Anouilh Plays 1 - Antigone & Leocadia & The Waltz of the Toreadors & The Lark & Poor Bitos

Antigone & Leocadia & The Waltz of the Toreadors & The Lark & Poor Bitos

Jean Anouilh (1910-87) along with Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, was at the forefront of the post-war generation of playwrights in Paris

In England his plays were championed by Peter Brook. Antigone is a response to the German occupation of France and established his popularity in 1944 (the Germans ironically, thought that it was a pro-Nazi in its portrayal of King Creon and thus allowed its production)

Poor Bitos, Anouilh's angriest play explores the act of judicial murder

And The Lark is a version of the Joan of Arc story

All three plays show his fondness for reworking myth, history and legend

Meanwhile Leocadia, about an opera singer who dies after a three day love affair with a prince and The Waltz of the Toreadors, about a general whose mistress attempts to prove his wife's infidelity, represent another talent - for ironic, modern comedy

This revised edition of some of Anouilh's most enduring work dramatically reveals not only his love of re-working myth, history & legend, but in Leocadia and The Waltz of the Torreadors we see his pleasure when playing with ironic, modern comedy

The translators are Barbara Bray, Christopher Fry & Timberlake Wertenbaker

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"Anouilh is a poet but not a poet of words, he is a poet of words-acted, of scenes-set, of players-performing" ~ Peter Brook