Poor Bitos

"Poor Bitos" is the strongest and most strikingly contemporary of Jean Anouilh's plays. With freezing precision and extraordinary theatrical skill, Anouilh here exposes the evil at the heart of political extremism, with specific reference to the French people but with implications that are tragically universal. The principal character is one André Bitos, a thin-lipped, Eichmann-like public prosecutor with a fanatical sense of justice that outrages every normal feeling of compassion. Bitos since the close of World War II has made it his gruesome business to track down fellow countrymen suspected of collaborating with the Germans and to bring about their execution. In a searing flashback to the Reign of Terror, Anouilh demonstrates that the lethal virtue of men like Bitos and Robespierre - inflexible Puritans dedicated to the total destruction of evil, without compromise and without mercy - threatens the very foundations of civilized life. No other play has given us such a profound and revealing exploration of the socio-psychological roots of the self-righteous fanaticism that has swept the world in the postwar era.