As for the Drama Festival's Best Drama Award and Best Screenplay Award, both were naturally and without dispute bestowed upon The Count of Monte Cristo, performed by the French Royal Troupe.
It received the Drama Festival's highest score of 19 points!
The Queen of France played Mercedes, the female lead in her middle years, in this play. Of course, that was not the only reason the judges had given the play such high marks.
Its plot absolutely crushed every other script at the Drama Festival!
Even at the three-in-the-morning showing, the audience shouted themselves hoarse with excitement at the scene where the Count of Monte Cristo escaped prison and was reborn from the flames.
Well, Queen Mary had not taken the stage for that performance—her health did not permit her to stay up late.
The Best Actor Award went to Saviano, the lead actor in Braveheart.
For several days after the Drama Festival ended, people on the streets of Paris would occasionally roar, "Freedom—"
It was the final word shouted by William Wallace, leader of the rebels from Scotland, before his execution. English had been used onstage.
And the Best Set Design Award went to a play depicting the French and spanish Allied Forces rescuing local farmers in Portugal who had suffered under the British army's "scorched-earth policy"—Thirty Days in Iberia.
Well, the play ended with the British fleeing Porto in disgrace, while tens of thousands of tearful Portuguese people crowded around the French and spanish "heavenly soldiers" as they entered the city.
In short, of the forty-two plays that had participated in the Drama Festival, fifteen received awards of various kinds.
Only four of those were relatively traditional plays; the rest all suited France's propaganda needs.
On the day the Drama Festival closed, more than ninety theater troupes from