After twelve long years as a resident, Laurent Lafitte made the sad decision to leave the Comédie-Française to “change theatrical horizon“.
“Laurent has decided to leave the House to be able to devote himself fully to his many external projects“, confided Eric Ruf, general administrator of the Comédie-Française, last May.
And to continue: “For twelve years he will have been a valuable actor and comrade for the troupe, and we all wish him much happiness and success in his new adventures.“.
New ambitious project for Laurent Lafitte
Shortly, the 51-year-old actor will therefore realize his “child's dream” playing Zaza in the musical The Crazy Cagean adaptation of the famous play by Jean Poiret, created on Broadway in 1983, reports The Parisian.
It's December 2022, in the middle of filming the Imaginary Molièrethat the idea visibly germinated in the mind of Olivier Py. “We often talked about musicals, in his dressing room, Laurent listened to them constantly and I listened to opera and musicals all the time. We talked about La Cage aux Folles, he told me it was his dream, it was also minebut at the time we didn't have a theater that could offer it to us“, confided the director in the columns of our colleagues.
“I imagine it as a grand spectacle for the familye, for Christmas“, he added: “It's great, intelligent, profound entertainment, comparable to Les Misérables because it's for everyone and at the same time, it doesn't say anything… Like Les Misérables, France has somewhat shunned the musical La Cage. Because of the film and the play, precisely, it was confused, but the public will not be able not to tell the difference“.
“Because there is not much left of the play, there is the Moliéresque framework, extremely intelligent, the situations, some characters but not all, and a text which is not at all the text of La Cage aux Folles“, specifies the director. “Zaza is first and foremost a theater character, an artist… It's much more emphasized in the musical, we see the cabaret that we don't see in the play and so little in the film. That's the good idea“.
A committed piece
The musical The Crazy Cageadapted by Harvey Fierstein and Jerry Herman, was a huge success on Broadway, winning eleven Tony Awards.
For this major project, Olivier Py will emphasize the themes of tolerance and individual freedom, while responding to anti-LGBT violence with glitter and feathers.
