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Club Director's Notes

The Lady in the Van Damsels in Distress

• The Madwoman of Chaillot

• 4th Feb - 11th Feb
• Written by: Jean Giraudoux
• Directed by: Alison Grant
• Performance Times: Sat 19:45, Mon 19:45, Tue 19:45, Wed 19:45, Thu 19:45, Fri 19:45, Sat 14:45, Sat 19:45

Synopsis

Written in 1942, during the Nazi occupation of Paris, the play is a delightful escapist comedy that has surprising relevance to our current times.

A powerful corporation is set to dig for oil believed to be beneath the streets of Paris in the Chaillot region, much to the alarm of Countess Aurelia, who lives for the beauty of life.Upon consultation with three other eccentric wise women a court hearing is set up with the street people and vagabonds to establish the guilt of the President, the Baron and the Prospector (in absentia). Duly convicted, justice is served and beauty and individualism are restored to the world.

New York Drama Critics Circle (for the premiere
1948-50 production)
"One of the most interesting and rewarding plays written in the last 20 years...pure gold with no base metal...and having an enveloping and irrestible humour".



The play ia a kind of poetic and comic fable. Set in a cafe terrace of Chez Francis and the Countess' Cellar- 21 Rue de Chaillot.
Countess Aurelia, the madwoman of Chaillot, who lives eternally in the moment when life was loveliest, is outraged when she discovers that a syndicate of corrupt businessmen is preapring to drill for oil beneath the streets of Paris. Realising that ordinary justice will not serve, she plans and carries out an alternative annihilation with the help of her eccentric friends and people of the street.