Word: giraudoux
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...Enchanted (adapted from the French of the late Jean Giraudoux by Maurice Valency; produced by David Lowe & Richard Davidson), whatever its weaknesses as a play, is frequently enchanting. A fantasy, as was Giraudoux's The Madwoman of Chaillot, it uses a much slighter and more tremulous fable. Instead of grandly and wackily turning Paris upside down, it delicately turns existence inside out. Half the play merely suggests and evokes, like music; even the solider half is mostly talk...
...than it does story. But The Enchanted is saved from any allegorical pallor or patness, from any insistent contrast of illusion with reality (e.g., romantic yearnings for the moon with realistic cultivation of gardens) by its doubling back on itself and by its gay, vigilant irony. Through the inspector, Giraudoux pokes merciless fun at literal-mindedness, practical wisdom, bureaucratic palaver. Yet he knows, and expresses with the sad sparkle of his wit, that man needs feet even more than wings, and must accept reality to survive. But there is yet another turn of the wheel: man need neither flee reality...
After a busy year in New York, "The Madwoman of Chaillot" has arrived in Boston, to what should prove to be the immense delight, and benefit of all good people. This play, by the late Jean Giraudoux, is of a caliber too seldom achieved--or even attempted--these days; it combines imagination, intelligence, and social commentary with the best possible results. Not since Thornton Wilder's "The Skin of Our Teeth" has a play been offered that was capable of stimulating in its audience that honest exhilaration which is the aim of true comedy...
...Odets and Saroyans--and other dealers in messages and whimsy--could do well to study Giraudoux' method of wedding them. "The Madwoman of Chaillot" has its share of yuks all right, but the best parts are not those which provoke loud laughter but rather a silent 'yes' when the Madwoman--with the perception of the insane and the logic of the child-like--cuts sharply through to the truth of the matter. The healthy heart-beat of humanity can be heard in this play...
...season when the public snubbed the critics. Despite a strong press, Life with Mother and The Traitor flopped financially; despite a badly mixed press, Where's Charley? and Jean Giraudoux's enchanting Madwoman of Chaillot flourished. Musically, 1948-49 could point with pride to Kiss Me, Kate as well as South Pacific; but, to only one enjoyable revue, Lend an Ear. It was a season when the mourners' bench was lined with Tennessee Williams, Clifford Odets, John van Druten, Kaufman & Ferber, Garson Kanin, Marc Connelly...