Jean-Paul Sartre and Christopher Fry —No Exit and A Phoenix Too Frequent

—black comedy and white—combine (in the latest Downstage presentation) to form an interesting chiaroscuro. This evening of antithesis weighs slightly in favour of Fry's lighter, more pretentious talent, and one of the few gripes one has about the programme is that perhaps this really shouldn't be so.

Witty, opportune and instructive the pairing is, but perhaps the daily reviewers were (for once) not far off the mark with their comments that Fry's wit took away the black taste left by Sartre's impressive but gloomy work. The question is: Should it have? One appreciates the dialectical wit that made the pairing, but one can't help feeling that it did Sartre less than justice.