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WHEN CONSIDERING HOW Molière's Dom Juan from Le Festin de pierre gets replayed today, we must first acknowledge that Molière's work was itself a reimagined variation of a play, a recycling of an oft-represented literary and dramatic archetype that has become a ubiquitous figure symbolizing masculine sexual desire, seduction, pursuit, and conquest.1 Moreover, it was the very way in which Molière reimagined the infamous protagonist as a freethinker and not a sexual predator that the French censors found unacceptable, leaving theatres and directors with fragmented editions, a puzzle to be pieced back together for the next several hundred years to serve their artistic visions.
This article considers four contemporary adaptations from the Global North: Stephen Wadsworth's own English translation in the United States from 2002, 2004, and 2006; Nina Moini and the PopDrama ensemble's 2019 and 2020 productions in Paris; Joel Beddows's 2017 production at the Théâtre français de Toronto; and choreographer Johan Inger and dramaturg Gregor Acuña-Pohl's 2021 and 2022 ballet with the company Aterballetto in France and Italy. As we shall see, these performances engage with this puzzle and its archetype. The notion of replay used in the context of this analysis refers to stagings of classical texts that feature the themes that support the directorial vision. The productions discussed herein focus primarily on the theme of sexual depravity and perpetuate the prevailing conceptions of the archetype. In so doing, these replays deemphasize the aspects of Molière's play that question faith and religion, commercial enterprise, and the split between moral and economic values.
Le Festin de pierre
In 1665, after his previous play Le Tartuffe, ou l'imposteur was banned and with too few repertory productions to perform until the end of the Palais-Royal's season, the stakes were high for Molière and his company to write and rehearse a new play. Don Juan was a well-known character in Molière's time; his audiences would have been familiar with Tirso de Molina's 1620 play El burlador de Sevilla y convivado de Piedra, which upheld Christian teachings by damning the brainless Don Juan, who coveted pleasure above all and accumulated infidelities, committed rapes, assaults, and murders. The Italian companies in Paris produced commedia dell'arte adaptations of the play at the Petit Bourbon theatre around...