Mademoiselle De Belle Isle

A young heiress disguises herself as a man and enters a world that was never meant to see her true face. In Dumas's glittering 18th-century comedy, Mademoiselle de Belle Isle assumes the identity of the Chevalier de Villeneuve, navigating aristocratic Paris in male attire while her fortune and her heart hang in the balance. When the notorious Duke de Richelieu himself becomes enchanted by this mysterious young 'man,' the stage is set for delicious chaos: rival suitors, compromised reputations, and the dangerous game of living a lie. What Victorian audiences found "immoral" was not merely the cross-dressing, but the way Dumas gleefully exposes the arbitrary rules of high society as costumes no different from the ones his heroine wears. Witty, romantic, and surprisingly progressive, this is Dumas at his most playful, skewering the pretensions of the French aristocracy while serving up the sparkling dialogue and intricate plotting that made him immortal.