A Radiant Girl

North American Premiere

Set in Paris in the summer of 1942, 19-year-old Jewish girl Irène is an aspiring actress, full of the joys of life. Crazy about all things theatre, she’s working as a theatre usher while rehearsing Marivaux with a view to getting a conservatoire place. She’s also discovering the joys of love, receiving declarations from one gauche young suitor while yearning for her stage partner, then falling for a doctor’s assistant — even pretending to have bad eyesight in order to revisit the clinic for prescription glasses. She’s also experiencing fainting fits while practicing stage fainting for her performances. Irène’s faints may be a symptom of her uncontainable soul. Her restless exuberance both infuriates and delights the members of her secular Jewish family. Things seem like they couldn’t be rosier for Irène — but perhaps her happiness is simply a form of denial, and she’s simply dancing on the proverbial edge of a volcano. Intimations of what lies ahead for French Jews come at first in incidental asides, then become more evident and threatening, as the family is obliged to hand in their radio, their bicycle, and finally their telephone, eventually forced to wear the yellow star on their clothes.