Double Zero

On Broadway, spring all too often wears a wintry look, and April is the crudest month indeed. Last week two plays, one French and one American, struggled to outdo each other in making their characters and their audiences groan. As the work of French Playwright Jean Anouilh (Antigone), Cry of the Peacock proved the more surprising debacle. Anouilh's indictment of Love began as frivolously as Molnar and wound up as savagely as Strindberg. With notable help from the production, the play messed up every mood it attempted, and, despite brief glimpses of something better, proved dated, hollow, inept. Bitterly portraying how Love tricks the innocent, mocks the decadent, dooms the misshapen, tortures the mad, Cry was almost literally a cry; the author seemed too enraged for clear speech.

In With a Silk Thread, Elsa (PickUp Girl) Shelley told of a throaty, sexy exactress married to a jealous surgeon and infatuated with a self-seeking young actor. Never did words seem more feeble or woes more protracted. Yet the play performed a miracle of sorts: after starting at rock bottom, it went steadily downhill.

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