Word: giraudoux
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Jean Giraudoux original is one of those typical French morality plays cleverly garnished and disguised with wit, world-weariness, and wistfully disenchanted romanticism. In Giraudoux, as in Anouilh, there is also an elegance of manner, a fencing master's play of the intellect, and a sense of historical irony of which few Broadway adapters have the remotest inkling. In Madwoman, Giraudoux conceived of a vicious, filthy-rich, top-hatted capitalist cartel that discovers oil under a bistro called the Chez François and is prepared to desecrate all of Paris to pan for the black gold...
...does it do any good? Dear World's new first act, even though substantially different from the original, got just as bad, if not worse, audience reaction. The critics had criticized the musical's shortchanging of the serious aspects of the play from which it had been adapted, Jean Giraudoux's Mad-woman of Chaillot. Apparently the authors took this prevalent criticism so seriously that they decided to drown the first act with eerie, sur-realistic doom. The audience was bored and dumbfounded, particularly considering the fact that the unchanged second act had a light, humorous tone...
...Chaillot, even as embodied in this musical, is not the completely frivolous comedy Herman has worked with in the past. Although essentially telling us the story of a comic woman who refuses to accept the fact that the modern world is a different place than it was in 1903, Giraudoux has more than frivolity in mind. Below the surface of his comedy is the serious warning that the snowballing forces of materialism, fascism and war must be checked if the human race is to survive. When Herman's turn comes to dig into this serious core, he falls apart...
...paper, Dear World, the musical prepping in Boston for its New York debut, has a promising premise, one that could even be exciting in the execution: an adaptation of Jean Giraudoux's Madwoman of Chaillot with Angela Lansbury as the title character. On stage, though, it's a failure and not a hell...
DEAR WORLD. Music by Jerry Herman (Hello, Dolly!). Starring Angela Lansbury, the Mame dame. Giraudoux's Madwoman of Chaillot sets off to destroy the wicked...