Word: anouilh
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...match for each other: Maria Tucci and Morris Carnovsky. Carnovsky is of course a known quantity. But I had never been especially struck by Miss Tucci's endeavors. Her Antigone, however, is miles above anything she has done before; it is in fact a performance of the first rank. Anouilh has lined up the arguments and swung his pendulum pretty equally, and the two Festival players interact magnificently on the same high level. The result is nothing short of electrifying...
...Sophocles' play it is primarily the gods and divine law that activate Antigone's conscience and drive her to her great act of defiance. Anouilh, however, watered down the religious overtones; he was more concerned with worldly power and man-made political laws. He made the clash essentially a temperamental one between two intensely human beings; and both Miss Tucci and Carnovsky are wondrously human...
...Creon of Sophocles is a pigheaded, authoritarian tyrant who is absolutely confident of his own infallibility. The Creon of Anouilh-Carnovsky is quite different. We even learn that in his youth "he loved music, bought rare manuscripts, was a kind of art patron." But now he has become the sort of person against whom Archibald MacLeish has just warned us: "Man in the electronic age is not a votary of the arts--he has more serious business. He sees himself, whatever his economic system, as a social and scientific animal, the great unraveler of the universe, its potential master...
...Anouilh's Creon is intelligent, dignified, and efficient. He didn't seek power, but "once I take on the job, I must do it properly." He is not without some compassion; he even offers to gloss over Antigone's first violation of his edict if she will agree not to repeat it. To him the burial of Polyneices is "meaningless," the people he governs are "featherheaded rabble," and "this whole business is nothing but politics." Carnovsky is marvelously forceful in describing his job ("Kings, my girl, have other things to do than to surrender themselves to their private feelings...
...majority of society; they are part of Creon's "featherheaded rabble." They are hard-drinking, vulgar-tongued, card-playing dullards...non-entities, really. They are utterly indifferent to what is going on around them, and couldn't begin to understand it even if they cared. They serve to underline Anouilh's prevailing pessimism about mankind. Kilty has also thrown in a couple of mute secret service men in grey suits and sunglasses, who go about their business with ominous dispatch...