PARTISAN REVIEW
a sense of suffocation, the sound effects a feeling of terror, and
the actors ha.ve all the significance of dream characters. The absurdity•
of the modern bureaucratic world
is
better expressed by a pair of
hands balancing matchboxes one on top of the other than by much
of the abstract dialogue of Sartre. The play builds in intensity, the
atmosphere becoming more and more suffocating until the execution
finally clears the air; for the actor there
is
climax and epiphany. By
mime, by an oriental type of symbolism and convention, but most
of all tbroujih the dynamic power that hundreds of years ago would
have br<!llded him as sorcerer, Barrault approaches in his productions
the violence of primitive ritual.
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