Ardèle ou la Marguerite
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Ardèle ou la Marguerite is a 1948 play by French dramatist Jean Anouilh. It was the first of his self-styled pièces grinçantes - i.e., 'grating' black comedies.
Plot
Set in 1912 "or thereabouts", the play concerns a family conference convened by the ageing General Léon Saint-Pé to discuss a romance entered into by his hunchbacked sister Ardèle. His other sister Liliane, a Countess, is accompanied by her husband Gaston (the Count) and her lover, Hector de Villardieu. All of them, especially the Countess, are scandalised by Ardèle's supposedly inappropriate passion for a fellow hunchback who has been engaged as tutor to the General's small son, Toto.
Their self-interested entreaties to her are communicated through her bedroom door, behind which she has locked herself and embarked on a three-day hunger-strike. The action culminates with the General's insane and apparently bed-ridden wife, Amélie, erupting from her room at dead of night while Ardèle and her lover (neither of whom is ever properly seen) take drastic action.<ref>Jean Anouilh, Ardèle: A Play in Three Acts, trans Lucienne Hill, Methuen & Co Ltd 1951</ref>
Other characters include Nathalie, the General's daughter in law; Nicolas, his middle son; Marie-Christine, the Countess' ten-year-old daughter, and Ada, the General's maid/mistress.
