Le Médecin volant ・ Comédie-Française

“The plot of Le Médecin volant, a one-act farce, is simple: Sganarelle, a slightly foolish valet, must pretend to be a learned doctor in order to convince Gorgibus that his daughter, Lucile, who is pretending to be ill, should go to the country to rest.

There she can secretly marry Valère, the man she loves, and escape the forced marriage which her father has planned for her.

What appeals to me in this play is how the man who everyone says is stupid, and who thinks himself stupid, will prove to be the cleverest of the lot thanks to the ‘mission’ he is given – for the first time, because there is no one else to entrust it to. Sganarelle makes blunders but comes up with dazzlingly inventive solutions to make up for them; he even invents a twin brother with whom he is estranged to justify his resemblance to the learned doctor.

I would like to show Sganarelle’s astonishment and jubilation at discovering abilities and intelligence that he did not suspect he possessed. This discovery galvanises him and it is this energy that serves the comedy, especially in the brilliant scene where Sganarelle has to play the two brothers – not unlike the hilarious scene of the bag in Scapin.

The actors, seated on either side of the stage, ready to put on a doctor’s or a lawyer’s robe, can play several roles. And because in the theatre we forget genders and ages, Sganarelle will be played by Françoise Gillard, revealing all the humour and grace of this character and this farce...”

Géraldine Martineau