Le Misanthrope ・ Comédie-Française

For Molière, 1665 – the year Le Misanthrope was written – was a year of betrayal: that of Racine, who gave his tragedy Alexander the Great to the troupe of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, after the failure of its first production by Molière’s troupe at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal.

Are there autobiographical resonances to Alceste’s black humour, who, to hate one person, decides to hate the whole world?
The sociétaire Clément Hervieu-Léger explores the temperament of the “cantankerous lover”, his struggle against the weariness of self and solitude. The work shows us a society free of parental and religious influence whose social veneer is stripped away when desire is awoken. Pushed to their limit by the radicality of an Alceste willing to renounce any form of sociability, over the course of a day, the characters reveal the contradictions of a humanity that obeys its heart over reason. They form a social microcosm that is placed in an open space, outside a mansion that is being renovated, instead of in the cosy confines of a salon. The set is a moving space, a metaphor for the repertoire, which, according to the director, should be: “evolving, completely of its century but nourished by previous centuries and already turning to the coming century.”
“I belong to a repertory theatre, and I think that if we do not approach the works from a fresh perspective, then this repertory theatre has no reason to exist.”
Clément Hervieu-Léger

Comedy in 5 acts and in verse

Production premiered 12 April 2014 in the Salle Richelieu
Work first performed: 4 June 1666 at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal
Comédie-Française premiere: 27 August 1680 at the Théâtre de l’Hôtel Guénégaud
2,734 performances of the work by the Comédie-Française since its premiere, including 140 in this production.

Calendar