After 13 years, the Comédie-Française, the highest temple of French theatre art, comes back to China.
Molière, the creator of classical comedy and the spokesman of French art, has created another peak of theatrical creation, The Trick of Scapin, which has been staged more than 1,500 times in the Comédie-Française since 1680.
Denis Podalydès newly directed version, which ran for 43 consecutive performances at the Comédie-Française from February to June'24, was a sell-out.

Synopsis

✴While their fathers were away on their travels, Léandre fell in love with Zerbinette while Octave married Hyacinte. But Geronte and Argante are back in Naples to force their respective sons into an arranged marriage. Fortunately, Léandre has a valet called Scapin who has more than one trick up his sleeve to unravel this double marital intrigue! Using his wiles and a certain talent for acting, the valet even manages to squeeze money out of the stingy fathers to further cement the couple's love.

Here Molière returns to one of his favourite themes, the clash of generations. In the absence of their mothers, fathers are authoritarian by nature, and hold the power of marriage over their sons. In Les Fourberies de Scapin, the secret union between Octave and Hyacinte is celebrated without the father's consent even before the play begins. A ban has been broken. If Scapin is the "skilful
is because he exposes the ingratitude of youth towards their elders and the ingratitude of youth towards their elders, and the ridiculousness of fathers ready to do anything to impose an order that the sons have already arranged to their liking.

The author
Appointed by the King to be in charge of court entertainments in 1665, Molière collaborated with the musician and composer Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) to write comedie-ballets such as Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, a new form of total spectacle. But when he wrote Les Fourberies de Scapin in 1671, the Palais-Royal was being renovated and the playwright imagined, in order to keep his troupe working, a comedy without dance or music where he could more freely display his improvisational gifts. He had been ill for several years and died of a pulmonary haemorrhage in February 1673 after the fourth performance of of Le Malade imaginaire