Repertory: 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...

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