Un chapeau de paille d'Italie ・ Comédie-Française

“I’m working on a play for the Théâtre-Français, you can let me know if I have the tone right. Your great institution scares me...” wrote Eugène Labiche to the administrator of the Comédie-Française in 1860.

While the venerable theatre that intimidated him so premiered only two of his works during his lifetime, they were its glory in the 20th century. With seventeen Labiche plays in the repertoire, he is one of the theatre’s most frequently performed authors. An Italian Straw Hat entered the repertoire in 1938 and was an immediate hit. It was with this masterpiece of vaudeville that Giorgio Barberio Corsetti carried out his first collaboration with the Comédie-Française, in 2012, within the wooden structure of the temporary theatre being used, the Théâtre éphémère. Equally at home in the theatre and opera, he fully embraces Labiche’s writing, proposing a supercharged staging. “Of all Labiche’s plays,An Italian Straw Hat strikes me as one of the most charming. Perhaps because the mechanism it sets up has something to do directly with the unconscious, with what is hidden and suddenly appears.” What is hidden is a simple straw hat eaten by a horse, slim evidence of adultery. All it takes is something as insignificant as this to set the characters in motion: Fadinard leads the dance on his wedding day, and the entire wedding party follows. The light spirit of the 1970s accompanies the burlesque at a frenetic pace driven by jazz and rock rhythms.

Creative team

Direction: Giorgio Barberio Corsetti
Scenography: Giorgio Barberio Corsetti et Massimo Troncanetti
Costumes: Renato Bianchi
Lights: Fabrice Kebour
Original soundtrack, musical direction and songs: Hervé Legeay
Make-up: Carole Anquetil
Direction assistant: Raquel Silva
Make-up assistant: Laurence Aué