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Jean Anouilh.
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The French playwright Jean Anouilh (1910-1987) was an accomplished craftsman. His plays, from the frivolous and fanciful to the serious, exploit the artificiality of the theater to elucidate his views...
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Critical Essay by Leonard Cabell Pronko
Anouilh's view of life and man's place in the universe has remained essentially unchanged throughout his career. The later plays clarify and elabo...
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Critical Essay by Marguerite Archer
The controversies which arise about [Jean Anouilh's] plays stem from the fact that he escapes clear-cut identification. This is due not to obscurity in his o...
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Critical Essay by GaËtan Picon
A mainspring of Jean Anouilh's work has been a savage indictment of society, despite his belonging to the political right (although there is, to be sure, t...
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In the excerpt below, Pronko explores Anouilh's technique of characterization, in which he mixes "characters who are often convincingly alive" with those that are symbols or gener...
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In the following excerpt, Chiari detects elements of the absurd in Anouilh's plays.
Anouilh shares with Cocteau the incapacity to grapple with tragic themes but he has a much wider range and he...
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In the following excerpt, della Fazia provides an overview of the recurring themes, situations, and concepts of Anouilh's plays.
The majority of Jean Anouilh's dramatic works have been g...
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In this excerpt, Archer examines elements of satire and black humor in Anouilh's piéces griçantes.
The key to the cycle of pièces grinçantes lies in the scene in La Valse de...
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In the following essay, Fazia finds parallels between the plays of Anouilh and those of the Italian dramatist Luigi Pirandello.
“I can just hear a critic whispering into his neighbor's e...
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In the following negative review of the 1963 New York production of The Rehearsal, Gilman contends that “we are supposed to be left with a troubled but gratified sense of how the world really g...
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In the following review, Bentley praises the sets and acting in the 1954 New York production of Colombe.
Optimistic plays are very depressing. “Too bad reality is different,” you say in ...
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In the following review, Hayes provides an unfavorable assessment of the 1954 New York production of Colombe.
Mlle Colombe, the fifth of Jean Anouilh's plays to achieve the condition of an Amer...
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In the following review, Clurman gives a mixed assessment of the 1973 New York production of The Waltz of the Toreadors, deeming the drama “the play which reveals most of Anouilh's essen...
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In the following essay, Roy underscores the differences between T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, Christopher Fry's Curtmantle, and Anouilh's Becket.
Within the last three de...
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In the following essay, Amoia provides an overview of Anouilh's heroic heroines and contrasts these female characters with their unimpressive male counterparts.
Women are the dominant figures i...
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In the following unfavorable review of the 1964 New York production of Traveller without Luggage, Clurman argues that the play “shows some of the salient features of Anouilh's personalit...
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In the following essay, Vlasopolos explores the reasons for the relative obscurity of Traveler without Luggage.
Despite its respectable history in performance, Anouilh's Le voyageur sans bagage...
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Jean Anouilh
Critical Essay by Leonard Cabell Pronko
