Tartuffe

If you are looking to practice your French you could head to the French Institute and watch an original new staging of a classical French play. The French Institute’s theatre season En Scène! presents Molière’s Tartuffe in a new adaptation by actor Guillaume Baillart.

Molière’s most performed play  has the double title of Tartuffe or the Impostor, it satirises self-interested hypocrisy and the power some of us hand over to gurus. Tartuffe is the name of the main character and the play made such an impression when it was first performed in 1664 that the term was quick to pass into everyday language. ‘Tartuffe’ is still used nowadays to describe  a fraud, particularly someone who feigns virtue in order to gain influence and money.

There are tickets still available for this coming Saturday at the French Institute. The performance is in French in Molière’s original verse with English surtitles.

If ever you can’t make it or if you fancy watching a more classical staging, here is the full performance of a 1973 production from La Comédie Française, France’s equivalent of the RSC also known as ‘la maison de Molière’. The play has been performed many times since, but this is the only full-length caption I found online. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRNIFqZR2JU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpklgqJwjHQ