Judith strips myth down to Freudian psychology and debunks belief with Shavian iconoclasmthe tactics by which modern man burglarizes himself of an agelong heritage of mystery. In this 34-year-old play, revived by APA-at-the-Phoenix, the late French Playwright Jean Giraudoux, an urbane, witty, and ironic second-story man of ideas, remains true to his dramatic creed: Be clever and let who will be good.
The apocryphal Judith was a pious and beautiful Jewish widow who got the Assyrian commander Holofernes drunk in his tent, cut off his head and saved the people of Israel. Giraudoux's Judith,...