Word: anouilh
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...version currently on stage is not that of Sophocles; it is the modern one of Anouilh--who is, with Beckett, one of the two greatest play-wrights of our time in the French language. Anouilh did, however, work from the play of Sophocles, though the result can in no wise be called a translation. In fact, Anouilh's play contains only one line that is an exact rendering from Sophocles. Anouilh preserved the actual story intact, but subjected the entire affair to a deep and thorough rethinking. If he was unable to equal the lofty grandeur of the original...
...Anouilh has been criticized for daring to alter certain features of Sophocles' play. But he had every right to do so. After all, Sophocles' own version of the tale was far from the first, and contained its own innovations. Before Sophocles, Antigone was supported in her act by other young maidens; and she was defying, not Creon and his guards, but the corporate decree of the entire Theban Senate. Sophocles had the inspired idea of placing Antigone in glorious isolation; and, as Sir Donald F. Tovey said in a quite different context, "Nothing in human life and history is much...
...easy to understand Anouilh's interest in this subject matter. The French have always enjoyed dramas that give free play to philosophical disputation. And modern French dramatists, with the shining example of Racine before them, have been especially drawn to ancient Greek legends. The trend started at the turn of the century with Gide, who wrote stage pieces about Philoctetes, Prometheus, and Oedipus. Montherlant turn-to Pasipha*e, and Cocteau dramatized Antigone, Orpheus, and Oedipus. Claudel turned to Proteus, and did a version of Aeschylus' entire Orestes trilogy. Giraudoux turned to Amphitryon, Electra, and the Trojan War, while Sartre refashioned...
...emerge during the Occupation. It was widely construed as a political allegory, the conflict between Antigone and Creon being viewed as that between the R*esistance and the collaborationists. The French people were divided, however, into those who found the play "fascist" and those who found it "antifascist." Thus Anouilh would seem to have achieved a good deal of the "negative capability" that Keats attributed to Shakespeare. And it is true that Anouilh did not stack the cards strongly in Antigone's favor as Sophocles had; a number of people even stoutly maintain that Creon is the true protagonist...
...Anouilh underlined the contemporaneity of his play by employing a good deal of low-level speech such as the ancient tragedians avoided, and by specifying the use of modern dress in performance. The current Stratford production is as up-to-date as today's newspapers. It is framed by the on-stage playing of a rock 'n' roll combo, with a bunch of teenagers frugging away (including Antigone's sister Ismene, in a yellow and black miniskirt). The Greek chorus has been reduced to a single commentator by Anouilh (as Shakespeare had done with the Chorus in Henry...