George Dandin ou le Mari confondu ・ Comédie-Française

“From La Jalousie du barbouillé to George Dandin, Molière uses the framework of farce to write a comedy-ballet.

But if we take away Lully’s music and its lightness, we discover a cruel drama in which a young woman is sacrificed on the altar of profit by her parents, members of a penniless petty nobility. It is also about the social humiliation of an upwardly mobile peasant by this same aristocracy, men’s contempt for women, and masters’ contempt for their servants. In short, it is about the cruelty subjected upon the humiliated. We laugh, as in all of Molière’s comedies, however this one does not end with a wedding but on a bitter note of collective defeat. Is it a farce? Is it a drama?
A tragically lucid human comedy.

It is a conflict of generations and a social class struggle. I would therefore like to contrast two generations of actors – the youth of Angélique, Claudine, Clitandre, Lubin and Colin with the maturity of Monsieur and Madame de Sotenville. And Dandin, to embody this class struggle between the Sotenvilles, their daughter and Clitandre against Dandin, Claudine, Lubin and Colin. The humiliation is also between generations, genders and social classes: Dandin humiliates Claudine, Colin and Angélique; the Sotenvilles humiliate Dandin but are themselves humiliated by Clitandre, who will be fierce with Dandin and contemptuous with Lubin; Angélique takes revenge and humiliates Dandin with the help of Claudine; does Clitandre really love Angélique or does he enjoy it?
We will be at George Dandin’s table, reading the signs of this humiliating-humiliated couple with an audience that is present or supposed to be.”

Hervé Pierre

This “À la table en public” presentation of George Dandin is dedicated to Simon Eine, who died on 30 September 2020 and who played the role of Colin at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in 2014.

With the patronage of François Jerphagnon