L'Avare

It has been another eventful weekend here in France! EDUCO decided to take us on another excursion to visit -- where? -- the chateaux of the Loire! The night before we left, we visited the Comedie Francaise. Yes the Comedie Francaise, founded in 1680, perhaps the most famous theater in France (at least, the only one I knew of before I arrived!), and very far from the hole-in-the-wall theaters I have been visiting, both in decor and in atmosphere. I mean it -- classical-revival architecture, completed in 1799, just six months before Napoleon's coup; red carpets; paintings and sculptures adorning the walls; guides everywhere; several balconies (I sat in the second), plus several box seats. In other words, everything that one could expect from a posh theater.
We were there to see Moliere's L'Avare, first produced in 1688. The title, in English, means something along the lines of "the miser," or "the avaricious man." The eponymous character, Harpagon, is a stingy, sixty-some Venetian who has decided to marry off both of his two children to spouses much their elders, in order to increase his own fortune; meanwhile. Both his son and his daughter, however, already have lovers, and to make matter's worse, Harpagon is determined to be married, himself, to his son's! The MacGuffin is the strongbox of 10,000 ecus which Harpagon has hidden in his garden -- and which becomes crucially important in the last act. I had already read the script, although not all of my classmates had; although Moliere's vocabulary is not very advanced, his syntax is very, very complicated, and I would have been absolutely lost, had I not read the script, especially because the actors delivered their lines very, very rapidly, and, in many cases, frenetically.
The play was performed in period costume, by a full troupe of professional actors, in the Comedie Francaise. And yet, though I enjoyed the performance, it in many ways disappointed me, and fell very short of my expectations. In fact, I found many of the jokes and farces much funnier on paper than in live performance! Many of the actors interpreted certain lines and situations differently than I had (just as in Shakespeare, there's a great deal of interpretive freedom), and actually treated some scenes, which I had laughed long and hard about in the reading, very soberly. For instance, in one scene, Harpagon's servant, Maitre Jacques, tells him all of the jokes and caricatures of their master that the crew of servants make behind Harpagon's back. These include the printing of special almanacs with double the number of fasting days, and the midnight filching of his own horses' hay. I found the list very funny when I read it, but the actors displayed it in a very grave manner, and not a laugh was heard anywhere in the theater. The only actor who made his role more comedic than I had imagined was the actor who played La Fleche (Harpagon's son's valet), who clowned fantastically, especially in his reading of the predatory lending contract, and while being strip-searched by Harpagon.
I found two aspects in particular made the production's quality fall short of the script's. First, the violence was far, far harsher in the production: when Harpagon struck his servants with his cane, he is not giving the comically light cuffs that I imagined, and when Valere intimidates Maitre Jacques, it is with a whip. Secondly, the actors who played Harpagon's children consistently delivered their lines in a hysteric fashion. Hysteria, too, isn't funny, if it is charged with sadness and desperation, as this hysteria was. I had imagined both characters far lighter and calmer, when I read the script.
Not to complain though -- but still, I realize that the Comedie Francaise is not all that it is cracked up to be.
Well, in the next post, expect a return to the chateaux, French drinking songs, a late-night drinking party in a field, and a large luncheon in the next post!
~JD
"Le guetteur du donjon medieval est maintenant remplace par un payson perche sur le clocher et surveillant les chemins, pret a sonner le tocsin" [The watchman of the medieval keep is now replaced by a peasant perched on the steeple and surveying the paths, ready to sound the tocsin] (Robert Mandrou, Introduction a la France moderne, p. 131).