Tuesday night was my first rehearsal for An Ideal Husband. I am going to be playing Mason, the butler. P. was not able to come to rehearsal, so it was just me and the French students. The director had us all recite English tongue twisters individually. I was clearly the best at that exercise, since I was the only native speaker of English in the room. I had been sort of hoping to pick up some French theatre vocabulary, like “cross downstage,” but I haven’t yet. I think either French theatre people are more plain-spoken, or this particular group is not well-versed in rehearsal language. (I'm leaning toward the former, because the French were never big into raked stages, which is where we get upstage and downstage in English.) The weirdest thing about this production is that no one has any idea where or when the performances are going to happen. It’s going to be sometime in March or April, and probably somewhere at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. But I had fun, and I liked everyone.

I went shopping at Franprix this week. I shop at the Franprix often. It is my second favorite store in my neighborhood, after Picard les Surgelés, the frozen food store that has inexpensive frozen gourmet meals. Franprix is a really cheap supermarket, where things are marked “Prix Choc!” (Shocking Price!). Laura and I have been especially enjoying the flavored ice-cream cones that come in a package of four for 99 centimes. So far we have tried Tiramisu, Cappucino, and 3 Chocolats. We are probably going to get Crème Brulée next. Sometimes there are crazy people shopping at the Franprix, but they don’t seem to be dangerous.

Tonight I went to see Samuel Beckett’s Oh, les beaux jours! (Happy Days), starring Catherine Samie of the Comédie-Française as Winnie. Winnie is buried up to her waist in dirt during Act I and up to her neck in Act II. I went with VS, and we ran into P. and K. there. I really enjoyed the show. The actress was fabulous, and the staging did a good job showing how Beckett’s minimalist project could work. There was a moment in the first act when Winnie picked up an umbrella and opened it and swung it around. Because there was so little movement in general, that moment was spellbinding. I’m much more familiar with the English text, which includes a lot of citations of British poetry. I only noticed one joke about using the classics to pass the time, so I’m guessing Beckett didn’t translate most of those references. The one other quibble I had was that I didn’t feel like Willie was a threatening presence at the end, My vague recollection is that the stage directions say he’s reaching for the gun at the end, but in this production he was reaching for Winnie in a tender way. Regardless, it’s nice to have a good Beckett experience to take away the painful memories of two looooooong student productions of Waiting for Godot when I was in college. Well, one and a half, since I left the second one at intermission. Because really, if you didn’t enjoy the first half of that play you know you’re not going to enjoy the second half.

Shall we go? Yes, let’s go. But we can’t go. Why not? Because we’re waiting for Godot. Oh.