La Tempête

Some of Shakespeare’s plays carry us beyond reality: whether we meet a fairy or a spectre, or whether a plot is based on a prediction or an act of magic, the spectator is often drawn into the realm of the supernatural – a place of evil or wonder – that permeated both the daily life and the imagination of Shakespeare’s contemporaries. Since 1769 (Ducis’ adaptation of Hamlet), numerous directors have “summoned” him to the stage of the Comédie-Française: Emile Perrin, Albert Carré, Charles Granval, Julien Bertheau, Jacques Fabbri, Terry Hands, Jean-Pierre Vincent, Jorge Lavelli, Georges Lavaudant, Daniel Mesguich, Andrès Lima, Dan Jemmett and Muriel Mayette-Holtz.

Macbeth is among the playwright’s darkest plays. The frightening protagonists seen at the rising of the curtain, the three witches, soon disappear mysteriously before Macbeth and Banquo, the latter becoming a ghost in the third act. However, the most illustrious and spectacular ghost haunting the history of theatre remains the one who appears to Hamlet as the spirit of his late father. Terrifying apparitions also haunt the king’s nights inRichard III and the curses of Queen Margaret all, inexorably, come to pass. Far from these evil spells, the most fanciful enchantment illuminates A Midsummer Night’s Dream, populating the forest with elves, fairies and fantastic creatures, composing a world in its own right. Puck has the power to make the fog emerge or to influence the feelings of love, like Ariel in The Tempest.

The power that Prospero and the occult sciences exert over the natural elements determine the unfolding of events in The Tempest. The unleashing of the sea, the use of invisibility to warn against conspiracies, metamorphosis and the organisation of phantasmagoria are triggered by white magic to elevate man to harmony and wisdom. While the previous staging of the play (1998) opened up the stage into an immense wooden bookshelf, the more virtual one proposed by Robert Carsen will have the effect of immersing it.