Voltaire (excerpt)

Synopsis:

Voltaire is in the midst of composing his master-work, Candide – the work for which he will be remembered most, even centuries after his death.

Meanwhile, by dint of artistic licence, his lifelong lover and partner, Emilie de Chatelet, has just given birth to a child sired by Jean-Francois de Saint-Lambert – a younger and more dashing poet soldier.

Alas, the babe has died and Emilie, the victim of puerperal fever, may not see out the night.

Faced with the loss of the only true soul-mate he has ever known, Voltaire attempts both to divert her from her fears of imminent death and to come to terms with his own grief by playing out his magnum opus before her.

The result is a multi-layered, fast-paced, rollicking yet – at times – confronting Jacobean-style tale that takes place somewhere within the mind of the great man, peopled by the characters we have come to know and love – the Cunegondes, the Candides, the Panglosses – and driven by Voltaire’s need to make sense of a world that is rapidly coming apart.

Combining music, vaudeville and even ventriloquism, this Enlightenment histoire places Voltaire firmly in the path of an uncomfortably bright spotlight.

Was he one of the great writer/philosophers of the modern era, whose values transcended those of his time, or was he, in spite of his extraordinary insights, subject to the same deeply held prejudices that he so devastatingly satirized in his beloved Candide?

Or was he both?

Tempering the piece with the same brand of mordant humour that Voltaire himself would have appreciated, the playwright challenges us to take a searching look at the true nature of Enlightenment.

Character Breakdown:

A seven-hander:  2 females and 5 males.
VOLTAIRE
DON ISSACHAR / CHERUB – one actor.
CANDIDE
CUNEGONDE
GRAND INQUISITOR / PRIEST – one actor.
EMILIE DE CHATELET
PANGLOSS / BULGARIAN SOLDIER – one actor.

 The script contains elements of a patois I am referring to as ‘retro-Franglais’.  A glossary of the terms used is to be found as an appendix to the play text, though most if not all should be fairly obvious from their context.

Production History:  Not yet produced.

Running-time: 120 minutes.

Excerpt available for download for free.