Theater: “False Confidences”, of the great Marivaux, where love owes nothing to chance

Without doubt one of the greatest pleasures of a director is to (re)discover a play. Objective achieved for Alain Françon with False Confidences by Marivaux, seen at the Théâtre des Amandiers in Nanterre (1). The actors have barely turned their heels when we bother to reread the text of this gentle comedy in which all the cogs click into place with millimeter precision. From the first scene, which brings together the suitor Dorante and the butler Dubois, the intrigue is knotted, then continuing without the slightest pause until the final confession.

Marivaux appears, then, in the firmament of French theater. The return to his text is all the more precious as Alain Françon asks his main actors to play a minimalist game. No burlesque or eccentricities but intimate dilemmas which swell and mature in the hearts of two beings until they blossom. Often facing the public, never eye to eye, he and she think for a long time before being forced to reveal themselves.

No burlesque or madness but intimate dilemmas

He is Dorante, placed by his uncle as financial advisor to Araminte, a rich widow with whom he has fallen dizzyingly in love. Shy and defeatist, he indulges in the mischievous trickery of Dubois, who intends to get them married. We must overcome social prejudices, competition from a fiery count, and fear of scandal. False confidences will gradually open the eyes, then the intelligence, then the heart of the beauty.

Georgia Scalliet is magnificent in the role of Araminte, dressed all in white like a vestal virgin, gropingly asserting her independence against her mother’s trivial aspirations for another marriage which would change her status. Pierre-François Garel plays a restrained Dorante, fearing to let go of the stifled happiness of his simple presence alongside the one he reveres, for the shadow of a mutually confessed love. Gilles Privat, a long, dark silhouette, masterfully drives the rhythm of a plot that in Dubois he masters with generous Machiavellianism.

The secondary characters, too, are used by the cunning butler, and their temperaments, clearly assumed by the actors who play them, add multiple twists and turns: Marthon (Yasmina Remil), the cheerful follower, overwhelmed by a project bigger than She ; Madame Argante (Dominique Valadié), the bourgeois and deliciously venal mother; Monsieur Remy (Guillaume Levêque), the attentive but clueless uncle; the Count (Alexandre Ruby), spurned gentleman; Lubin (Séraphin Rousseau), archetype of the cheeky valet; the son of the jeweler (Maxime Terlin), innocent and essential cog in the scheme.

In a simple, classic and functional setting, Marivaux’s play concludes that love ultimately owes little to chance, and a lot to daring. A very contemporary tale.