La Petite Sirène

FROM THE BEGINNING, the literary genre of the fairy tale contains both dreamlike and moral characters that appeal to children as much as to adults, who also perceive their subversive dimension. It is therefore not surprising that twenty-first century directors have sought to take a new look at this genre, proposing inventive reinterpretations for all audiences

Fairy tales comprise a fabulous repertoire from which the theatre has often borrowed, starting from the seventeenth century. The audiences of the time were fond of so-called machine plays and the array of wonderful effects that went with them. In the eighteenth century, these plays remained as popular as ever and adaptations of Charles Perrault’s tales flourished on stages, offering spectacular live scenery changes. His tales became such a reference that Beaumarchais, in a one-act play entitled The Seven League Boots –performed at the Salle Richelieu in 1932 as a non-Repertoire piece, during the celebration of the bicentenary of the author’s birth– has the character of Gilles address the audience as follows: “It is here that we see [...] those famous boots [....] composed by the celebrated Mr Perrault”.

While the magical world of fairy tales was a staple of fairground and boulevard theatres, the Comédie-Française remained more on the fringes of the trend. As a result, the genre’s presence in the Repertoire remained discreet. Some plays with suggestive titles were in fact quite far removed from children’s literature, such as La Coupe enchantée (The Enchanted Cup) by Jean de La Fontaine and Champmeslé (1688, based on two tales by La Fontaine, Les Oies de Frère Philippe (Brother Philip’s Geese) and La Coupe enchantée, themselves inspired by Boccaccio and L'Arioste), Le Petit Chaperon rouge (Little Red Riding Hood) by Félix Gandera and Claude Gevel (1919) and Poudre d’or (Golden Powder) by René Trintzius and Amédée Valentin (1928). On the other hand, there were works with less evocative titles that clearly drew on fairy-tale imagination. For instance, fairy characters were introduced into L’Oracle by Germain-François Poullain de Saint-Foix (1740), Les Fées (The Fairies) by Dancourt (1699), L’Amour et les fées (Love and the Fairies) by the Cardinal de Bernis (1746) or Arlequin poli par l’amour (Harlequin Refined by Love) by Marivaux (1720); a talisman appeared Il était une bergère (Once There Was a Shepherdess) by André Rivoire (1905) and a genie in Amour pour amour (Love for Love’s Sake) by Pierre-Claude Nivelle de La Chaussée (1742).

Although the magical tale was the genre most often represented throughout the eighteenth century in adaptations for stages outside the Comédie-Française, towards the end of the century the philosophical and moral tale became a new source of inspiration, reflecting political, cultural or social issues. For instance, Rochon de Chabannes drew the subject matter for his play Heureusement (Fortunately) –premiered by the Comédiens-Français in 1762– from two Moral Tales by Marmontel, who was credited with fathering this genre, which gradual freed itself from its fantastical origins. Much more recently, in 2012, at the Studio-Théâtre, Emmanuel Daumas staged a lively adaptation of Voltaire’s Candide, which he described as “a mischievous and pernicious work” that tries to see “how far it can push the limits of our acceptance”.

As a close relative to the fairy tale, the fable has also found its way into the Comédie-Française’s Repertoire, in particular through the works of Jean de La Fontaine. His animal fables were the subject of literary evenings in 1975 and 1986, toured the United States in 1996 under the direction of Michel Favory, and in 2004 were orchestrated by director and visual artist Robert Wilson on the stage of the Salle Richelieu.

With Le Loup (The Wolf), based on Marcel Aymé’s Contes du chat perché (directed by Véronique Vella) in 2009, the Comédie-Française revived this interest in the staging of fairy tales –more specifically for a young audience– and gave it a “new form of oral expression”. Over the following seasons, several adaptations of Andersen’s tales offered a range of approaches to the challenge of staging fairy tales: The Emperor’s New Clothes (directed by Jacques Allaire, 2010), The Three Little Pigs (directed by Thomas Quillardet, 2012), The Princess and the Pea (directed and adapted by Édouard Signolet, 2013), and The Little Matchstick Girl (adapted by Amrita David and Olivier Meyrou, 2014). In 2016, Véronique Vella staged another tale by Marcel Aymé, Le Cerf et le chien (The Stag and the Dog), continuing her reflection on the close bonds between animality and humanity. In these various stagings, all presented at the Studio-Théâtre, the handling of the narrative and the metaphysical dimension of the tale, making use of speech but also sound and image, stimulated the childish imagination while bringing to life the political, poetic and sometimes challenging dimensions of the works for audiences of all ages.