Molière (The Cabal of Hypocrites) – Mikhail Bulgakov

The performance was made available for streaming on only one occasion, on February 6, 2021, live from the Main Stage | Ziller Building.

The original title of Mikhail Bulgakov’s work, which the author began writing in 1929 facing constant obstacles as a result of bans imposed on him by the Censorship Board, was The Cabal of Hypocrites. Following several revisions and cuts, the Board gave its long-awaited approval for the premiere of the play at the Moscow Art Theatre on February 16, 1936 under the title Molière. However, after only seven performances and in the wake of harsh criticism from the newspaper Pravda, which enforced the line of the Stalinist party, the production was cancelled.

Bulgakov’s Molière clashed with the Soviet myth surrounding Molière. The Russian author dramatises the last years in the life of the great French dramatist and actor Jean-Baptiste Poquelin. The play depicts his private life, his love affairs and his relationship with the actors of his troupe, his earning and subsequent falling out of the King’s favour, as well as the polemic that he faced from the church and his own personal conflict with the Archbishop.

The play was met with outrage by religious groups, the Stalinist milieu and “those working behind-the-scenes”, as Bulgakov used Louis and Molière as a cover for his own relationship with Stalin’s regime and authoritarian, dogmatic power in general.

Πηγή: National Theatre of Greece