Tiger at the Gates

A play changes shape in the eye and era of the beholder. When Tiger at the Gates was written in 1935, the shadow of Hitler fell across the world and darkened the significance of Jean Giraudoux' drama. In its first U.S. production in 1955, the menace of McCarthyism seemed to be echoed in the play. Doubtless the mentors of Manhattan's Lincoln Center now see this tragic confrontation between the Greeks and the Trojans as a cautionary parable of the U.S. commitment in Viet Nam, though the analogy is wrenchingly sophomoric. The sad fact is that Tiger cannot carry its own dramatic weight, let alone the added burden of historical allusion. It suffers from the most telling weakness of antiwar plays--Sherman said it better and shorter.

Couching his pacifist message in Gallic irony, Giraudoux bandies about the question of whether the Trojans should pledge their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to hold onto Helen, the world's most beautiful woman. As with the role of Cleopatra, it is virtually impossible for any actress to live up to that kind of advance billing. Jennifer West fails abysmally by playing Helen as a dumb, dumb blonde, more waitress than temptress; far from launching a thousand ships, it appears doubtful whether she could pilot a coffee cup across a hash house.

The voice of doom in the play belongs to Cassandra, played with cranky, New Yorky irritation by Diana Sands in a black bikini. The voice of reason belongs to Hector, who is humane but soporifically dull, although Philip Bosco has talent enough to take half the curse off the part. As he talks sense to his fellow Trojans and debates with the wily Ulysses, Hector seems always on the verge of averting the madness of war. Actually, it is merely a delaying action against ultimate defeat. For Giraudoux is bent on proving that there is a vile instinct in man that wills to kill. The play ends sadly and cynically with war breaking out and Helen kissing a new lover, Troilus.

Initially hailed, Tiger now seems undecipherable and inconsequential. Giraudoux lacked the wit to give his play buoyancy and the wisdom to give it gravity. He simply swaps frivolous badinage on war, a tragic theme that demands poetry and power.

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