Jean Bellorini adapts Éric Vuillard's Goncourt-winning novel for Comédie-Française

Jean Bellorini, the French theatre director born June 18, 1981 in Paris, has staged an adaptation of Éric Vuillard's Prix Goncourt-winning novel "L'ordre du jour" at the Comédie-Française. The novel recounts Hitler's meeting with German industrialists on February 20, 1933, a dinner between British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and German ambassador Ribbentrop, and preparations for the German invasion of Austria in March 1938. Bellorini, who previously adapted Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov," Proust's "In Search of Lost Time," and Hugo's "Les Misérables," uses four Comédie-Française actors wearing masks inspired by northern French carnival traditions to portray the twenty-four ominous black overcoat-wearing industrialists. Twenty-four pairs of black shoes arranged in a square complete the tableau. The Chamberlain-Ribbentrop dinner is transformed into a clownish cabaret, giving the characters a grotesque, distanced quality reminiscent of Brecht. Bellorini aims to "make people smarter through emotion and laughter." He was awarded the Molière for best director of a public theatre production in 2014, appointed director of Théâtre Gérard-Philipe de Saint-Denis in November 2013, led the Théâtre National Populaire (TNP) de Villeurbanne from 2020, and will direct Théâtre de Carouge in Switzerland from January 2027.