French life on Beijing stage

Some men like to keep a record of their sexual conquests. A candid camera is handy in the digital age, as was shown by Edison Chen, the Hong Kong star whose scandal early this year involved starlets and very private photos.

In The Memorandum, a Parisian man dutifully writes down the profiles of all the women who happen to bump into his life - 134 in all - in a black notebook. But someone points out a small inaccuracy - there is one woman recorded twice because she appears three years apart and has now turned into two separate entries.

Jean-Claude Carrire's play Aide Memoire (The Memorandum) features only two characters: the Parisian man who lives in a small apartment and a woman who literally forces herself into his life. Produced by Xu Ying and directed by Guo Shixing, the story takes on a timeless feel, with an emphasis on human relationships in modern society that could have been set in any country.