Theater: The Guillotine Complex

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Anouilh perhaps distorts history by making Robespierre no more than Bitos. Allowing that the will to power may begin as a desire for social revenge, as Anouilh believes, even the monsters of history acquire the grandeur of history's stage. An evil genie cannot be reduced to, or explained by, the bottle from which it came. Anouilh's Robespierre lacks size. And if men are not all black and white, it is even more difficult to swallow Anouilh's misanthropic contention that they are all black and black, however wittily or trenchantly phrased.

In the phenomenally difficult role of Bitos-Robespierre, Donald Pleasence is phenomenally good. He is a one-man seminar of the acting art, capturing every shading of the role from social unease to icy cruelty. He even bites his fingernails as if dreaming of heavenly guillotines. The scrofulous bum of The Caretaker has become the holy terrorist of the French Revolution.