Bungalow 21

The ambiance is pleasantly fake-Californian, especially for a Paris November evening. As audience members take their seats, the red curtain of Théâtre de la Madeleine is adorned with projections of hot-pink palm trees, while classic midcentury tunes sung by the Coasters or the Andrews Sisters are piped through the speakers. Even the preshow announcement is tweaked to welcome us to the theater’s “airline,” as plane engines whir and archival black-and-white footage of adoring fans is projected onto a screen hanging in the middle of the set, in an evocation of Simone Signoret and Yves Montand’s journey to Hollywood in 1960 for the shooting of George Cukor’s Let’s Make Love. Immediately the screen is lifted and we see a bellboy (Clément Moreau) ushering the two French stars into Bungalow 20 at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where further palm trees can be glimpsed through the blinds. Unfortunately, this charmingly nostalgic prologue...