After his acclaimed French debut last year with "The Bee," news of Hideki Noda's return to the Theatre National de Chaillot in central Paris with his pop-war-and-Olympian extravaganza "Egg" created quite a buzz of anticipation.

Premiered in 2012 at the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre where Noda is artistic director, the play starts with a very large, very open stage strewn with debris. Soon, an usherette (played by Noda) arrives, leading a tour group of giggling schoolgirls across and down off the stage, then passing in front and back up stairs on the other side as she explains that this is a theater undergoing renovations — not the ruined future it appeared to be at first sight.

Then one of the girls finds a play, the tour guide incomprehensibly runs off to Australia, and the theater's artistic director (Noda again) explains that this found work, titled "Egg," is by the venerated avant-garde poet, playwright and filmmaker Shuji Terayama (1935-1983), a reference that situates the story in a not-too-distant past of real movements for peace and true underground theater.