Black Farce

By T.E.Kalem

THE WALTZ OF THE TOREADORS

by JEAN ANOUILH

In this play, first seen in New York in 1957, Jean Anouilh caricatures the romantic attitudes that get men betrayed. It is a black farce with a bitter personal tang, an overprotesting cynicism, a disillusionment so dark as to suggest illusions once far too rosy.

Unfailingly attired in his uniform, General St. Pe (Eli Wallach) faces advancing middle age as if it were a court-martial. He is chained to a vixenish wife (Anne Jackson) who spews venom at him and pretends to be a dying invalid. In his high-romantic imagination, he is in thrall to the memories of a young girl (Diana Van Der Vlis) he waltzed with 17 years ago. St. Pe's dream girl appears, only to run off with his callow aide, and the general is left alone in the dusk.

Thanks to Anouilh's vividly ironic vision, much of the evening is howlingly funny. Wallach has always possessed perfect comic pitch and he displays it again here. However, he lacks that certain panache which makes St. Pe a duelist with destiny rather than a Good Soldier Schweik taking fate's pratfalls. Jackson is an awesome virago who delivers her lines like bayonet thrusts.

The brisk playfulness of Brian Murray's direction somewhat masks the vein of melancholy that runs through Anouilh's best characters. Their gaiety is inverted mourning. They suffer with a quip on their lips while stretched on a rack that is the distance between the way things are and the way they want them to be. "T.E.Kalem

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