Molière THE IMAGINARY INVALID

Le malade imaginaire, 1673

A Comedy with Song and Dance
Translated by Josip Vidmar

Directed by Mile Korun

Premiere: September 2011

 

 

Argan: I am always left alone!

 

A wealthy gentleman Argan is convinced that he is fatally ill. Living in panic and fear, he spends all his property for physicians and apothecaries. As he subjects everybody around him to his imaginative disease, he becomes more and more tyrannical and consequently more and more isolated. He would prefer to marry his older daughter Angélique to a physician and send his younger daughter Luison to the convent.  He trusts only his wife Béline, who apparently supports him but in fact thinks only about his money. However, Angélique, who is in love with young Cléante, is not willing to give up easily.  She is also supported by the Argan's cheeky but faithful and benevolent servant Toinette and his objective brother Beralde. Will appearance succumb to reality, will selfishness bend to emotion, and will mind beat fear?  

 

In one of the repeat performances of his last comedy, in which he himself appeared in the role of Argan, Molière was seized with a sudden attack of disease. The performance was played to the end but the playwright, main actor and head of the group died soon after that. This quite paradoxical fact that the terminally ill Molière designed a character of a hypochondriac, depicting his concern for his health as an egoistic farce, raised a lot of attention in the time, following its creation. It is by all means a unique, complex and up-to-date work. His world is both funny and scary, as he lucidly kneads scoffing at human weaknesses with questions on human existence.  This particular staging of The Imaginary Invalid will be uniquely dedicated to our theatre's 60th anniversary. The doyen of the Slovene theatre directors Mile Korun has already directed this play for our theatre in 1982, when he entrusted the main role to our unforgettable artist Zlatko Šugman.