Salacrou, Armand

Salacrou, Armand (1899–1989), French dramatist whose plays, though often comedies or farces, were imbued with social and metaphysical observation. The finest but least characteristic of them is Les Nuits de la colère, which deals in a chronologically free-flowing form with the German occupation of France during the Second World War. Presented by the Renaud–Barrault company, it opened in 1946 and was seen in London during the company's visit in 1951. It was produced in New York in 1947 in an English translation as Nights of Wrath. Unlike his younger contemporaries Anouilh and Sartre Salacrou made little impact upon the English-speaking theatre; his only other plays to have been performed in translation appear to be L‘Inconnue d’Arras (1935), seen in 1948 and 1954 as The Unknown Woman of Arras, in which a man's entire life is relived in the instant of his suicide; the farcical Histoire de rire (1939), produced in London in 1957 as No Laughing Matter; and L'Archipel Lenoir (1947), produced as Never Say Die in London in 1966. Salacrou's plays also include two early experiments in Surrealism, Tour à terre and Le Pont de l'Europe (both 1925); his first success, the comedy Atlas-Hotel (1931); Une femme libre (1934), a study of differing kinds of male domination; a historical drama, La Terre est ronde (1938), set in Florence in the time of Savonarola; and La Rue noire (1967), his last play.