George Dandin / La Jalousie du Barbouillé ・ Comédie-Française

Inspired by a tale from the Middle Ages, Georges Dandin or the Confounded Husband hides “behind the laughter the fact that a social order is crumbling and that a new world is emerging”, comments Hervé Pierre, sociétaire of the Comédie-Française.

This new world will soon see the nobility losing power to the merchant class, a shift that will continue until the advent of the Second Empire. It is for this reason that Hervé Pierre sets the play in France of the 1850s: “by setting the action of Georges Dandin at the time of Courbet and Napoleon III, it brings about a distancing, along with a new perspective on the play. We would probably make the same observation by moving the story to today –we are constantly saying goodbye to our illusions”, he comments. Indeed, the play is perhaps wrongly described as farce, so cruel and bitter is the outcome for Dandin, made to bear the full weight of his arranged marriage by his young wife. His family-in-law constantly remind him of their class difference, the profit he draws from it being supposed to compensate for the daily affronts inflicted on him from all sides. A similar plot is found almost twenty years earlier in La Jalousie du Barbouillé (The Jealous Husband), a resolutely comical one-act antecedent that Hervé Pierre places alongside the better remembered Dandin. At every moment, in both plays, one feels a deep empathy for the characters in their violence, their spinelessness or apathy. They so deeply embody human nature that one inevitably identifies with them.

Creative team

Mise en scène : Hervé Pierre
Scénographie et costumes : Éric Ruf
Lumières : Christian Dubet
Musique originale : Vincent Leterme
Travail chorégraphique : Cécile Bon
Collaboration artistique : Laurence Kélépikis
Assistante à la scénographie : Dominique Schmitt
Assistante aux costumes : Siegrid Petit-Imbert