Billetdoux, François

Billetdoux, François (1927–91), French journalist and dramatist, who studied under Dullin and achieved success in 1959 with Tchin-Tchin, a play considered at the time a sign of renewed vigour in the Parisian avant-garde theatre. As Chin-Chin it was staged in London (1960) with Celia Johnson and New York (1962) with Margaret Leighton. Billetdoux created unusual situations in order to question the whole social fabric. Thus Tchin-Tchin shows a drunken complicity developing between a bricklayer and the wife of a doctor who is having an affair with the bricklayer's wife; A la nuit la nuit (1960) revolves on the mysterious identity of a man who visits a prostitute; Le Comportement des époux Bredburry (also 1960) is about a woman who tries to sell her husband through the small ads; and Va donc chez Törpe (1961) is set in an inn where all the guests have gone to commit suicide. Like Giraudoux and Audiberti, Billetdoux wrote highly coloured prose which constantly runs the risk of sounding mannered. Among other plays were Il faut passer par les nuages (1964), in which a successful middle-class woman is led by a personal crisis to allow her family to disintegrate, and Wake up! Philadelphie! (1988).