Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre is to stage a new production of Molière’s rarely performed romantic comedy The Sisterhood.
It will be the third Molière comedy that artistic director Hamish Glen has directed after The Hypochondriac in 2015 and The Miser in 2010.
Playwright and translator Ranjit Bolt has adapted Molière’s Les femmes savantes which was first performed at the New End Theatre, Hampstead in 1987.
Glen said, “my productions of The Hypochondriac and The Miser hopefully gave audiences a glimpse of how accessible and relevant these 17th century comedies can still be today. Molière helped create the style of comedy which is built on one-liners, stand-up, slapstick and set pieces and which has become the foundation for almost all modern-day comic routines.
“This updated translation takes us to 1980s France and into a stylish salon in downtown Paris. Unusually for a Moliére comedy, the women are the butt of the jokes as the play pokes fun at the pretensions of these pseudo-intellectual ladies and proves that a little learning can be a dangerous thing.”
Julia Watson plays matriarch and head of the household Philaminte. Her credits include Terence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea at Watford Palace Theatre and Chekhov’s The Seagull, Janys Chambers’s adaptation of Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals and David Hare’s Amy’s View, all at Nottingham Playhouse. She has also appeared at the National Theatre.
Joanna Roth will play Belise and Peter Temple is beleaguered husband Chrysale. He took the role of 71-year-old Norman in Alecky Blythe’s Where Have I Been All My Life? and played Jan Coggan in Theresa Heskins’s adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Far From The Madding Crowd, both in 2012 at the New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme.
Playing the roles of sisters Henriette and Armande are Vanessa Schofield who was Perdita in the Northern Broadsides production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale in 2015 and Katherine Manners who took the role of Esther Rubenstein in James Phillips’s The Rubenstein Kiss at Nottingham Playhouse in 2015.
Completing the cast are Paul Trussell as Trissotin, Joshua Miles as Clitandre, Paul Hamilton as Ariste, Valentine Hanson as Vadius and Miriam Edwardes as Martine.
Design is by Libby Watson and lighting design is by Mike Robertson.
The Sisterhood runs in the B2 auditorium at the Belgrade from Saturday 30 January until Saturday 20 February. Press night will be Tuesday 2 February.