Theatre : Phèdre

Presented as a lecture on Racine's masterpiece, the tragedy becomes a joyful, interactive monologue! A little gem of humour, knowledge and inventiveness, Phèdre! deserves its exclamation mark.

Swiss artist François Gremaud delivers a zany lecture on Racine's classic text, managing the double feat of conveying its tragic beauty and making us laugh out loud.

Alone on stage, wearing a simple white T-shirt, jeans and a pair of trainers, actor Romain Daroles reveals his passion for the thwarted love affair between the wife of the King of Athens and her stepson Hippolyte. He captivates his audience by playing all the roles in the play, daring to make incongruous comparisons with our own times and stringing together a series of delightful puns.

His erudition is not soluble in humour, and he reveals a veritable précis of classical theatre: mythological genealogy, the virtues of the alexandrine, the notion of catharsis, exegesis of the play's most beautiful literary turns of phrase... With this mischievous lecturer, you'll want to relearn everything through theatre, with a smile.

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