Théâtre : L'Avare de Molière

Jérôme Deschamps' raw, unpretentious staging gives pride of place to the play, the text and the farcical side of Molière's play. On stage there's a lot of jostling, running and cavorting in a light-hearted and cheerful way, with a generosity that goes straight to the audience's heart.

Molière has never been so delicious to hear, thwarting the plans of the penny-pinching patriarch with biting irony.

Jérôme Deschamps' “old dream” has come true: he has staged a light-hearted, stripped-back production of Molière's comedy after staging Le Bourgeois gentilhomme with music and ballet.

His long association with the playwright means that he can take on the role of Harpagon with absolute malignity: a black suit and white strawberry, a full belly, drooping eyes, a red glove at the start of the play and a small spade hanging from his waist.

A role made to measure! With only an old armchair, a birdcage and the indispensable cassette as props, the troupe manages to give life to this comedy of character about domestic tyranny, forced marriage and misogyny.

These are all themes dear to Molière and still relevant today (!), brought to life by the grace of the actors, who create lively, playful characters to face an ageing Harpagon, greedy and terrified of dying. A real treat... One to "invent" Ophelia, the other to "visit" Hamlet in a massive dramatic movement that dissects the stories and gives them a fresh perspective and distinctive color.

The thousand and one faces of Hamlet are brought to life on stage by a quartet of performers dressed in strawberry and neon jogging suits, with cellphones in hand and a golden paper crown perched on their heads. Insolent and carefree.

Three aimless lads and a girl, representing the youth of the decayed kingdom of Denmark, were left to fend for themselves. As a free electron, Hamlet is stumbling against his own apathy, boredom, and complete inactivity.

The play adopts the style of a grim farce with a wind of revolt blowing through it while maintaining the common thread with the original text: without a father, mother, or king, the characters don't want to perform another Hamlet!

They are restrained to a wooden stairway that they climb up and down as they indulge in excessive drinking, put on headphones, and perfidiously question each other, "Would you rather be or not be? That's always the question!