Bona fide actors and The village heir

Pierre de Marivaux

THE ACADEMY – NATIONAL COLLEGE OF THEATRE IN LIMOUSIN
in Saint-Priest Taurion

Direction: Jacques Lassalle

Cast:
    Yannis Bougeard
    Denis Boyer
    Amélie Esbelin
    Laure-Hélene Favennec
    Aurore James
    Samuel Martin
    Mathilde Monjanel
    Aurélie Ruby
    Thomas Visonneau

From Director’s letter on the play:

Here, Blaise, an already easy farmer, inherits a fortune and, consequently, intends to change his social environment and to put his family in the school of the beautiful world; there, a rich widow, at the marriage of his nephew, orders a comedy improvised by his servant Merlin and his friends. Thus the two parts have both recourse to the pleasant history of two despotisms : the father and the aristocrats’ widow and the disorders which they generate. The two plays are in one act and the action, as the author specifies takes place in the country. (...)

During two centuries, Marivaux was regarded as a dandy, occupied, according to Voltaire, “to pose eggs of fly in balances of spiderweb”. One had even invented a word, le marivaudage, to indicate the singularity of his style, invaluable, quasi-abstract, circumvented until kindness. Without the great actresses who let themselves be tempted by Araminte, Angélique or Sylvia,from generation to generation, we would have forgotten it, perhaps.

(...) in the second half of the XX-th century, we could measure the force, the complexity, the amplitude, the infinite diversity, the upsetting modernity of the marivaudienne work.

Jacques Lassalle, 8 février 2009

Length: 2 hours