At the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, in “Imaginary Sick”, Guillaume Gallienne annoys and moves

2023-12-27 19:00:42
Guillaume Gallienne (center) in “Le Malade Imaginaire” at the Comédie-Française, in Paris, in 2019. CHRISTOPHE RAYNAUD DE LAGE, COLL. FRENCH COMEDY

The Théâtre des Champs-Elysées has not programmed, as usual, some operetta or ballet for the end-of-year celebrations but the revival of a play, the last comedy by Molière, who died while performing the role -title on the evening of the fourth performance of Imaginary illnesson February 17, 1673. Created at the Comédie-Française in 2001, Salle Richelieu, the production directed by Claude Stratz (1946-2007) has already been performed by generations of actors, being, from its beginnings, the subject from a recording made by Laurent Heynemann, which testifies to a muscular game, between comedy and tragedy, sometimes exacerbated to the point of hysteria.

Read the review (in 2001): Article reserved for our subscribers With “The Imaginary Sick”, race to death, race to life!

Perched as well as chained to a commode, alternately throne and stretcher, watchman and prison, the sick old child played by Guillaume Gallienne annoys and moves, keeping the audience in suspense throughout the two-hour show. The room will be offended by these diapers that he wears above the white support stockings, his hospital gown open in the back revealing the most intimate part of his self.

And even more of these enemas and enemas, from which Toinette dressed as a doctor will collect the material, going so far as to put it in the mouth and taste it with many facial expressions, like an oenologist in matters of scatology. Sobriety of the sets, “historical” costumes, the staging draws a ballet of life and death around a bed of psychological agony, raising the ultimate anguish with laughter.

Role of music

Music is an integral part of Molière’s dramatic work, Unfortunate au Imaginary illness. No less than thirteen titles will illustrate his fruitful collaboration with Lully, the originator of comedy-ballet. The break between the two Jean-Baptiste was complete when, after having worked with “the most French of Italian musicians”Molière attached himself to the most Italian of French musicians, Marc-Antoine Charpentier.

It is to him that we owe the original score of Sick : a prologue to the glory of the king and three interludes – that of Polichinelle, that of the Mores as well as the burlesque ceremony of the doctors which closes the play, without forgetting the little “opera” which the lovers Cléante and Angélique with the beard of a father who intends to marry his daughter, even if against her will, to the disastrous Thomas Diafoirus, fresh from medical school.

After having contributed to the success of the show for a long time, music was banned in the 19th century, before the next one got lost in conjectures, between the search for historical truth (in 1990, the production by Jean-Marie Villégier and Christophe Galland will see William Christie and his flourishing Arts restore all of the interludes found in the archives of the Comédie-Française) and attempts at contemporary adaptations.

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