The Docteur (Doctor) mocks Pierrot, dressed in ancient clothes to play in Nitétis. Arlequin flees when Polichinelle becomes angry after not being given a role in the tragedy; then, he offers the Docteur the role of the Princesse (Princess). The king of Persia, Cambise (Cambyse), ousted the king of Egypt, Phanès (Phanes). Phanès, a relative of the old Egyptian king Apriès (Apries) asks Cambise to kill the children of Amasis, Psamménite (Psammenitus) and Nitétis, to take revenge for the murder of his wife. Cambise agrees but later learns that the stranger who saved him is Psamménite; he also falls in love with Nitétis, with whom Psamménite is also in love. The Reine (Queen), widow of Apriès (Apries), who was killed by Amasis, also asks Cambise to take revenge for her, by killing Amasis. Amasis tells Psamménite that Nitétis is not his daughter, but Apriès’. He also tells him that he was raising her to be Psamménite’s wife. Psamménite declares his love to Nitétis; doing so, he reveals that she is Apriès’ daughter. Nitétis tells the Reine, Apriès’ widow, that she is her daughter. She asks Cambise to kill Amasis. Psamménite discloses to his father Amasis that he is in love with Nitétis. Amasis tells him about his plan to have Cambise killed, but Psamménite refuses to help him. Amasis attacks Cambise, but Psamménite intervenes: Cambise kills them both. Nitétis asks Cambise to marry her, but he prefers a common-law marriage.

Not specified

Piron Alexis

France

Paris

Tragedy

Revenge

Brother-sister incest

Murder for hire

East

Theaters of the Parisian fairs

Parodistic

French

Arlecchino

Il Dottore (Commedia dell'arte)

Polichinelle

Pierrot

Queen

Swiss

Persian

Scene of recognition

Comical foreign accent

Colombine Nitétis

While the Father of a rich, bourgeois family is dying at the hospital, his house is being burgled. Pascaline, his help (who has become his wife since he became a widower) laments, but her daughter Sarah is delighted to be relieved of the burden of the memories attached to the objects. A Young Man (the Father’s son) happens to come back that very day after seven years of unexplained absence. Freddy, a young and attractive rogue, arrives the same day to ask his mother Pascaline to give him an explanation for the identity of his father and for the reasons that have led her to abandon him. Pascaline, who behaves like a mother towards the Young Man, rejects Freddy. We learn that she survived the Shoah when she was a child. She pretends to ignore who Freddy’s real father is and she also claims that, after denying her pregnancy, she entrusted her to her sister, who raised him without love in a poor suburb. An alcoholic and a very unstable person, she sees Nazis coming out of the walls, unless that it is Freddy who is manipulating her so that she tells him the truth. Later, Pascaline, drunk, confesses to Freddy we was born out of a short-lived relationship she had with a Maghrebin jazz musician who died during the Algerian War. She ends up accepting his son as a gift from God. Freddy’s attractiveness and the ambiguity of his behaviour reveal both the Young Man’s homosexual desire and Sarah’s need for love, as she was a prisoner of an unconditional love for her own brother, and therefore rejected any kind of sexual intimacy. The Young Man encourages his sister to find happiness with Freddy while he, knowing that she is happy, will be able to transition into the woman he realized he wants to be. The phone rings and the death of the Father is announced. Pascaline goes off to discover the world, encouraging Freddy and Sarah to build a fulfilling life as a couple in the house.