It sounded like the audience out front...

It sounded like the audience out front clapping in rhythm to hurry us up.

Like giant cockroaches eating all the popcorn in the lobby.

Like every bottle of wine in the cellar popping its cork.

A wine cellar under a theater? Vraiment. This was Paris, after all.

“What’s going on?” I asked Marion, my wife and the leading lady. Her ankles swayed seductively as she slipped outside and got a newspaper. The last metro edition.

“The Nazis!” she gasped.

So that was it. I should have known. That awful sound was coming from tens of thousands of jackknifing legs with jackboots at the ends of them. Jackhammering the cobblestones. Making the Eiffel Tower hum like a tuning fork.

“Quick, Lucas,” she said. “You’re Jewish.”

“Moi?”

“You must hide. Down in the cellar.”

I eyed this prospect with distaste. Except for the wine. There might be just enough to last me until 1945.

“What are you going to do?” I asked her. She was gazing at the leading man with what seemed to be a new interest.

“We’re gonna put on a show.”

“The Last Metro,” a musical play based on the Francois Truffaut film about a theater company in occupied Paris during World War II, runs through Sept. 29 at the Colony Studio Theatre, 1944 Riverside Drive, Los Angeles. Times are 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 3 p.m. or 7 p.m. Sunday (call for schedule). Tickets are $20-$18 Saturday and $18-$15 Thursday, Friday and Sunday. Phone: (213) 665-3011.