'Anouilh is a poet, but not of words: he is a poet of words-acted, of
scenes-set, of players-performing' Peter Brook
Jean Anouilh, one of the foremost French playwrights of the twentieth
century, replaced the mundane realist works of the previous era with his
innovative dramas, which exploit fantasy, tragic passion, scenic poetry
and cosmic leaps in time and space. Antigone, his best-known play, was
performed in 1944 in Nazi-controlled Paris and provoked fierce
controversy. In defying the tyrant Creon and going to her death,
Antigone conveyed to Anouilh's compatriots a covert message of heroic
resistance; but the author's characterisaation of Creon also seemed to
exonerate Marshal Petain and his fellow collaborators. More ambivalent
than his ancient model, Sophocles, Anouilh uses Greek myth to explore
the disturbing moral dilemmas of our times.
Commentary and notes by Ted Freeman.