Der Geizige

Josefstädter Strasse 26

1080 Wien

 

Can love conquer avarice and greed? Molière's comedy "The Miser," first performed in 1668, uses the example of one family to demonstrate the absurd and existential upheavals to which a ruthless fixation on money can lead.

The miserly Harpagon, the epitome of a man solely focused on possessions, forces his family to orient their lives entirely around his obsessive material and pragmatic expediency. His daughter Elise is to marry the elderly Anselme because he would forgo a dowry. For his son Cléante, who is in love with Mariane, he has, however, a wealthy widow in mind as his future wife.

Harpagon himself has set his sights on his son's lover and is already planning his own wedding to her. To thwart his father's marriage plans, Cléante exposes his father's schemes with a clever strategy, exploiting his avarice and using his obsessive passion for money and possessions as leverage. In "The Miser," Molière created a masterful satire of the archetype of the wealthy yet narrow-minded bourgeois who oppresses his joyful children with his avarice. The renowned director Tina Lanik, in her musical production of "The Miser," will demonstrate how the conflicts between these ideologically vastly different generations can be resolved in a comedic way.

(Source: josefstadt.org)