Les Créanciers

Admittedly, August Strindberg was not staged at the Comédie-Française until the 1970s, fifty years after Ibsen, but with A Dream Play, it was one of his most original plays that entered the Repertoire. Initially it was to be directed by Ingmar Bergman, a director frequently associated with Ibsen and Strindberg, with whom he forms a trio in the theatrical imagination. However, the French language was too great an obstacle for Bergman and, in the end, the staging was entrusted to Raymond Rouleau. Ever since, every ten years or so, Strindberg, the unhappy husband, re-appeared to undermine his audience’s peace of mind and dreams of conjugal bliss. Dance of Death (1996) left no illusion in its title as to the fatal ending of the tragedy. And for the couples of The Father (1991 and 2015) and Creditors (1980 and 2018), the “struggle of minds” dramatised by Strindberg followed the same, implacable course of complex conflict, to the point of psychological murder between persecutors and persecuted, or creditors and debtors. While the couple exacerbates cruelty, it is not the only battlefield. The Ghost Sonata (1975) revealed the blackness of the characters and, inThe Stronger, feminine rivalry proves to be formidable. This short play was staged in 2006 by Anne Kessler, who, in Grief(s), associated it with A Doll’s House (Ibsen) and The Best Intentions (Bergman).

Strindberg’s affinities with Ibsen are numerous, in particular for the dramaturgy of the family drama and conjugality, or even the violent war of the sexes dominated by the feminine insurrection and dramatic confrontation oscillating between love and hatred.