Paris  /  Died:   Mar 17th, 1970