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• 1 media/Thumb 1312.png 2024-11-08T14:16:28-05:00 "The Theatre in Paris" 18 A preview of the theatrical season, summary of a farce play by Vallabrègue plain 2024-12-03T17:26:25-05:00 09-10-1890 Translation:The theatrical year has started. Shortly the reopenings will all be done. The drift this season seems to be toward music. In the place of the Menus-Plaisir, which are becoming naturalistic with L'Assomoir, operetta scenes are being staged at Montmartre and at Rochechouart. Mr. Verdhurd is promising a serious campaign competing with the Opera, and finally Mr. Desfossés has just had an excellent opening at the Opéra-Bouffé.
  
  The latter theatre is none other than the Paradis Latin transformed, cleared of its galleries where male and female students would lounge and watch acrobats. The current director, active and intelligent, joins a tenacity with a methodical mind that will assure him serious success in the future.
  
  It is thus that, leaving aside singers and puppets, Mr. Désfossés is assembling a troupe of very diverse elements drawn from the corners of the capital and the recesses of the province. Of all these subjects, he has made a charming whole, which has given us Les noces d'Olivette with flair and spirit.
  
  The play suffered a bit from a weak diction along with long and useless speeches particularly in the final act. But the actors offset this fault with truly masterful qualities.
  
  We must also congratulate the head of the orchestra Mr. Allery, who directs conscientiously, both the choirs whose assembly and size are worth noting, and the musicians who are attentive to his energetic rhythm.
  
  In a word: the troupe, the play, the costumes, the hall (a true little boudoir), make the Opéra-Bouffé into a charming place, intelligently directed, that deserves complete success. We hope it for Mr. Désfossés, asking him for novelties.
  
  The Folies-Dramatiques have given us a vaudeville in three acts of Messrs. Vallabrègue and David: Le Pompier de Justine.
  
  The oddity of the book is in these two lines: The firefighter of Justine is not just one firefighter, but two firefighters, who are not a single firefighter, since they are a fake.
  
  This demands an explanations. Here it is:
  
  Blanchinel, a court bailiff who is legitimately married, expresses his love to the wife of Durozoir, an old soft protector of animals and eater of vegetables. Now, the court bailiff to better conceal his schemes, disguises as a firefighter and goes out thus. He is noticed by his own maid, Justine, who falls madly in love with him. At that time, she is discharged by Madame Blanchinel and passes into the service of Durozoir. She can thus see her firefighter, who is not the only man going to the house of her new master.
  
  The court bailiff's second clerk is in love with Blanchinel's wife, and tells him about her husband's escapades. The woman is furious, and, wanting to catch her husband in the act, leaves and encounters Justine with a firefighter. But this one is not her husband, but Germain, her own valet, who has fallen for the Mr. Durozoir's new cook. This Germain, knowing that she loves a firefighter, he puts on a beard and a costume, and in this uniform he gets near to his beauty. From this point, total buffoonery. Germain gets heated, while Blanchinel is stony toward Justin who does not understand anything that is going on.
  
  Then the court bailiff surprises his wife with a firefighter; the cook think she has "faulted" with Monsieur, and understands with difficulty that it was Germain. Durozoir demands reparations for his maid from Blanchinel, who believes they are referring to the former's wife.
  
  In short, Le Pompier de Justine is a salad in which there is much to laugh at; but the care to sort through it is left entirely to the public, the author did nothing to that end.
  
  For the performance, there is Germain, Gubin and Guyon, all excellent, and who, with Miss Leriche, are four masters of their craft. But the rest!...
  
  Marius Bergeret