Le voyageur sans bagage

Le Voyageur sans bagage (The Traveller Without Luggage) is a 1937 play in five scenes by Jean Anouilh. Incidental music for the original production was written by Darius Milhaud and for the play's first Paris revivals by Francis Poulenc. Plot Gaston, a veteran of World War I, suffers from amnesia and has spent the last 18 years in a hospital trying to regain his memories. Although he's claimed as a son by various families, a rich Duchess believes the true family Gaston belongs to is the Renauds. Gaston travels to the Renauds' estate alongside his lawyer, Huspar. A docile character, Gaston discovers his former identity of Jacques Renaud: a cruel and violent young man who used to kill animals for sport. He learns that immediately prior to the war he pushed his best friend, Marcel, down a flight of stairs, breaking his back, shortly after seeing him kiss the maid Juliette, with whom Jacques had been intimate. Gaston has difficulty reconciling his current personality with that of his past. His brother's wife, Valentine (with whom he had an affair during adolescence), tells him about a tiny scar on his shoulder, sustained when Valentine attacked him with a hat pin in a fit of jealousy. Gaston sees this scar in a mirror but doesn't tell Valentine about it. Soon thereafter, numerous families arrive at the Renaud estate, searching for their lost loved one from the war. Gaston spots a young boy. This boy, who is the only surviving member of the Madensales, a family who died in a boating accident when he was an infant, is searching for his long-lost nephew who happens to be much older than himself. Gaston tells the young boy about the scar on his shoulder and fabricates a story about the scar belonging to the boy's long-lost nephew. Gaston leaves the Renauds to become a member of the boy's family, later writing a letter to Jacques' brother Georges, stating that their Jacques is dead and they need not search for him any longer. Inspiration and reception Inspired by the story of an amnesiac soldier, Anthelme Mangin, who was claimed by over a dozen families, the play was first presented on 16 February 1937 and was Anouilh's first major hit with critics and audiences alike. According to biographer Edward Owen Marsh, the playwright enjoyed "his first financial success in the theatre, when perhaps the poorest theatre-director in Paris, Georges Pitoëff, produced what is generally considered to be one of Anouilh's finest plays, Le Voyageur sans bagage.