Word: anouilh
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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DUNSTER'S production of the Durrenmatt-Gore Vidal play Romulus excellently reflects the dual nature of the work. It reminds one of many French plays (especially those of Cocteau, Anouilh and Giraudoux) both witty and superficial on one hand, and intensely intellectual and philosophical on the other. The problem of mounting such a production on the amateur level is obvious: the recruitment of actors to perform characters who can simultaneously embrace these conflicting elements...
October will bring The Concept, a chilling piece of theatre performed by members of Daytop Village, a community of ex-dope addicts. It was one of last season's biggest off-Broadway successes. This will be followed by Le Treteau de Paris' stark production of the Anouilh Antigone, which, when I saw it four years ago, struck me as an unusual presentation of a much too frequently done play...
...turns out that Bitos is not an unlikely man for the part of Robespierre since he once ordered his closest friend killed because this friend had collaborated with the Germans during the war ten years ago. Anouilh rails at this bit of petty bureaucratic brutality be linking this act of Bitos' to the tortuous reasoning by which Robespierre condemned some of his closest associates to the guillotine...
...setting up this parallel between Robespierre and Bitos, Anouilh seems to be warning against the re-emergence of the kind of intolerent righteousness that characterizes tyranny on the Stalinist model...
...Anouilh has clearly touched on some important social problems, but he deals with them so superficially that it becomes hard to credit his sincerity. In Act Two the play shifts to Robespierre himself in the French Revolution and Anouilh goes on to caricature the man asserting at one point that Robespierre killed "because he couldn't succeed in growing up." The dangers that come along with the second generation of revolutionary leaders, who are generally more intolerant and uncompromising than the original leaders, are too serious to allow one to be happy at seeing them parodied in Anouilh's manner...