Introduction & Overview of Ring around the Moon by Jean Anouilh

Ring around the Moon Introduction

Jean Anouilh's Ring Around the Moon first appeared in France in 1947 as L 'Invitation au Chateau. Especially important in Anouilh's career, the play is the earliest of his pieces brillantes, a rather mixed group of four works moving from two lighter to two darker pieces. Brilliantes has been employed to describe the polished and sophisticated gemlike quality of this group, most prominently displayed in Ring Around the Moon's complex plotting, ceaseless obstacles, and still after all the reconciliation of almost all of its characters to both love and wealth.

Perhaps because of its parody of upper-class vanity Ring Around the Moon is Anouilh's most produced play in the United States, where there is a tradition of holding the aristocracy in contempt. The play's numerous characters engaged in ceaseless exiting and entrancing enhance the quick-paced wit and tangy satire of upper-class pretension and lower-class ambition. Yet Ring Around the...
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