Argan, a middle-class man as rich as he is hypochondriacal, has decided that his daughter should wed a doctor, so that he can have constant care.  However, the young woman is already in love and, to help her avoid marriage, the cunning maid Toinette comes up with a brilliant plan...
Written in 1673, Il malato immaginario is Molière’s final play, performed by the author himself, who died a few days after the debut after collapsing on stage; an interweaving of art and life that will forever bind the figure of the grumpy hypochondriac with his creator.
«‘I am the sick man!’ cries Argan to his brother Beralde and the maid Tionette: ‘I am the sick man!’. I asked myself – comments Andrea Choidi, directing a cast headed by Tindaro Granata and Lucia Lavia – if this cry is not the desperate cry of a playwright who, as he writes, feels set aside, ridiculed by society, no longer in vogue and, in the case of Molière, no longer accepted at court. With this work, I have sought to present this desperate cry, the cry of an artist, the question of an artist, of one who is trying to explain who his work, his theatre, is for, going as far as to die in the midst of it all, to choose to be ill to protect himself from the harsh reality. We have stayed true to the unabridged script, adding only Molière’s plea to the king.»