La machine à écrire: pièce en trois actes (The Typewriter: A Play in Three Acts)

Jean Cocteau’s Typewriter is a play in the style of a detective drama about twin brothers (both played by Cocteau’s lover Jean Marais in its premiere run), and a series of anonymous letters exposing the community’s misdeeds. Similar to Cocteau’s other productions of the time, Typewriter faced many difficulties before opening. The political climate of Nazi-occupied France in 1941 was actively hostile toward avant-garde artists such as Cocteau, and the fact he was publically homosexual put a target on his back. During an open dress rehearsal, the show was ambushed by pro-fascist protestors who threw smoke bombs on stage, leading the theater to temporarily cancel the show.

Ambiguity became a survival tactic for artists during this period, as evidenced in Mary Reynolds’s book design. The front and back covers feature capital letters “M” in red and black type, randomly scattered across the surface, but it’s not clear what the “M” stands for. It could refer to “machine” as seen in the original French title. Or, it could stand in for Maxime, one half of the twins who are the main focus of the show, or Margot, another prominent character. More personally, the “M” could point to “Marais,” the actor who plays the twins and Cocteau’s lover, or even Mary herself (or her lover, Marcel). Reynolds’s usual gilded-stamped text with Cocteau’s signature star underneath grace the spine, offsetting the mysterious and haphazard “M’s” with a stabilizing title and author.