The Madwoman of North Coast Rep

Greedy financiers and rapacious corporate exploiters ready to do anything to get more oil to wage more war might well inspire the shock and awe of recognition, especially through the words of Jean Giradoux’s The Madwoman of Chaillot, currently at the North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka. Written in the midst of World War II, the text is witty and incisive on currently painful topics, expressed in a program note by director Renee Grinell: “Forty years ago, when I first read The Madwoman of Chaillot, another war was raging, and so was I. I lost friends in the Vietnam War, and now, forty years later, I am losing the sons and daughters of friends.”

But while such parallels can cause shivers, this play’s insights are wrapped in a comic fable with reputedly batty old ladies as the saviors of civilization, symbolized by a Paris café where the poor and the jugglers are as welcome as the aristocrats and corporate con men.

As the main Madwoman—Aurelia, Countess of Chaillot and owner of the café—Michele Shoshani exudes Gallic charm and the warmth of the character, holding the play together with her stage presence and skill. Bob Service is effective as the philosophical ragpicker who in the second act mock trial demonstrates that the unitary executive has been tried before, under different names. Kicking her first act nun’s habit and broker’s suit, Gloria Montgomery holds center stage and our attention as the judge in that same scene. Pam Service has good comic timing as the Sewer Man. There’s a sweet but slight young lovers subplot that Delcie Moon and Sam Cord handle nicely.

Darcy Daughtry works small miracles with the costumes, and except for a dubious brick wall, Calder Johnson’s set serves the play well. I wasn’t so taken with some of the exaggeration and awkwardness that undercut the satire in an admittedly wordy play, and there were stretches that on opening night just weren’t funny. The cast’s increasing familiarity with the words and with each other could change that.

Perhaps the most famous line from this play is Aurelia’s observation that ''Nothing is ever so wrong in this world that a sensible woman can't set it right in the course of an afternoon.'' It’s disingenuous in a practical sense, but apart from the danger of confirming the complacency of the well-meaning, it does support the proposition that once the relatively simple truths about war for profit are faced, it’s just as natural to live decently as it supposedly is to live rapaciously. There is that hope.