The new director of the Théâtre de Lorient, Simon Delétang, signs the entry of “The Death of Danton” by Georg Büchner into the repertoire of the Comédie-Française. The chronicle of a violent and founding period of the Republic, which sees two enemy brothers confront each other, played by Loïc Corbery, in the role of Danton, and Clément Hervieu-Léger in that of Robespierre.
Georg Büchner, the “German Rimbaud”, the republican, the militant for the emancipation of the people, who died at the age of 23, delivers in The Death of Danton his foreigner’s view of a paroxysmal moment of the French Revolution when everything went haywire: the five days that preceded Danton’s death, in the middle of the Terror.
In a unique 18th century setting, the furniture draws the different places in which the characters will evolve: a room, the Jacobin Club, an alley, the Committee of Public Safety, the Convention, a prison or the Place de la Concorde. All this under the terrible gaze of Caravaggio’s Medusa.
A popular Danton despite his dissolute morals
A week earlier, in March 1794, Robespierre had the ultras led by Hébert beheaded, and he felt the urgency to get rid of his former friend Danton, who was considered too moderate. Danton is still very popular despite his dissolute morals, and he wonders about the deviations of the Revolution.
Hervieu-Léger, a surprising Robespierre
It is Loïc Corbery and his beautiful presence, very far from Danton’s physique (a colossus with irregular features), who gives the jovial and disenchanted tribune the ardor and romanticism that Büchner gives him. Clément Hervieu Léger is very surprising as Robespierre, giving a power and a kind of hysteria very convincing to the character.
The language, when heard (Corbery for example is not always audible), can be beautiful. But the play is talkative, and neither Büchner nor the overly classical staging quite captures the intensity of the characters.
The brotherhood of these young convicts
Some striking scenes will remain however: the speeches of Saint-Just (Guillaume Gallienne impeccably plays the “incorruptible” who denounces a “guillotine too slow”) and Robespierre (“terror is an emanation of virtue, let’s destroy by terror the enemies of freedom”), both turning the Convention against Danton; the wounded hopes of a Camille Desmoulins (very accurate Gaël Kamilindi). And above all, the fraternity that develops in prison between these young convicts who must face, on their last night, their disillusionment and, for some, the fear of dying.
The Death of Danton, deliberately anchored in its time, the 18th century, by the director, warns of the risks of revolutions that end in a bloodbath. The play will hold the attention of history buffs, even if Buchner makes a romantic hero out of Danton, who did nothing to prevent, among other things, the massacres in prison in 1792, when he was minister of justice.
For the others, Simon Delétang’s warning is to be taken literally: “To come and see this play without having reviewed the complexity of the stakes of this key moment in French history, nor knowing all the protagonists involved and the chronology of the facts, is a bit of a challenge”! This is the real reservation that we make about this ambitious show, the need to really prepare for it.
“The Death of Danton” by Georg Büchner, directed by Simon Delétang
With the troupe of the Comédie-Française: Guillaume Gallienne, Christian Gonon, Julie Sicard, Loïc Corbery, Nicolas Lormeau, Clément Hervieu-Léger, anna Cervinka, Julien Frison, Gaël Kamilindi, Jean Chevalier, Marina Hands, Nicolas Chupin