The Théâtre du Soleil, Part Three: the Production of ‘Sihanouk’

HELENECIXOUS's epic wittily and reverentially echoes elements of Shakespeare's history plays, but while Cixous maintains much of the formal patterns of interpersonal conflict and confrontation established by Shakespeare, she has a keen sense of how the tragic contradictions of the modern world differ from those of Renaissance England. Where Shakespeare's characters embody the collision between feudal, family-centred interests, the centralizing, rationalizing tendencies of absolute monarchy, and the anarchic displacements of the rapidly developing, individual-oriented entrepreneurial spirit, Cixous's characters embody the irreconcilable extremes of first-, second-, and third-world ideologies – multi-national capitalism, communist absolutism, and the indigenous cultural rhythms of an ancient, agrarian civilization.