DRAMATIC CLUB PLAY UNUSUAL PRESENTATION

In presenting Sacha Guitry's "Beranger" as its twenty-third production, on May 8 and 11 in Cambridge, and at a Boston matinee on May 10, the Dramatic Club offers a play that is of unusual interest from many points of view. Opening in the courtyard of a little inn just outside of Paris, in the Spring of the year 1813, the action of the first act traces the phenomenal rise to popularity of the famous French song-writer, Beranger, through the immediate nation-wide singing of his songs; his meeting with Desangiers and the attention and honor bestowed upon him by the latter and his friends in the "Caveau", and, above all, through his dramatic "reconnaisance" with Talleyrand, one of the world's greatest diplomats.

Passing over the intervening 16 years, the second act presents Beranger at the height of his career and on the day of one of its striking crises. He is visited in his room by the intriguing Talleyrand, who sees in him a tremendously powerful political force which he, Talleyrand, seeks control. During a stirring interview which, through Beranger's characterization of him and his own speech and action, gives new and valuable insight into Talleyrand's character, Beranger states his heroic principles and gives his final answer.

French Atmosphere Retained

The little inn is much the same when Beranger, now an old man, wistfully returns to it in the winter of 1848, at the beginning of the third act. The unexpected opening of a cycle in a new generation, of great significance in lending remarkable structural unity and import to the play, and the effective ending given to this drama of an unusually attractive personality, are the impressive features of this last act of "Beranger".

The whole play is filled with true French atmosphere and the full power of the dialogue has been retained by the translator, Howard Phillips '23, treasurer of the Dramatic Club. Besides giving valuable insight into Talleyrand's character, into the life and customs of the time, as seen through the lives of the common people especially, and into the French character in general, Mr. Guitry's play, which is of the episodic type so well-know from the recent writings of John Drinkwater, holds a very high place in the modern drama.