The original production was done with Giraudoux's frequent collaborator, actor and theater director Louis Jouvet, who played the Ragpicker.

She enlists the help of her fellow outcasts: the Street Singer, The Ragpicker, The Sewer Man, The Flower Girl, The Sergeant, and various other oddballs and dreamers.

In a tea party every bit as mad as a scene from Alice in Wonderland, they put the "wreckers of the world's joy" on trial, and in the end condemn them to banishment—or perhaps, death.

The New York Drama Critics' Circle hailed the 1948–50 production as "one of the most interesting and rewarding plays to have been written within the last twenty years", "pure gold, with no base metal" and having "an enveloping and irresistible humor.

"[2] La Folle de Chaillot was translated into English by Maurice Valency, in Jean Giraudoux, Four Plays, vol.