The Theater: New Play on Broadway, Dec. 21, 1959

The Fighting Cock (adapted from the French of Jean Anouilh by Lucienne Hill) reveals an Anouilh more balanced than bitter in mood, and more effective as a philosophe than as a playwright. His play is an often witty variant on a persisting theme, perhaps all the more persisting because it poses an insoluble question. The Fighting Cock concerns a retired general disgusted by a world he finds filled with "cheats" and lost to honor. He would like to stir up a movement to get rid of the "maggots." Against this testy idealist rooted in the past, Anouilh sets a number of...