The Waltz of the Toreadors (translated from the French of Jean Anouilh by Lucienne Hill) is an often hilarious French sex farce. As just that, it is conceivably the best envelope Anouilh has yet found for conveying his philosophic approach to life, with its bitter personal tang, its overprotesting cynicism, its disillusionment so dark as to suggest illusions once far too rosy. In Waltz, by reducing to caricature the romantic attitudes that get men betrayed, he more nearly rises to truth than when steadily whiplashing the betrayers. As Ring Round the Moon also showed, he achieves a detachment in a world...
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