COMÉDIE-FRANÇAISE / IVO VAN HOVE

Although he was approached twice, Ivo van Hove had never staged Molière in French until the Comédie Française, on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the playwright’s birth, asked him to take on the original version of Tartuffe, which Louis XIV had censored in 1664. Reconstituted for the first time by the historian Georges Forestier, in collaboration with literature professor Isabelle Grellet, it consists of three instead of five acts. Focusing on the relationship between Elmire and Tartuffe, it is imbued, in the words of the Flemish director, with “a violent, almost savage force”.  A Hypocrite instead of an Impostor, devout out of necessity rather than deceit, Tartuffe is a beggar taken in by Orgon and his mother Madame Pernelle, who give him a place in the family home. Chaos lurks within. Cléante, Damis, and even the maid Dorine vehemently oppose the patriarch, playing out once again the age-old conflict between defenders of the established social and religious order and advocates of individual emancipation. Edgier, more sensual, and more explosive than the version we know, this production features a dark, contemporary set design that creates a searing, raw and visceral kind of theatre.