IN AN AGE WITHOUT HEROES, Only the European playwrights (Edward Albee is the American exception) seem to comprehend the paradox that comedy has become the highest form of contemporary tragedy. Brecht and Beckett, Pinter and Ionesco lacerate a world whose sham far surpasses the magnitude of mere men and lay it bare with cruel humor. They are less concerned with curing the afflicted than with exposing and ridiculing the affliction.
On the face of it, Jean Anouilh is too delicate a playwright for this company. He is a dealer in paradox and a polisher of epigrams, a writer of such impeccable taste that he might easily be dismissed as a Noel Coward with bite. His dramatic framework is so glitteringly burnished that the crack in the surface veneer is nearly obscured. But it is always there and, once exposed, reveals Anouilh’s black view that the world he lives in will inevitably corrupt innocence.
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