L'Avare (1666) is Molière's great satire on materialism, a funny yet sophisticated story of cunning, guile and double-dealing, not only by the Miser himself, but also by the Miser's family and servants. First performed at the Festival Theatre, Chichester in 1995, it was revived at the Salisbury Playhouse in April 2001.
Includes L'Etourdi (1653), the first, the fastest, and perhaps the funniest of Molière's verse comedies, in a new and highly entertaining translation.
Molière (born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin in 1622) was a French playwright and actor-manager. Molière's main achievement was in raising the standard of French comedy to a level commensurate with French tragedy. In doing so he created a body of work that would continue to be performed for the next three centuries, providing generation after generation of performers with some of their finest roles.
Born in Manchester in 1959, Ranjit Bolt was educated at Perse School and at Balliol College, Oxford. He worked as an investment analyst and advisor for eight years, before concentrating on theatre translation from the end of 1990.
Ranjit Bolt's acclaimed translations for the theatre, many of which are published by Oberon Books, include works by Molière, Seneca, Sophocles, Corneille, Beaumarchais, Brecht, Goldoni and Zorilla.