ADJANI

The high point of the autumn theatre season in Paris, we are told by every magazine and newspaper screaming it from the roof-tops, is Isabelle Adjani's return to the stage as Mary Queen of Scots. The last week, she has been displayed on just about every conceivable front page, looking as mysterious and as beautiful as ever, but with her 51 year-old skin now showing a weird baby-milk smoothness. As usual in these affairs, the French press is quite unbearably sycophantic. Her interviews are unreadable screeds of panting hero-worship. Only France-Soir was willing to put the boot in. It revealed that rehearsals for "The last night of Mary Stuart" by the little-known German absurdist Wolfgang Hildesheimer were not exactly easy. One fellow actor walked out as Adjani staged a series of crying-jags, it said. All that is as it may be. What really gets my goat is that three days after this long-awaited performance, there is not one single review available -- in the press or on the Internet. I -- and the rest of the intereseted public -- have still not the slightest idea what she was actually like. If this was London or New York -- and it was indeed the highpoint of the theatre season -- then the next day's editions would have been full of it. It all goes to show the essential emptiness of so much French "culture". It has not been reviewed because in the elitist world of Paris theatre no-one can imagine that ordinary people might have an interest in the show's quality -- or Adjani's as an actress. All I have read so far is that on the opening night the stalls were full of celebrities and that they gave her an ovation. Well, whoopy-do.