La Visite de la vieille dame ・ Comédie-Française

When, after decades of absence, the ultra wealthy Claire Zahanassian returns to Güllen, the small town of her childhood, to celebrate her wedding to her eighth husband, the whole community hopes she will pay off the chronic debt that has left the town in terrible hardship.

The old woman agrees to give huge sums to revitalise the town, but with one condition: that they kill Alfred Ill the grocer, her childhood sweetheart, who basely disowned after getting her pregnant. The old lady is determined to destroy the hypocritical moral order that cast her out of the town and sets off a genuine manhunt for Ill. Pursuing her own idea of justice, she accepts to close her heart to her one and only love.

Friedrich Dürrenmatt, the author
Friedrich Dürrenmatt was born in 1921 in Switzerland, in the canton of Bern. After studying philosophy and German literature, son of a Protestant pastor decided, in 1943, to devote himself to literature and drama, while continuing a career as a painter. He came to the attention of his fellow Swiss writer Max Frisch with his first play, It is Written, which caused a scandal at its premiere in 1947. He earned fame as a novelist (The Judge and His Hangman, Suspicion, The Tunnel, The Breakdown), essayist and theatre theoretician, as much as for his playwrighting. His extensive body of work for the theatre, amounting to almost thirty plays (Romulus the Great, The Marriage of Mr. Mississippi, The Physicists) is characterised by a strong social critique, making a severe and pessimistic judgment of his era, marked by the consequences the Second World War and the Cold War. He died in 1990 in Neuchâtel.

Christophe Lidon, the director
Christophe Lidon created his company La Nuit and the Moment Théâtre in 1991, directing some sixty productions in France and abroad. His repertoire ranges from the great classics (Racine, Diderot, Shakespeare, Molière, Chekhov, Goldoni) to contemporary authors (Durringer, Baricco, Lodge, Rault, Siméon). His work is driven by a very attentive reading of the texts and a deep love for actors. Audiences and critics have praised many of his recent stagings which have notably featured Danielle Darrieux, Robert Hirsch, Claude Rich, Danièle Lebrun, Isabelle Carré and Samuel Labarthe. He has a preference for stagings that place the actor at the centre of the production.

Creative team

Translation****: Laurent Muhleisen
Direction****: Christophe Lidon
Direction assistant****: Natacha Garange
Sets****: Catherine Bluwal
Assistant****: Françoise Henry
Costumes****: Chouchane Abello Tcherpachian
Lights****: Marie-Hélène Pinon
Assistant****: Lucie Joliot
Original soundtrack****: La Manufacture Sonore
Video****: Léonard
Assistant****: Cyrille Valroff