French Spoken

Broadway has its Lunts; London its Oliviers. Last week Manhattan theatergoers had a chance to see the pride of Paris. Imported by Impresario Sol Hurok, Madeleine Renaud and Jean-Louis Barrault began a three-week run which will end with Hamlet, the play that brought their troupe fame in 1946.

The troupe's opening bill was a pleasing double one: Marivaux's Les Fausses Confidences (The False Secrets) rattled off in French; and a pantomime, Baptiste, requiring no French at all. A mannered 18th-century mixup, Les Fausses Confidences was all ambitious mothers and wily servants, dissembling lovers and trumped-up letters. But in an elegantly stylized production, the play seemed almost to be danced. Done so lightly, even its witless deceptions had an air of wit. Madeleine Renaud made an exquisite widow; Barrault, playing an agile valet, had about him a touch of quicksilver, of Mercury himself. To enjoy the production it was less necessary to understand French than to respond to style.

Baptiste, a bright-colored dream tale of a Pierrot in love with a statue, showed that Actor-Director-Choreographer Barrault knows how to use his body quite as well as his head. A pantomime that just falls short of being a ballet, Baptiste has a gay, floating, slightly intermittent charm, with more unusual comic effects than choreographic ones. For real substance from the troupe, Broadway had still to wait: their first bill was rather a triumphant avoidance of it, an exercise in sheer airiness and grace.

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