Word: giraudoux
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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MILWAUKEE REPERTORY THEATER, Spring Green, Wis., offers Friedrich von Schiller's Mary Stuart, Jean Giraudoux's Amphitryon 38, and Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, June 22-July...
...overriding buildup of tension leading to a climactic finish. Instead, Truffaut provides a whole series of suspenseful crescendos-and finds voluptuous revelations and eerie beauty in each one of them. Under his low-keyed, meticulous direction, all the murdered men give subtle performances that would do credit to Giraudoux. Out standing is Michel Bouquet, pathetic yet loathsome as a pawky, balding bachelor who cannot believe his good fortune when a mysterious beauty comes to his shabby room with a bottle of strange-tasting liqueur. Scarcely less memorable is Charles Denner, a painter who poses Moreau as Diana the Huntress...
Couching his pacifist message in Gallic irony, Giraudoux bandies about the question of whether the Trojans should pledge their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to hold onto Helen, the world's most beautiful woman. As with the role of Cleopatra, it is virtually impossible for any actress to live up to that kind of advance billing. Jennifer West fails abysmally by playing Helen as a dumb, dumb blonde, more waitress than temptress; far from launching a thousand ships, it appears doubtful whether she could pilot a coffee cup across a hash house...
...Bosco has talent enough to take half the curse off the part. As he talks sense to his fellow Trojans and debates with the wily Ulysses, Hector seems always on the verge of averting the madness of war. Actually, it is merely a delaying action against ultimate defeat. For Giraudoux is bent on proving that there is a vile instinct in man that wills to kill. The play ends sadly and cynically with war breaking out and Helen kissing a new lover, Troilus...
Initially hailed, Tiger now seems undecipherable and inconsequential. Giraudoux lacked the wit to give his play buoyancy and the wisdom to give it gravity. He simply swaps frivolous badinage on war, a tragic theme that demands poetry and power...