"La Grande Magie," photo: Cosimo Mirco Magliocca

The story revolves around that stock character of comedy, the cuckolded husband, in this case a certain Calogero Di Spelta, whose stay at a seaside resort with his wife coincides with the visit of an aging magician looking to make a comeback to pay off his bills. Otto Marvuglia's disappearing act offers a quick and clean exit out of a prim marriage for Signora Di Spelta, who "vanishes" out of Calogero's life and into the arms of her lover. Far from discerning the ruse, however, Calogero becomes the poignant victim of his wife's infidelity, Marvuglia's ambition and his own self-doubts, allowing the magician to convince him that Marta is now locked in a box, from which only his faith in her love can free her: if he believes, he will discover her there waiting for him; if he doesn't, he will find it empty and she will be forever lost to him.  Without revealing the ending, suffice it to say that that box remains closed a good long time...

After "Les Précieuses Ridicules", which touches also on the fragility of put-on appearances and the comic desire to believe in them against all logic, "La Grande Magie" is the second collaboration between the Comédie Française and the 42-year old, London born director, who makes his home between Paris and Pittsburgh but never travels far from what he has called "a nostalgia for the theater I never knew": that of the puppetry his actor/father loved but didn't practice, in the interests of raising his family. The characters in De Filippo's play are marionettes manipulated by the clever Marvuglia; how he manages to keep them all in motion is in itself a work of prestidigitation. But the unassuming star of the show is the suffering Di Spelta, for whom the magic of love (or the need to know it) transcends Marvuglia's chicanery. The show, which places the action on a kind of midway stage and employs the grand talents of the Comédie Française troupe, led by Denis Podalydès as Calogero and Hervé Pierre in the role of Marvuglia, is an authentic and clever tribute to a lost age of theater, when its strings and trap doors were visible to the eye but invisible to the heart that believed.

"La Grande Magie", to January 17, 2010, various days, 2 pm/8:30 pm, Comédie Française - Salle Richelieu, Place Colette, 1e, Mº Palais Royal-Musée du Louvre, 11 euros-37 euros, tel: 08.25.10.16.80.

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