Lucrèce Borgia

Lucrezia Borgia
by Victor Hugo
Directed by Denis Podalydès

Richelieu

22 January 30 April 2016

Richelieu

Lucrèce Borgia

2016-01-22 00:00:00 2016-04-30 00:00:00

“Lucretia Borgia is an ambivalent and subversive tragedy, a sort of monster of beauty and impropriety.”

For his third staging at the Comédie-Française, after Fantasio and Cyrano de Bergerac, which is revived this season, Denis Podalydès returned to the century of romanticism in 2014 with one of Victor Hugo’s masterpieces, Lucretia Borgia, which entered the Repertoire in 1918. “[...] and now mingle with all this moral deformity a pure feeling, [...] maternal love; inside your monster, put a mother and the monster will make you cry” states the preface. Antoine Vitez’s staging in Avignon in 1985 fed the director’s desire to follow Hugo’s lyricism so as to “better descend into this shadowy abyss that is Lucretia Borgia, an ambivalent and subversive tragedy, a sort of monster of beauty and impropriety” and recreate the poetic violence of the incestuous drama. The play calls for a scope of gesture, feeling and acting that accepts the ridiculous and exaggeration, that does not hold back from joining the grotesque and the sublime. “Hugo stretches this tension in every scene to accentuate contrasts. It is clearly from Shakespeare that Hugo borrowed this fundamental law of drama.” The opening scene shows a gondola in which a group of bedraggled men, their faces covered by grotesque masks, are telling the story of the infamous Borgia family, recalling how the two brothers Cesare and Juan killed each other for the love of their sister Lucretia; “the use of disguise and masks come from both the play and the desire to make a Lucretia less a dramatic heroine than an allegory of the pariah.”

Duration

2:20 WITHOUT INTERMISSION

Venue
logo-richelieu

Creative team

Direction****: Denis Podalydès
Direction assistant****: Alison Hornus
Scenography****: Éric Ruf
Scenography assistant****: Dominique Schmitt
Costumes****: Christian Lacroix
Lights****: Stéphanie Daniel
Sound design****: Bernard Vallery
Make-up and VFX****: Dominique Colladant
Make-up assistant****: Laurence Aué and Muriel Baurens
Masks****: Louis Arene
Choreography****: Kaori Ito

Distribution

the company

The Comédie-Française Academy

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ANNULATION

En raison d'un mouvement de grève national, nous sommes malheureusement contraints d'annuler la représentation du spectacle « Angels in America », Salle Richelieu, ce mardi 28 mars à 20h30. Vous trouverez ici les modalités pour demander le remboursement de vos billets.

Nous vous prions de bien vouloir nous excuser et vous remercions par avance pour votre patience, fidélité et soutien.

❗️La lecture d'Éric Génovèse à la Coupole de la Salle Richelieu à 18h est maintenue.

VIGIPIRATE

Suite au renforcement du plan Vigipirate, toute personne se présentant avec une valise ou un sac (hors sac à main) se verra interdire l'accès à l'enceinte des trois théâtres de la Comédie-Française.
Pour faciliter les contrôles, merci d'arriver au minimum 30 minutes avant le début des représentations.