The Comédie Frangaise is so old that it can afford to be perfectly eclectic. Tt has just revived Prosper 'Mérimée's "Lo Carrosse clu Saint Sacrement," which is more than a hundred years old, and has produced 'M, Jean Cocteau's playlet "La Voix Humaine," which, in a relative nse, was written only yesterdays 'M, Cocteau is classed among the "young authors" though he must be forty or thereabouts, He was regarded as a budding genius when, in his twenties, and he is still a "coming man." M, Cocteau is a poet with individuality; an essayist and novel litle critic of art and perature, and a caricaturist, He'
created a bar where the young'
llectuals of the day meet to en-Joy literary, discussion combined With liquid refreshment, very much as their predecessors used to frequent cafes in the Latin Quarter. Enter the bar and the cocktail fexount the cafe and the absinthe cloudy in the glass: thus the world wags and fashions change. M. Cocteau is also an ingenious dram-arist who does not disdain to. mo-demise the ancients, He has re-written "Antigone" in tabloid form for a world in-a hurry, and has also given us all that he regards as really essential in "Romeo and Tuliet." In "La Voix Humaine" he discovers the monologue, which is one of the earliest forms of the stage play, The telephone enters into nearly every modern play as an accessory: "La Voix Humaine" is fall telephone. A woman, deserted by her lover, tries. to touch his ear by appealing to him over the tele-hone, or rather the''phone, as we call it, nowadays, Tt provides a splendid part for Mme Berthe Bovy, who has a fascinating voice with wonderful modulations.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.