Israel’s Chamber Theatre, which was given the honor of closing the third International Drama Festival here, opened last night in a performance hailed by a first night audience drawn from Parisian diplomatic, political and society circles as brilliant. They saw a contemporary Israeli play, Moshe Shamir’s “He Went Through the Fields,” and called the players back for eight curtain calls. The entire company was acclaimed and several singing and dancing scenes in the course of the performance were interrupted by loud applause.
The Chamber Theatre’s visit here has produced a number of interesting statistics. Among them are the fact that despite the tremendous interest exhibited here in the work of playwright Berthold Brecht, there were eight times as many reservations requested for the native Israeli play as there were for the troupe’s second attraction–Brecht’s “The Good Woman of Tzetzuan”; that the house is completely sold out for all performances of both plays; and that the priests of Paris have been given special permission by their Cardinal to attend the Israeli group offerings, the only troupe to gain that distinction this year.
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