After a busy year in New York, "The Madwoman of Chaillot" has arrived in Boston, to what should prove to be the immense delight, and benefit of all good people. This play, by the late Jean Giraudoux, is of a caliber too seldom achieved--or even attempted--these days; it combines imagination, intelligence, and social commentary with the best possible results. Not since Thornton Wilder's "The Skin of Our Teeth" has a play been offered that was capable of stimulating in its audience that honest exhilaration which is the aim of true comedy.

In the Chaillot sector of Paris there lives a woman who calls herself the Countess Aurelia, but who is known to her many friends as "the madwoman." This is not necessarily derogatory. It is difficult to tell how old the Countess might be because she dresses in the style of the 1880's and is rather out of touch with the times--a fear she manages by living in a dream-world and reading every morning a 1903 newspaper.

The Countess' world is shattered one day when she learns that her friends are unhappy because the "pimps" are taking over. (The pimps, explains the Rag-picker, are the parasites and non-productive members of society--presidents and vice-presidents of corporations, to be specific but non-inclusive,) The Countess sets out to rid Chaillot of such wickedness, which she manages to do in short order, there being "nothing so wrong in this world that a sensible woman can't set it right in the course of an afternoon." How she accomplishes this, and the introduction it affords to the Countess' world, is the substance of the play.

Martita Hunt is in the title role and she does handsomely by it. Her Madwoman is warm and human and views the world through a dewy spider's web which she is constantly brushing from her eyes. It is an inspired performance. Other outstanding players are Estelle Winwood, as the Madwoman's gaily demented pal, John Carradine as the oratorical rag-picker, and Lydia Westman and Elconora Mendelssohn as the other accomplices.

The original Parisian sets of the late Christian Berard are used for this production and are entirely in sympathy with the play as are his bizarre costumes. The American adaptation by Maurice Valency appears to be an excellent job. A word of special thanks must go to Alfred De Liagre, Jr., not only for his direction, but for his courage and foresight in putting on such an obviously 'uncommercial' drama. Mr. De Liagre chose for his garden the almond tree rather than the oil well--and happily has been granted both.

Our Odets and Saroyans--and other dealers in messages and whimsy--could do well to study Giraudoux' method of wedding them. "The Madwoman of Chaillot" has its share of yuks all right, but the best parts are not those which provoke loud laughter but rather a silent 'yes' when the Madwoman--with the perception of the insane and the logic of the child-like--cuts sharply through to the truth of the matter. The healthy heart-beat of humanity can be heard in this play.