L'Avare ・ Comédie-Française

Harpagon plans to marry off his daughter Élise without a dowry to a rich merchant who could be her father, and his son Cléante to a rich widow.

Needless to say, Molière, who played the role of Cléante at the premiere in 1668 at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, takes the side of love against paternal authority: Elise is infatuated with Valère who enters the household disguised as a valet, while Cléante pines after Mariane without knowing that his father intends to marry her. In this play, Molière adds the father-son conflict and the quest for eternal youth to the theme of forced marriage, notes Lilo Baur, who is returning to the Troupe for the sixth time, after her recent staging of Feydeau’s Puce à l’oreille, which is also revived this season. She sets the play on the shores of her native Lake Geneva, in the post-war years, a period close to us but still far before the emancipation of women from parental authority and society that has since been achieved. And she draws the threads of her lively production from this unscrupulous usurer who keeps his wealth in a chest, “just like the big banks, with all those gold bars and jewels locked up in safes as if in mausoleums”. A theatre practitioner with an overflowing imagination, she exploits the situational comedy of this text with its legendary scenes, from Harpagon searching through the pockets of his valet La Flèche to the stolen chest, and highlights “the exacerbated feelings of youth, whether in love or in rage”.

This Avare, staged during Molière’s 400th anniversary celebrations in April 2022, is a magnificent tribute to one of the most delightful plays in the repertoire.

Premiere
1 April 2022
Salle RIchelieu

With the support of la Fondation pour la Comédie-Française

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