At the National Early Music Centre in York, Ensemble Moliere put on an absolutely fabulous show – we loved it. This is from their programme notes:
“Good Soup is an exploration of Molière’s world, both through his words and the music of his time. To celebrate 400 years since his birth, Ensemble Molière joins forces with two clowns to create a 60-minute performance transporting the audience into the playwright’s cosmos.
In a space and time not dissimilar to our own, where environmental catastrophe, popular upheaval, war and pestilence rage through the country, the king withdraws into a world of mirrors, spectacle and art. Two servants are trying to uphold the Molièrian idea of ‘decorum’ while performing multiple roles, singing and dancing around the king’s banquet table, until the world seeps into the dining hall.
Good Soup investigates Molière’s form of bourgeois comedy, and asks what these narrative structures still have to offer. Bringing together baroque music, absurdist theatre, slapstick and puppetry, Good Soup takes a critical look at our own relationship with catastrophe and the desire to escape into spectacle and ‘happiness’.”
Photographs by Richard Duffy-Howard
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