Paris Theater: The Best Plays Outside the City

The venerable grande dame of the French stage, Madeleine Renaud, eighty-seven, seemed to make her performance more exciting each evening last winter as Winnie in Oh! Les Beaux Jours (-Happy days), Samuel Beckett's celebrated play. Buried to her neck in a sand dune - a concrete symbol for being mired in the human condition - Renaud performs as a virtual one-woman show. She monologues a talkative, sentimental old woman - building from an almost Pollyanna-like gaiety to a powerful dramatic climax.