1942-08-10: (The Third Act — By the Third and Final Act Reviewers Explaining “We All Already Knew That Charles and Sanité Were Lost — and Yet Such Is the Int…

1942-08-10: (The Third Act — By the Third and Final Act Reviewers Explaining “We All Already Knew That Charles and Sanité Were Lost — and Yet Such Is the Intensity That Mrs. Perez Knew to Give to Her Drama That in Spite of Our Knowledge We Were Interested in Their Fate We Waited We Followed Passionately . . . Breathless Towards What We Knew Had to Happen” — the Inevitability of the Twenty-One-Year-Old Revolutionary’s Fate on October 5 1802 Not Stopping Perez from Telling the Story Again and Again): By the third and final act, reviewers explained that they all already knew that Charles and Sanité were lost. And yet, such was the intensity that Mrs. Perez knew to give to her drama that in spite of their knowledge they were interested in their fate, they waited, they followed passionately, breathless towards what they knew had to happen. The inevitability of the twenty-one-year-old revolutionary’s fate on October 5, 1802, did not stop Perez from telling the story again and again — the audience’s knowledge of the ending only deepened the power of the telling, the collective holding of breath a ritual of grief performed in the present tense for a death that had already happened 140 years before.