The Théàtre de la Cité of Lyons and its director, Roger Planchon, have scandalized French traditionalists by taking gross liberties with the classics to give them contemporary credence. A U.S. audience is more likely to feel the faint shock of cultural lag. Freshly attuned to the theater of tribal intimacy, with its skin-to-skin actor-audience confrontations and its stereophonic barrage of sound, a playgoer may be startled to see a stylized drama in which each line is pruned, each gesture sculptured, each scene framed.
Appearing at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater, the company...