The Theater: New Plays in Manhattan, Jan. 10, 1949

The Madwoman of Chaillot (adapted from the French of Jean Giraudoux by Maurice Valency; produced by Alfred de Liagre) is the first vintage champagne the French stage has sent to Broadway since Dunkirk. Possibly it is caviar as well—an often brilliant, always civilized fantasy, as fresh and witty in detail as it is traditionally satiric in design. In spite of dramatic defects—it opens badly, and is a little too loose and long—it has an air of really genuine distinction that sets it apart from every other show on Broadway.

An ironic extravaganza and a satiric fairy tale, The Madwoman paints a Paris rife with money-madness; a network of economic pimps and pressagents; the low dodges of high finance; the hollow corporations with their grandiose facades; the tireless web-spinners with their spidery schemes (their latest: to dig for oil under the streets of Paris).

Into all this sweeps the Madwoman of Chaillot, a humane, imperious, sumptuously tacky countess who inhabits a cellar and lives in the past (her morning paper is always the Gaulois for Oct. 7, 1906). Round her like pigeons flock all the nobodies of the Paris streets—porters and peddlers, ragpickers and flower girls. When a small crisis suddenly shatters the Madwoman’s comfortable dream and informs her of a world full of grab and greed, she blithely vows that she will set matters straight.

Pretending to have struck oil under her own house, she lures the wicked finaglers and their henchmen to her rococo cellar, directs them down a flight of stairs that leads to nowhere. Then, slamming a trapdoor over them, she restores Paris to happy sanity, herself returns to contented balminess.

With his dazzling sense of make-believe, the late Jean Giraudoux lifted The Madwoman above mere protest into a world of poetry. Like most highbred fantasy, The Madwoman evokes a long line of distinguished ancestors—the sublime delusions of Don Quixote, the swift wizardry of The Pied Piper, the mad tea party in Alice, the mock trial in Lear, the glinting philosophical jokes of Voltaire, Heine and Bernard Shaw. And like all comedy worth its salt, The Madwoman has something touching and sad about it: for only through dreams can there be escape, and only in fairy tales do the wicked perish so prettily. But this is comedy that can be wonderfully funny too—as when the Madwoman entertains two women slightly madder.

Last week’s production needed smoothing and tightening, but it had some notable assets. There was Adapter Valency’s fluent and vivid translation, French Painter Christian Berard’s witty and elegant sets and costumes. There were also attractive performances by Estelle Winwood, John Carradine and others. And in the crucial title role that could have been played for easy laughs or easy tears, English Actress Martita Hunt (best known in the U.S. as Miss Havisham in the movie Great Expectations) performed with wonderful glitter and style. She was always as much grande dame as wack; and when the lights of fantasy turned ruddy, as much fairy godmother as grande dame.

Don’t Listen, Ladies (translated from the French of Sacha Guitry by Stephen Powys; produced by Lee Ephraim & Jack Buchanan) is a very French and faded sex comedy performed by a very British cast.

It concerns a husband & wife (Jack Buchanan and Moira Lister) who suspect each other of infidelity, and it recruits a former wife, a former mistress, a romantic young beau and a rich old buck. After endless insinuations but not one speck of sin, husband & wife are reunited on a basis of mutual mistrust.

Suave Jack Buchanan (Chariot’s Revue) behaves toward the script as a man of gallantry pretends that an aged flirt is still a lustrous belle. But to no avail: neither scandalous nor amusing, M. Guitry’s Don’t Listen, Ladies chiefly suggests that the French are not nearly as wicked as they are wordy.