Theatre
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Théâtre de l'Athénée Louis Jouvet

Certain directors in France do extraordinary things with the medium of theatre. Classic texts are shuffled into theatrical moments, where spectacular and dazzling sensation takes precedence over speech. Their shows are overwhelming: huge casts, vast sets (sometimes real buildings never before used for theatre), exotic lighting effects, original music scores. It adds up to a unique experience, even if you haven't understood a word. The director par excellence of this form is Ariane Mnouchkine, whose Théâtre du Soleil is based at the Cartoucherie in Vincennes. Peter Brook, the English director based at the Bouffes du Nord theatre, is another great magician of the all-embracing several-day show. His most recent offering is an acclaimed production of Hamlet. Also a big name, though often involved in films rather than the theatre, is Patrice Chéreau. Any show by these three should not be missed, and there are likely to be other weird and wonderful productions by younger directors, such as Jérôme Savary, who produces an exciting programme of events at the Opéra Comique.

At the same time, bourgeois farces, postwar classics, Shakespeare, Racine and the like, are staged with the same range of talent, or lack of it, that you'd find in London or New York. What you'll rarely find are the homegrown, socially concerned and realist dramas of the sort that have in the past kept theatre alive in Britain. Edward Bond plays (scarcely performed now in the UK), in translation, are currently a regular feature on Parisian theatre programmes and productions of Sarah Kane's hard-hitting plays are proving quite successful – the French equivalents hardly exist.

The great generation of French or Francophone dramatists, which included Anouilh, Genet, Camus, Sartre, Adamov, Ionesco and Cocteau, came to an end with the death of Samuel Beckett in 1990 and Ionesco in 1994. Their plays, however, are still frequently performed. The Huchette has been playing Ionesco's La Cantatrice Chauve every night since October 1952, and the Comédie Française, the national theatre for the classics, is as likely to put on Genet's Les Paravents, which set off riots on its opening night, as Corneille and Racine.

One of the encouraging things about France and its public authorities is that they take their culture, including the theatre, seriously. Numerous theatres and theatre companies in Paris are subsidized, either wholly or in part, by the government or the Ville de Paris. And the suburbs are not left out, thanks to the ubiquitous Maisons de la Culture, which were the brainchild of man of letters André Malraux, de Gaulle's wartime aide, and eventually, in the 1960s, his Minister of Culture. Ironically, however, although they were designed to bring culture to the masses, their productions are often among the most "difficult" and intellectually inaccessible.

Another plus is the Parisian theatre's openness to foreign influence and foreign work. The troupe at the Théâtre du Soleil is made up of around twenty different nationalities, and foreign artists and directors are frequent visitors. In any month there might be an Italian, Mexican, German or Brazilian production playing in the original language, or offerings by radical groups from Turkey or China, who are denied a venue at home.

The best time of all for theatre lovers to come to Paris is for the Festival d'Automne from mid-September to mid-December, an international celebration of all the performing arts, which attracts stage directors of the calibre of the American Bob Wilson, Canadian Robert Lepage and Polish director Tadeusz Kantor.