Latest news with #Molière
LeMonde
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- LeMonde
Thomas Jolly, director of Paris 2024 Olympics ceremonies: 'You're always reminded of where you come from'
One year ago, France was buzzing with excitement for the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. As the artistic director of the opening and closing ceremonies, Thomas Jolly delivered bold and extraordinary performances. At 43, the theater and opera director, known for his spectacular productions, such as his acclaimed staging of the musical Starmania, received an honorary Molière award, the French equivalent of the Tonys, in late April. I wouldn't have gotten here if… In French class at middle school, we hadn't read Le Médecin malgré lui [ The Doctor in Spite of Himself ] by Molière, and that first line spoken by Sganarelle at the beginning of the play, which I delivered in an extremely theatrical manner, banging on the table: "No! I tell you that I'll do nothing of the kind, and that it is for me to speak, and to be master." I was in sixth grade, I didn't know anything about theater, and it was the first time I had ever recited a line from the repertoire. But I understood you had to "give it some tone," and the teacher had asked me to perform it with anger. I did it, and I made my classmates laugh. Suddenly, it wasn't the same everyday laughter I heard that was hard to bear on the playground, in the cafeteria, or on the bus. This laughter was different, and it continued throughout my reading. That evening, when I got home to my parents, I wanted to do theater. I felt that it was a space where, even though you were exposed, you were also protected. What images do you keep from your childhood in the small village of La Rue-Saint-Pierre, in Normandy?
Irish Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Hot Tickets – Frank McNally on watching a steamy Molière and how Barry Lyndon became a TikTok hit
Went to Molière's A Misanthrope in Smock Alley at the weekend, and it's every bit as good as our reviewer said . But my God, the heat. Just returned from sweltering Spain, I was sorry I hadn't bought one of those souvenir fans in Alicante airport. As it was, like most of the audience, my companion and I had to improvise one, from several pages of the Dublin Fringe Festival programme. Rebuilt in 1735, the venerable theatre may be struggling with climate change on the Costa del Irlanda. 'These are the joys of a 300-year-old building,' said a sympathetic staff member at the interval, as sweaty audience members poured out on to the front steps for air. But it was the cast we felt sorry for. As well as being a brilliantly funny update of Molière's 1666 farce, transferring the plot to a Silicon Docks tech company, the production is a fiercely energetic one. It includes, for example, a choreographed sex scene that for technical difficulty (9.9) and artistic merit (10.0) would rival any gymnastics routine. READ MORE That probably added to the heat, in fact. And there was an actual gym scene too. But whatever about the audience, the actors somehow seemed to keep their cool. Molière himself would have struggled with the conditions. When comedians talk of 'dying' on stage, that's usually just a metaphor for having a bad night. He did it in the literal sense, near enough, while acting in one of his own plays. After years of suffering from tuberculosis, probably contracted from a time he spent in debtors' prison, he had a fatal coughing fit mid-scene and expired a few hours later. [ A Misanthrope: knockout satire of a horny and insincere Silicon Docks Opens in new window ] In a twist he could hardly have written himself, the play in question was called The Imaginary Invalid, and his part was that of the eponymous hypochondriac. Which reminds me of Spike Milligan's epitaph. A martyr to comedy, Molière was probably more deserving of the last words: 'I told you I was sick.' Anyway, the great Irish heatwave has broken since the night I was in Smock Alley. And A Misanthrope is highly recommended, regardless of the weather. But any steaminess in the venue now should arise only from the play. I'm intrigued to learn that the 50th anniversary re-release of Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, now showing at the Irish Film Institute and elsewhere, has also become one of the surprise hits of the summer: embraced, ironically or otherwise, by the TikTok generation. A period drama following the adventures of an 18th-century Irish rogue, it was considered slow-moving even in 1975. The New Yorker's movie critic Pauline Kael called it 'a three-hour slide show for art history majors'. But now it's being hailed as a masterpiece even by members of Generation Z, a cohort often depicted as having the attention spans of goldfish. Mind you, according to the Financial Times, some of the new fans 'have taken to TikTok to express their love for the film in their lingua franca: viral 'fancam' edits cut to violently themed rap music'. So whether they can sit still through the full three hours and seven minutes of scenes that look like old paintings may remain debatable. As at least some art history majors will know, the original 1844 novel by William Makepeace Thackeray may have owned something to the vagaries of an Irish summer. During a tour of Ireland a year earlier, Thackeray had endured two days of unrelenting rain in Galway, for which umbrellas were no match. But marooned in Kilroy's Hotel, he caught up on his reading, and especially on a handful of popular 'chapbooks' he had bought for eightpence in Ennis. These included the memoirs of one 'Captain Freeny', a gentleman robber from 18th-century Kilkenny, whose unshakeable self-confidence, freedom from conventional morality and the 'utter unconsciousness that he is narrating anything wonderful' could be a description of Lyndon. Either way, slightly disguised as 'Feeney', the highwayman also earned a cameo in his own right, in both book and film. Alas, not all the comedy of the novel made it on to the screen. The mid-Atlantic accent of Ryan O'Neal was much criticised in these parts when the movie came out. But reading the novel a while back, I was amused to see that one of its running jokes involves the narrator lampooning the way English people speak. Take the scene, for example, where Lyndon – pursuing a titled lady – needs to buy the loyalty of her doorman. 'But listen, you are an Englishman?' he asks the latter. ''That I am,' said the fellow, with an air of the utmost superiority. 'Your honour could tell that by my haccent.'' There follows, almost as an aside, an insult on the relative morality of the two neighbouring countries. 'I knew he was [English] and might therefore offer him a bribe,' Lyndon explains for the benefit of any foreign readers, and adds: 'An Irish family servant in rags, and though his wages were never paid, would probably fling the money in your face.'
Irish Independent
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
A delicious reimagining of baroque excesses updated for Instagram generation
Smock Alley Theatre production puts a modern twist with Irish gloss on Molière's 1666 comedy A Misanthrope Creating a version of Molière's 1666 comedy of manners for a contemporary audience is a challenge. A straight adaptation can feel museum-y. Yet reimagining for a modern context can feel forced. However, this version by American writer Matthew Minnicino, from 2016, is a tonic. The follies of high-society 17th-century France find a clever mirror in the Instagram generation. Director/designer duo Marc Atkinson Borrull and Molly O'Cathain, of Sugarglass Theatre, have also added a layer of Irish gloss to the piece. The show is set in a Dublin tech company called Frans. The misanthropic Alceste (Matthew Malone) cannot bear the falsity of business life and his home-truths verge on the abusive. He has got on the wrong side of the HR department because of biting criticisms of a fellow worker. Despite himself, Alceste is in love with Célimène (Emer Dineen), though he finds her false and untrustworthy.
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
A MacArthur 'genius' skewers philanthropy in a farcical play tackling oligarchy and arts funding
NEW YORK -- Taylor Mac does not set out to bite the hand that feeds in a new play satirizing cultural philanthropy. The MacArthur 'genius grant' recipient claims to be 'just trying to get some lipstick on it." Set at a not-for-profit dance company's gala, "Prosperous Fools" invites questions about the moral value of philanthropy in a society denounced by the comedy as 'feudal.' A boorish patron goes mad trying vainly to wield his lacking creative capital and thus confirms the choreographer's fears of selling out to a sleazy oligarch who represents everything his art opposes. The show, written by Mac and directed by Darko Tresnjak, runs through June 29 at Brooklyn's Polonsky Shakespeare Center. 'I'm not trying to hurt anybody. I'm trying to get people to think differently about the world,' said Mac, whose gender pronoun is 'judy.' 'I just wish that all of the great philanthropists of America, and the world, would lead with, 'This is a temporary solution until we can figure out how to make a government of the people, for the people, by the people,'" Mac added. "Instead of, 'This is the solution: I should have all the money and then I get to decide how the world works.'' Don't let present day parallels distract you. The fundraiser's honored donor enters atop a fire-breathing bald eagle in a black graphic tee, blazer and cap much like Elon Musk's signature White House getup. He later dons the long red tie popular in MAGA world. But the resemblance doesn't mean Mac is meditating solely on recent events such as President Donald Trump's billionaire-filled administration and tightening grip over cultural pillars including the Kennedy Center. The script reflects personal frustrations with philanthropy's uneven power dynamics navigated throughout a 30-year career spent in what Mac described as 'a million handshaking ceremonies," first as a cater-waiter and eventually as one of the celebrated honorees who donates performances to help fundraise. Mac's desperate portrayal of the artist at the center of 'Prosperous Fools' only sharpens its skewering of wealthy philanthropists who take more than they give away. When the artist cries 'But why couldn't I have a good oligarch?' and bemoans that 'I should have stayed in the artistic integrity of obscurity,' it feels like a case of art imitating life. Mainstream success came last decade for Mac. 'A 24-Decade History of Popular Music' was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2017 and Mac's Broadway debut play 'Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus' racked up seven Tony nominations in 2019. 'Prosperous Fools,' however, was written 12 years ago before much of the critical acclaim. Mac said 'someone with power' commissioned a translation of French playwright Molière's 'Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme,' which mocks a status-obsessed middle class social climber. Mac isn't surprised the original commissioner didn't want the final product. Molière is hardly present. And the play essentially advocates for an end to the perpetuation of culture that only the affluent deem worthy of funding. Mac is also unsurprised it took over a decade to land another interested producer. The initial 40-person ballet troupe had to be shrunk to a more affordable ensemble of four dancers. Plus, its style, in Mac's judgment, is still rather 'queer' for a 'heteronormative' theater industry. 'And then the other reason is because I insult donors," Mac said. 'I don't think I insult donors," Mac added. "I ask donors to consider. And the theater is entrenched in making sure their donors feel good about themselves — not that their donors are in collaboration with us for us all to get to a place of better consciousness.' The show's slapstick humor helps break down its fairly cerebral subject matter. In one of several moments of hilarity, the patron and his 'philanthropoid' — the ballet's artistic director, whose primary concern is securing donations — sway around the stage oinking like pigs. Mac's artist delivers scathing and highbrow critiques while pretending to be 'The Princess Bride' actor Wallace Shawn in a puppet costume. The gala's other honoree — a star singer called the 'patron saint of philanthropy" who wears a gown adorned with impoverished children's faces — makes no bones about her lust for Shawn. But, as Mac knows, nonstop humor can have the effect of softening its target. 'Prosperous Fools' foregoes the actors' bows that typically end a play in favor of an epilogue, delivered by the artist in rhyming couplets, that serves as the show's final blow to 'philanthrocapitalism.' 'I want to be a tender heart in this too tough world trying to figure out how to maintain my tenderness and how to create revolution with tenderness. And I'm at a loss for it right now," Mac said. "Part of what the play is doing is saying, 'I'm at a loss. Are you? Do you have a solution for me?'' By skipping the curtain call, Mac practically demands that the crowd wrestle immediately with whether charity absolves wealth hoarders' greed — a question boldly put forth at the close of a Theatre for a New Audience season sponsored by Deloitte and Bloomberg Philanthropies. But whether the show's heavy-handed message has reached those financial backers remains to be seen. 'No one's spoken to me," Mac said. Neither responded to requests for comment.
The Hill
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hill
Taylor Mac's ‘Prosperous Fools' skewers wealthy philanthropists in a biting satire
NEW YORK (AP) — Taylor Mac does not set out to bite the hand that feeds in a new play satirizing cultural philanthropy. The MacArthur 'genius grant' recipient claims to be 'just trying to get some lipstick on it.' Set at a not-for-profit dance company's gala, 'Prosperous Fools' invites questions about the moral value of philanthropy in a society denounced by the comedy as 'feudal.' A boorish patron goes mad trying vainly to wield his lacking creative capital and thus confirms the choreographer's fears of selling out to a sleazy oligarch who represents everything his art opposes. The show, written by Mac and directed by Darko Tresnjak, runs through June 29 at Brooklyn's Polonsky Shakespeare Center. 'I'm not trying to hurt anybody. I'm trying to get people to think differently about the world,' said Mac, whose gender pronoun is 'judy.' 'I just wish that all of the great philanthropists of America, and the world, would lead with, 'This is a temporary solution until we can figure out how to make a government of the people, for the people, by the people,'' Mac added. 'Instead of, 'This is the solution: I should have all the money and then I get to decide how the world works.'' Don't let present day parallels distract you. The fundraiser's honored donor enters atop a fire-breathing bald eagle in a black graphic tee, blazer and cap much like Elon Musk's signature White House getup. He later dons the long red tie popular in MAGA world. But the resemblance doesn't mean Mac is meditating solely on recent events such as President Donald Trump's billionaire-filled administration and tightening grip over cultural pillars including the Kennedy Center. The script reflects personal frustrations with philanthropy's uneven power dynamics navigated throughout a 30-year career spent in what Mac described as 'a million handshaking ceremonies,' first as a cater-waiter and eventually as one of the celebrated honorees who donates performances to help fundraise. Mac's desperate portrayal of the artist at the center of 'Prosperous Fools' only sharpens its skewering of wealthy philanthropists who take more than they give away. When the artist cries 'But why couldn't I have a good oligarch?' and bemoans that 'I should have stayed in the artistic integrity of obscurity,' it feels like a case of art imitating life. Mainstream success came last decade for Mac. 'A 24-Decade History of Popular Music' was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2017 and Mac's Broadway debut play 'Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus' racked up seven Tony nominations in 2019. 'Prosperous Fools,' however, was written 12 years ago before much of the critical acclaim. Mac said 'someone with power' commissioned a translation of French playwright Molière's 'Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme,' which mocks a status-obsessed middle class social climber. Mac isn't surprised the original commissioner didn't want the final product. Molière is hardly present. And the play essentially advocates for an end to the perpetuation of culture that only the affluent deem worthy of funding. Mac is also unsurprised it took over a decade to land another interested producer. The initial 40-person ballet troupe had to be shrunk to a more affordable ensemble of four dancers. Plus, its style, in Mac's judgment, is still rather 'queer' for a 'heteronormative' theater industry. 'And then the other reason is because I insult donors,' Mac said. 'I don't think I insult donors,' Mac added. 'I ask donors to consider. And the theater is entrenched in making sure their donors feel good about themselves — not that their donors are in collaboration with us for us all to get to a place of better consciousness.' The show's slapstick humor helps break down its fairly cerebral subject matter. In one of several moments of hilarity, the patron and his 'philanthropoid' — the ballet's artistic director, whose primary concern is securing donations — sway around the stage oinking like pigs. Mac's artist delivers scathing and highbrow critiques while pretending to be 'The Princess Bride' actor Wallace Shawn in a puppet costume. The gala's other honoree — a star singer called the 'patron saint of philanthropy' who wears a gown adorned with impoverished children's faces — makes no bones about her lust for Shawn. But, as Mac knows, nonstop humor can have the effect of softening its target. 'Prosperous Fools' foregoes the actors' bows that typically end a play in favor of an epilogue, delivered by the artist in rhyming couplets, that serves as the show's final blow to 'philanthrocapitalism.' 'I want to be a tender heart in this too tough world trying to figure out how to maintain my tenderness and how to create revolution with tenderness. And I'm at a loss for it right now,' Mac said. 'Part of what the play is doing is saying, 'I'm at a loss. Are you? Do you have a solution for me?'' By skipping the curtain call, Mac practically demands that the crowd wrestle immediately with whether charity absolves wealth hoarders' greed — a question boldly put forth at the close of a Theatre for a New Audience season sponsored by Deloitte and Bloomberg Philanthropies. But whether the show's heavy-handed message has reached those financial backers remains to be seen. 'No one's spoken to me,' Mac said. Neither responded to requests for comment. ___ Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP's philanthropy coverage, visit
