Figure of a Girl

One of the successful plays in Paris last season was Jean Pierre Aumont's "L'Empereur de Chine" in which the author also appeared and directed. Now translated and adapted by one of our most successful playwrights, Philip Barry, and given a new title, "Figure of a Girl," it is an interesting play to see, and the present production contains some really enjoyable acting. But as a play it is no great shakes.

It is the peculiarity of this reviewer to expect more from imported plays, such as this one, than of our own unproved offerings. (It is sad to note that the only two new exciting plays this season have both come from France--"Red Gloves" and "The Madwoman of Chaillot." There is no clear evidence that "Figure of a Girl" is worthy of its boat fare.) I therefore was disappointed.

The play concerns a young man who escapes from his humdrum life by inventing wonderful tales about himself. This gains for him the prestige he craves, ("I should have been a knight in shining armor"), but he soon finds it difficult to remember when he is lying and when he is not. He is a Walter Mitty of action; a Christy Mahon without honor.

He is hired by a rich Parisian marketcer to do some gold smuggling, which, of course, is nothing at all to a former leader of the desert patrol, etc. Unfortunately, the young man's charm, or something, is so tremendous that in no time at all he has the wife, the secretary, the daughter, and the maid all madly in love with him. But with the daughter it's real, and she gives up her bourgeois notions about truth. The final curtain finds her fixing breakfast for her "emperor of China."

Mr. Barry, the translator, has chosen to retain certain odd twists in the dialogue which tend to make the audience conscious of the translation. Now, is the good? In "Red Gloves," for example, the absence of such twists and literally-translated idiomatic expressions made the play more direct and forceful, the hand of the middle-man not being there. However, a play with a hero such as this Pierre Renault is probably not creditable in the land of Washington and the Cherry Tree. Such people can flourish in foreign soils, and well. But not here. So Mr. Barry has left the play distinctly Gallic.

M. Aumont plays the liar-adventurer and does it very well. He is wholly creditable as the fatal charmer, an exceedingly difficult job to do without making the character a slippery heel. He injects a good deal of humor into his acting, notably through gestures. Despite this, however, the characters of the wife and daughter are more intriguing, if less whole. Arlene Francis plays the wife with a restraint that suggests that there is more to her than the script will allow. Her part is brief and disturbing; the audience is hardly allowed to make more than a "cocktail-party analysis" of her personality.

In the role of the daughter, Lilli Palmer is called upon to be an unkissed, naive girl. Miss Palmer is a truly lovely, fresh thing to look upon, and reacts with the fiery bewilderment of you when she discovers the truth about her lover. She is especially good in the scene in which she proposes to him, reminiscent of Ingrid Bergman in her uncanonized days. Lawrence Fletcher as the father is a funny burlesque of the nouveau riche businessman.

If you have the acquired taste for the sweet cynicism of Contineual comedy, "Figure of a Girl" should he your dish. But don't expect more than a saucer.