Quartett

In 2003 in Marseille, Franck Dimech directed Heiner Müller's Quartett at the Théâtre de Lenche, a text adapted from Choderlos de Laclos's Les Liaisons dangereuses, with the actor Maurice Vinçon. Twenty-four years later, the director reunites with this unmissable Marseille artist, now 87, for a re-creation of the play.

To compose Quarttet, Müller kept only the four main characters: La Merteuil, Valmont, La Tourvel and Cécile de Volanges. In Franck Dimech's production, they have become old, hideous, filthy and wicked. Waxen complexions, faces made up like whores escaped from a painting by Otto Dix; if their hearts have turned to stone and their souls to unfathomable frozen lakes, their consciousness, on the other hand, is intact. Atrociously sharp. Much like Jean Genet's The Maids, the theatre here is a hall of mirrors in which the roles are interchangeable. The show is their last evening, the terminal phase of their affair. "Dead, dead, dead," they cry!

Text: Quartett, Heiner Mûller, Éditions de Minuit; translation by Jean JOURDHEUIL and Béatrice PERREGAUX

Director: Franck Dimech

Cast: Marcelle Basso and Maurice Vinçon