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by Jean de Rotrou, directed by Pierre Deusy

La Troupe de Bourbon, Théâtre du Nord Ouest, 13 rue du Faubourg Montmartre, Paris, FRA

December 12, 2024-June 29, 2025

Genest: “Ce monde périssable, et sa gloire frivole,

Est une comédie où j’ignorais mon rôle”

Even fervent theatre-lovers can be forgiven for never having heard of Jean de Rotrou (1609-50) and his masterpiece Le Véritable Saint Genest (1646). Outside of France, 17th-century French drama is represented almost exclusively by the comedies of Molière. There may be excursions into Pierre Corneille’s comedies L’Illusion comique (1634) or Le Menteur (1644) but none of his tragedies. For tragedy, Phèdre (1677) by Jean Racine and perhaps Andromaque (1667) are the only plays companies choose. The idea of selecting an unknown play by an unknown contemporary of Corneille never arises. More’s the pity, since of all French plays of the 17th-century, Le Véritable Saint Genest  is the one where the nature of theatre itself is the subject along with the fine line between illusion and reality.

I was lucky enough to see Saint Genest in 1988 in a famous production by André Steiger at the Comédie Française. That was in my previous life as a professor of humanities before I began reviewing. I thought I would never see the play again, but here in 2025 I discovered that a production by La Troupe de Bourbon which has been running at the Théâtre du Nord Ouest since December 2024, is still playing. The company had presented its highly acclaimed production at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence in July 2014 and was asked to bring it to Paris. I couldn’t believe my luck in being able to see this rarity a second time.

The action is set in during the reign of the emperor Diocletian (284-305), who was famous for his persecution of Christians. In the play Diocletian celebrates the marriage of his daughter Valeria to Maximian, who later became co-Caesar with Diocletian, by having a play staged by the greatest actor of the empire, Genesius (“Genest” in French). The troupe of Genesius has been asked to perform a play about the death of the Christian martyrs Adrian and Natalia at the hands of Maximian himself. (In reality, Adrian and Natalia were martyred in 306, three years after Genesius, but the chronological order is reversed for dramatic purposes.)

Genest is famous throughout the Roman Empire for the realism of his acting. As Dioclétien says to Genest: “En cent sujets divers, suivant tes mouvements, / J’ai reçu de tes feux de vrais ressentiments”. This is, of course, the paradox of theatre that what actors feign produces real emotions in its audience. One reason why Genest is so successful is that he delves deeper into his characters than do his contemporaries. In rehearsing his lines Genest finds that he is not merely mouthing Adrian’s sentiments but actually feels them: “D’effet, comme de nom, je me trouve être un autre ; / Je feins moins Adrian, que je ne le deviens”. Genest finds that in playing the Christian martyr he has begun adopting his character’s feelings and world view.

The play-within-a play about the martyrdom of Adrian and Natalia takes up the middle three of the five acts of Rotrou’s play, thus making the Adrian play the largest portion of the play about Genest. During the course of the Adrian play, the court – i.e., Dioclétien, Maximin and Valérie – comment positively on the ardour Genest puts into his role. Eventually, however, Genest, to the consternation of the other actors, goes off script and delivers a speech about the joys of Christianity that disturbs the court. When Genest admits that he now honours the Christian God, not the Roman gods, Dioclétien has no choice but to arrest him.

Genest’s colleagues, especially Marcelle who plays Adrian’s wife Natalie, try to persuade Genest to recant, but he will not. Even Valérie, though not Christian, tries to intercede, but to no avail. Maximin has the last word concerning Genest that “il a bien voulu, par son impiété, / D’une feinte, en mourant, faire une verité”, a remark that holds an irony Rotrou’s contemporaries would understand in that Genest, an actor and martyr, would become the patron saint of actors.

People point to Pierre Corneille’s most performed comedies, L’Illusion comique (1634) or Le Menteur (1644), as investigations into that favourite 17th-century topic, reality and illusion. Rotrou’s Saint Genest, however, goes much farther than either of these. Here Rotrou investigates how the process of acting changes the actor. Rotrou thus takes Hamlet’s wonder that the First Player can produce tears when reciting a passage about Hecuba to its extreme. The actor adopts the faith of his character to the point of sacrificing his life. In Rotrou, illusion becomes reality. Yet even here Rotrou questions what “reality” is since he has Genest express the well-known trope known as “theatrum mundi”, or as Shakespeare’s Jacques says, “All the world’s a stage”. Rotrou has Genest lament, “Ce monde périssable, et sa gloire frivole, / Est une comédie où j’ignorais mon rôle”.

Seeing the play a second time made me realize that Rotrou’s play has other intriguing elements beyond being the archetypal play about reality and illusion. The play feels very modern in its look at what happens when one member of a tightly knit group takes on a world view opposed to all his friends. Rotrou well depicts the dilemma these friends find themselves in . On the one hand, they fear being found guilty of Genest’s views by association. On the other, their troupe would not exist without Genest and seek to plead for his release without implicating themselves.

Another particularly relevant topics arises when Valérie tries to intercede on behalf of Genest. She asks Dioclétien why he cannot let Genest live so that he can continue the great work he and his troupe perform in the service of theatre. Diocletian replies that “où l’irrévérence et l’orgueil manifeste, / Joint l’intérêt d’État, à l’intérêt céleste”. The topic that lies behind this simple exchange is whether a state must be so authoritarian that it excludes citizens who do not subscribe to the state religion. In Rotrou’s day, that question would refer to including Protestants along with Catholics. Today, so many authoritarian regimes seek to purge themselves of all who do not conform to the state’s beliefs, whatever they are, that Rotrou’s play attains a relevance today far beyond what he could have imagined.

The stage in the 90-seat Salle de Spectacles of the Théâtre du Nord Ouest is typically minimalist. There are simple but effective costumes by Catherine Lainard but no sets and few properties. Lighting designers Hélène Robin and Olivier Bruaux often achieve the chiaroscuro effect of Old Master paintings using the few instruments at hand.

Director Pierre Deusy, who also plays the minor role of a Guard, has drawn finely integrated work from his cast, but there is no doubt the play stands or falls based on the performance of the actor assigned to play Genest. With Rémi de Monvel the play has an ideal Genest. Monvel shows us the Genest as a generous, sympathetic character before his revelation. We see Monvel interpret the same lines in two different ways – one when Genest is rehearsing, one after he has been inspired. The first is extremely effective on its own without being overtly histrionic. In the second, Monvel brings a new ardour to his voice as if everything depends on each word that Adrian says. When Genest goes off-script Monvel brings this believably ardent manner along with him. We see that Genest is no longer the same person and knows that the ecstasies he expresses also place his life in danger.

Rotrou also allows us to see two sides to Marcelle, the actor who plays Natalie, Adrian’s wife, played here by Héloïse Cunin. In their scene together in the Adrian play, Marcelle is inspired by Adrian’s conversion to join him in martyrdom and rises to Adrian’s own ecstatic state. Rotrou creates a parallel scene where Marcelle visits Genest in prison and tries to persuade him to renounce his new-found religion which she thinks cannot be real. Unlike the roles as Adrian and Natalie, Genest spurns Marcelle’s suggestion and she, with a combination of irritation and sadness, abandons Genest.

Among the acting troupe Hélène Robin plays Sergeste, an elderly woman, who is compassionate when acting Flavie, a woman who tries to persuade Adrian of the danger his new faith will incur, but rather more self-interested when pleading with Dioclétian to spare the lives of the actors.

Among the court, Olivier Bruaux is a logical but inflexible Dioclétian, not the monster we might expect, but a politician who puts the “ l’intérêt d’État” above all else. In contrast, the Maximin of Franck Nalis seems particularly harsh, a military man who will never be a good politician. Julia Beauquesne is the unfortunate Valérie. Director Pierre Deusy has unaccountably cut the first two scenes of Act 1 which includes Valérie’s longest speech, one in which she expresses her unhappiness of the marriage Dioclétian has arranged and in which she recounts a dream of a coming catastrophe. In that speech she boldly criticizes Dioclétian as “Ce monarque insolent, à qui toute la terre, / Et tous ses souverains, sont des jouets de verre”. This sets up her defence of Genest later in the play and makes it a direct affront to her father. Beauquesne makes Valérie’s plea to save Genest as strong as she can, but the support of Valérie’s earlier speeches would make its effect even stronger.

This production of Le Véritable Saint Genest by La Troupe de Bourbon left me more convinced than ever that Rotrou’s is one of the most important French plays of the 17th-century. As with the best works of contemporaries of more famous authors and composers, producers should try to overcome the fear of lack of name recognition and trust the worth of the work itself to draw an audience. That is what has happened with Saint Genest first at Aix and now in Paris, and I suspect it would happen with the contemporaries of Shakespeare or Mozart if they were given a chance.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Héloïse Cunin as Marcelle, Rémi de Monvel as Genest, Hélène Robin as Sergeste, Frédéric Morel as Lentule, Franck Nalis as Maximin, Olivier Bruaux as Dioclétian and Julia Beauquesne as Valérie; Rémi de Monvel as Genest playing Adrian; Olivier Bruaux as Dioclétian. © 2025 La Troupe de Bourbon.

For tickets visit: www.theatredunordouest.com.