No
Nutcracker
,
Lake
or
Giselle
to celebrate Christmas this year at TCE.
The holiday ballet this year will be…
The Imaginary Invalid
by Molière!
This season, the TCE is reviving a distant tradition: having the Comédie-Française play within its walls.
At the dawn of the 1970s, French actors had already come there: for school matinees, then, already, to play
Le Malade imaginaire
.
Their last appearance in the hall on Avenue Montaigne dates back to
Ulysses and the White Whale,
by and with Vittorio Gassman, in December 1992.
Le Malade imaginaire,
which takes the stage from December 21 to January 7, is no longer, as in the 1970s, the one staged by Jean-Laurent Cochet.
We will see the staging designed in 2001 by Claude Stratz with a musical composition by Marc-Olivier Dupin.
A timeless production in which, for more than twenty years, many actors have passed.
An infinitely human fabric
Guillaume Gallienne subjugates in Argan.
With his head bandaged, seated as if on a throne on his chair, in a dim light, he shamelessly waged his fight with death.
He gives way to his monstrous egocentrism.
He shows himself soup au lait, whiny, but without histrionics.
He looks at death, he feels it approaching, it frightens him, he reacts without measure, builds up his defences, mistreats his world with a stupefying tone.
This is how he feels alive.
He knows it and plays with the excesses that fear inspires in him.
Despite his excesses, Gallienne gives Argan an infinitely human fabric.
He is a man who lets himself be sucked in by melancholy.
His voice alone is a captivating instrument: sighs, complaints, whispers, cries and anger caught in the breath, that of life itself which swells to the point of singing.
Julie Sicard, in Toinette, the abrupt.
Denis Podalydès, who alternates with Christian Hecq in the two roles of Diafoirus and Purgon, tricks him.
Their dance is for Argan, that of seduction, for the greatest amusement of the room.
A very pleasant Christmas gift!