Le Côté de Guermantes

This show is a production of the Comédie Française.

For his first collaboration with the Comédie-Française, Christophe Honoré brings to the stage the third of the seven volumes that make up ‘In Search of Lost Time’, which Proust began writing in 1913.

In it, the Narrator moves with his family to Paris, into an apartment in the Hôtel de Guermantes, whose salon he dreams of frequenting. The Guermantes own a château near Combray, where he has already admired a portrait of the Duchess Oriane, a figure who crystallises his fascination. The director explains that this volume is primarily the embodiment of an aristocratic family name, inaccessible and suddenly within reach of this young man endowed with extraordinary powers of seduction. At a time of mourning for childhood and romantic illusions, this book – part of which is set around the Théâtre Marigny – is also a rare account of the bonds of friendship that the Narrator forms with the Dreyfusard Saint-Loup. Christophe Honoré, who notably brought La Princesse de Clèves to the screen in La Belle Personne and recently directed his Idoles, knows how much literature resists attempts at illustrative adaptation, but also how it comes alive when deployed in the present tense. According to him, the madness of this work lies in the feeling that it reflects something ‘absolutely close’ to our lives, an ever-pressing upheaval for the reader, which he makes the focal point of his theatrical project.

At the Théâtre Marigny

Set design Alban Ho Van and Ariane Bromberger

Costumes Pascaline Chavanne

Lighting Dominique Bruguière

Sound Pierre Routin

Choreography by Marlène Saldana

Make-up by Vesna Peborde

Assistant directors Aurélien Gschwind and Sébastien Lévy

Assistant costume designer Claire Fayel, costume designer at the Académie de la Comédie Française

Assistant lighting designers Nicolas Faucheux and Pierre Gaillardot

With

Claude Mathieu, Anne Kessler, Éric Génovèse, Florence Viala, Elsa Lepoivre, Julie Sicard, Loïc Corbery, Serge Bagdassarian, Gilles David, Stéphane Varupenne, Sébastien Pouderoux, Laurent Lafitte, Rebecca Marder, Dominique Blanc, Yoann Gasiorowski

and the actors of the Académie de la Comédie-Française

Aksel Carrez, Mickaël Pelissier, Camille Seitz, Nicolas Verdier

© Jean-Louis Fernandez