Au théâtre Artistic Athévains, à Paris, Frédérique Lazarini present The women’s school. Fresh and seductive, a staging which admirably updates Molière’s text when Agnès, caged and under the eye of surveillance cameras, conquers love and freedom. A hymn, par excellence, to the emancipation of women.
Following the day dedicated to women’s rights, it is an understatement to assert that this École crafted by the pen of Molière is a flamboyant illustration of the battles to be waged for half of humanityfor this so-called second sex which for millennia gave birth first, this second sex which gave birth to humanity: throughout time, from between the thighs of a woman, man was born! A wonderful Women’s Schoola fantastic production by Frédérique Lazarini.
It’s the story of a day in Arnolphe’s house.
That day the tutor decides to marry the young girl
which he keeps locked up.
But here she is, from her balcony,
to discover the world…
This day will also be the day when the prisoner, in love,
will leave his jailer.
Certainly, the little cat is dead but, from the mouth of Agnès, the news hardly moves Arnolphe her guardian, delighted arm in arm to walk with the woman he has been guiding with his omnipotent authority for many years. Delighted to sail soon in marriage, proud to marry a very young girl educated to sew and mend well, not to think or think! The tone is set, the dice are loaded. Between glass cage and surveillance cameras, there is no doubt in the head of the rich and arrogant fifty-year-old, vicious and evil, he is completing the education of the chicken in his barnyard.
Naive perhaps the kid, but not insensitive to the true impulses of the heart when, under her windows, her gaze meets that of young Horace. Love at first sight not really but the exchange of a tender and benevolent smile, it is little but already a lot, which jostles her in her torpor and languor, which breaks the boredom of everyday life, transgresses the sole attendance of the master of the house, absolute despot behind these impudent screens who scrutinizes all his actions… When we only have loverises from the stage to the hangers the song declaration of Jacques Brel, the future is possible, everything becomes possible, nothing impossible!
Brilliant Frédérique Lazarini for whom video is neither an accessory of convenience nor an object of coquetry, but a truly part of the action, masterful Lazarini who leads his troupe to the best of interpretation: from the couple of guards subject to laughable blunders (Emmanuelle Galabru and Alain Cerrer) to the amorous and desperate Horace (Hugo Givort), from the dashing but greedy and jealous Arnolphe (Cédric Colas) to the young and lively Agnès (sublime Sara Montpetit), without forgetting Uncle Chrysalde, lucid and pleasant (Guillaume Veyre)…
The words are in no way overused, it’s great art when a work from the 17th century resonates with so much truth, topicality and modernity! The king laughed a lot, it is said, at the representation of this Women’s Schoolnot really the courtiers and aristocrats who saw their patriarchal model shattered. The message is clear, even revolutionary for the time, almost unexpected from Molière who had just married Armande Béjart, twenty years his junior: before its time the feminist message par excellenceevery woman has free choice in her love and sexual life, whatever it is, every human being only fully flourishes between intelligence and freedom! A happiness, better still a rock, a milestone, a peak of pleasure assumed and shared. Yonnel Liégeois, photos Marion Duhamel
The school for women, Frédérique Lazarini: until 04/06, Tuesday at 8 p.m., Wednesday at 5 p.m., Thursday at 7 p.m., Friday at 8:30 p.m., Saturday at 5 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., Sunday at 3 p.m. Theater Artistic Athévains45 rue Richard Lenoir, 75011 Paris (Tel: 01.43.56.38.32). In July during the Avignon festival, at the Théâtre du Chêne noir.
