THEATER: Metatheater and the Infinite Mirrors of Current Reality
Six personnages en quête d’auteur at the Comédie Française (Théâtre du Vieux Colombier)
It is a strange and delirious thing to watch Pirandello on the very day the Epstein files were released. The world outside is drowning in the ink of redactions and the grim reality of corrupted girls. Here inside the Vieux Colombier the Comédie Française has decided to hold up a mirror that is clean, bright, and terrifyingly alive.
For the performance I attended, the boundary between spectacle and reality shattered before the curtain even rose. A bizarre drama unfolded that felt like a prologue Pirandello might have planned. The bleachers on the far side of the Vieux Colombier suddenly collapsed. Miraculously, no one was injured, but the psychological impact was immediate. Staff condemned the last two rows, expelling their occupants. While I sympathize with those turned away, this structural failure felt eerily appropriate. It literally deconstructed the theater building before the play could deconstruct the concept of theater, shattering the venue’s safety and establishing a chaotic atmosphere perfectly suited for the meta-theatrical storm to follow.
The High Energy of Adeline d’Hermy
Not your grandmother’s Pirandello or the dusty academic exercises often seen in university towns. This production is incredibly high energy. It vibrates with a nervous electricity that resembles a hostage situation rather than a rehearsal. The tension is immediate and uncomfortable. I happened to be sitting right next to where Adeline d’Hermy planted herself at the beginning. It is a disquieting intimacy to be that close to a character vibrating with such rage. Her Belle Fille (Stepdaughter) transcends simple tragedy to become physical, powerful, loud, and delightfully obnoxious. There is no weeping willow here and no victim seeking pity. D’Hermy plays her as the corrupted young girl turned hardened prostitute who wears her trauma like a weapon.
She is a force of nature that refuses to be polite about her own destruction. She invades the space of the “actors” and mocks their attempts to sanitize her story.
Serge Bagdassarian’s Perfection
The anchor and conductor of this madness is Serge Bagdassarian. His portrayal of the Director (Le Chef de troupe) is absolute perfection. Dressed in a fancy jacket that makes him look like a neurotic Herbert von Karajan, he commands the stage with a body language that is pure physical comedy. He treats the rehearsal space like his personal podium where he is the undisputed genius of a chaotic symphony. He is incredibly funny as he fusses over the “art” while frantically attempting to stay hydrated from a water bottle that seems to be his only emotional support.
The brilliance lies in the little choices. At one point Bagdassarian briefly decides to play Madame Pace, the madame in whose shop the Belle Fille was corrupted. It is a directorial stroke of genius. He is hysterically funny in the role. He layers the grotesquerie of the exploiter over the authority of the Director to blur the lines between the one who sells bodies and the one who sells stories. It highlights the uncomfortable truth that the director, like the madame, is trafficking in human experiences for profit.
The Play Itself
It brings us back to the heart of the play which is the complex and parasitic relationship between characters, actors, and authors. Academically, Six Characters is recognized as the seismic shift that ended the polite dinner party of 19th-century Naturalism. It is the ur-text of Metatheater, a precursor that lays the uncomfortable groundwork for the Theatre of the Absurd that would follow with Beckett and Ionesco. The play posits a terrifying ontological argument: the “Character” is fixed, eternal, and therefore more “real” than the “Actor,” whose identity is fluid, changing, and ultimately decaying.
Where the futurists and dadaists played with these concepts as avant-garde experiments, Pirandello elevated them to a philosophical crisis. He asks who truly owns the suffering: the “Character” who is condemned to live it eternally, or the “Actor” who mimics it for applause? The play questions the very nature of reality in a theatre. The characters are not merely roles written on a page but entities that are more real and more consistent than the changing nature of human beings. They demand life even when their author has abandoned them.
It is worth remembering that when this play premiered in Rome in 1921 it caused a riot. The audience shouted “Manicomio!” (Madhouse!) and Pirandello with his daughter Lietta had to flee the theatre via a side exit to avoid being physically attacked. It was too raw, too meta, and too insulting to the bourgeois conception of “a night at the theater.” It shattered the fourth wall and left the audience exposed to the mechanics of illusion in a way that felt like a betrayal.
A Necessary Revival
Compare this electric French production to the ridiculously British and boring interpretation you might find floating around the internet like this one. This version is an anesthetic that is polite, dusty, and utterly devoid of blood. It treats the text like a museum piece to be handled with white gloves.
The Comédie Française has done the impossible. They have rescued this work from being butchered by “gentility” or overly stylized “grit.” They have restored the danger to the text.
And I’m sure the technical glitches of the Vieux Colombier will be duly addressed.
Rating: ★★★★★ (If only for Bagdassarian’s Madame Pace)