SOURCE: Fazia, Alba Della. “Pirandello and His French Echo Anouilh.” Modern Drama 6, no. 3 (December 1963): 346-67.

In the following essay, Fazia finds parallels between the plays of Anouilh and those of the Italian dramatist Luigi Pirandello.

“I can just hear a critic whispering into his neighbor's ear that he has already seen this in Pirandello,”¹ anticipates The Author in the opening scene of Jean Anouilh's recent play La grotte—a plotless play which has yet to be written and which depends largely on audience cooperation, according to Anouilh.

La grotte's point of departure is a fait accompli: the apparent murder of the cook. An investigation of the real cause of death ensues. The Author, a combination of Pirandello's Director in Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore and Hinkfuss of Questa sera si recita a soggetto, poses, before his audience, the problems of staging an “improvised” play. He wrangles with...