Madrid
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We are launching Molière year, we celebrate in 2022 the IV Centenary of the birth of the great Gallic playwright, and nothing better for it than this staging of ‘The imaginary sick person’ carried out by the Morboria company. With that idea of comedy crossed by tragicity, of deliciously humorous and critical nonsense, Molière dislocated reality to extract its absurd part. If Don Quixote distorted reality by inventing a phantom world, Argán, the protagonist of this work, invents diseases because he believes that the world is so badly made that he needs a doctor by his side to put the health of things at the right temperature.
From there, Molière makes the satirical sense become the only common sense, that comedy, laughter and humor point out our vices and our sins.
Also those weaknesses of the human being both in their fear of death, and of a (loving) destiny that they do not want.
Very appropriate is the updating that is made of the work here, with constant nods to this social and health situation, as appropriate is the musical and choreographic part that not only accompanies, but also underlines and broadens the meaning of the scenes. To highlight the playful aspect and the naturalness with which the text is faced, and its combination with a staging where neither pomp nor lavishness are alien. But above all that cartoonish character that is achieved with certain characters, true wimp in the hands of their hypochondria or their ambition.
The interpretive level is not negligible, especially when it comes to making the audience reach those hyperbolic features that constitute the absurd character of some central characters. And, of course, also when one uses that non-verbal language that Molière wisely introduces in his works and which gives it a dimension and register of greater depth and psychological complexity.
Eva del Palacio and Morboria have therefore mounted a worthy work, with which they show off amusing while correcting an era, ours, in so many aspects afflicted by scam, fear, mistakes and grotesqueness, but also by restore the natural course of things. Now that we live in a society where the disease takes on the rank of a real and tragic delusion, Molière comes to warn us of those who take advantage of our weakness, of our bad weather. A good way to honor him.
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