- Premiere
- 2 hours 35 minutes with one intermission
- Recommended age: 14+
- With English surtitles, surtitré en français
A comedy about Molière
You can't "really" die in the theatre. But what if you do? This is about an acting troupe whose director dies in the middle of a performance. On 17 February 1673, Molière plays the lead role in 'The Imaginary Invalid'. But when the latter is supposed to 'wake up' from his feigned death, Molière no longer stirs. What happens next is told in 'The Imaginary Dead' with slapstick, gags, confusions and deceptions.
For Molière does not even realise that he is dead. He begs his colleagues to continue playing, but they neither hear nor see him. A fast-paced play develops in which the living plot against the dead and vice versa. Molière's widow mourns. The boss of the competition senses his chance. And the oldest mime begins to see ghosts while intoxicated. Figures from Molière's life and comedies tell of the ups and downs between plots and successes, adaptation and refusal, triumph and defeat. For in the theatre there are only imaginary dead.
Molière and his company lived on stage, for the stage. Like countless theatre companies before and after them, they worked together for decades and created a unique body of work. But what remains in the most ephemeral of arts when one dies? Molière's restless spirit cannot surrender to death because the stage will not let him. On the occasion of the 350th anniversary of his death, the Basel company dedicates a comedy in its own style to this mercurial undead of the theatre.
Together with the dramaturgy, Basel's Kulturhaus Bider & Tanner has curated the book table for our plays for many years. Now this selection of books, CDs, DVDs, catalogues or even sheet music can be accessed at any time in the online shop. It's worth browsing regularly.
With the kind support of the French Embassy in Switzerland and Liechtenstein
Mediathek
Once a month, tickets for a selected performance are 50% off! The theatre deal is valid for our newsletter subscribers for the performance of 'Molière – der eingebildete Tote' on Wednesday 22 November.
Dates follow
'Molière - der eingebildete Tote' is a potpourri of witty anecdotes and tomboyish theatre at its best.
Terribly amusing and a much-needed liberation of theatre from all winter gloom and profundity. (...) The Basel ensemble, above all Jörg Pohl as the slobbering, dachshund-like Molière, is bursting with playful energy. There is hopping and jumping, sliding, crawling, tripping and waddling for all it's worth.
An evening that plays everything on the piano of farce, that is loud, garish and overcandid, that furiously and shamelessly goes to and sometimes beyond the limits of the bearable, but that is also quite amusing if you let yourself get involved.
The play-obsessed director Antú Romero Nunes uses the story of Jean Baptiste Poquelin alias Molière to take a look at a theatre before our time. Into a theatre of laughter - in which pantomime, physical action and acrobatic interludes; with singing, voice disguises and dialects are used to turn the knobs of the almost inexhaustible art of acting until the theatrical pleasure becomes permanent. (...) The wine and the theatre do not come together in vain in the end. "The god Dionysus gave us the gift of laughing at ourselves and at life in the theatre", and this succeeds beautifully here with the consistently fantastic performers.
The ensemble is so virtuosic that the intelligent, shrewd theatre of expenditure does not end up as a loopy boulevard. There is light-footed dramaturgical discourse, it is about independence and appropriation, leadership culture and autonomy (a little), plot and counter-plot. And about a Dionysian celebration of theatre itself.
Antú Romero Nunes lets the actors off the leash completely. They do everything they feel like doing. Between the toilet, the funeral and the drinking binge, everything is on offer that actors who finally want to really let off steam are capable of.
A celebration of nonsense, admittedly on a high level, perfectly timed, with a lot of playful wit.
The director of this world premiere, Antú Romero Nunes, has allowed his ensemble, which acts in baroque costumes and well made-up, everything to make a high-pitched comedy possible: slapsticks, gags, pantomime, acrobatic interludes, singing, voice disguises, dialects. It's great, entertaining at the highest level.