In 1973, Ingmar Bergman created Scènes de la vie conjugale for Swedish television, a six-episode work that dissected, with surgical precision, the bodies and souls of a seemingly exemplary middle-class couple. Built on the bourgeois conventions of love and marriage, the story of Marianne and Johan struck a nerve so deep that, at the hour of its broadcast, cities reportedly emptied as viewers stayed home, transfixed by the slow implosion of an “ideal” union.
What Bergman brought to the screen was not spectacle but truth: the intimate, often uncomfortable reality of what passes between a man and a woman. He gave husband and wife the words to articulate desire, resentment, tenderness, and sex - plainly, magnificently, sometimes brutally. The result was a relentless outpouring, at once harrowing and darkly humorous, driven almost entirely by dialogue. Like a mirror held too close, the work reflected both the splendors and the miseries of conjugal life, illuminated by an unsparing lucidity and a profound humanity.
That text now returns to the stage in an inédit adaptation drawn from Bergman’s original six-episode version. Directed and scenographed by Christophe Perton, this theatrical production expands the intimate duel into a piece for six performers, with Astrid Bas, Romane Bohringer, and Stanislas Nordey among the cast. Performed without intermission over two hours and thirty minutes, it will be presented on Friday, February 6 at 8:00 p.m. at the Théâtre Princesse Grace in Monaco.
The staging is supported by Éric Soyer’s lighting, an original musical creation by Maurice Marius, video by Baptiste Klein, and a filmed realization by Samuel Theis, with general stage management by Pablo Simonet. Produced by Scènes&Cités, the work is presented in coproduction with the Théâtre National de Nice, the Théâtre National du Luxembourg, and the Théâtre Saint-Louis in Pau. The theatrical works of Ingmar Bergman are represented in French-speaking countries by the agency DRAMA, in agreement with the Bergman Foundation and the Josef Weinberger agency in London.
Half a century after its creation, Scènes de la vie conjugale remains what it has always been: a rigorous examination of intimacy that refuses consolation, and in doing so, continues to recognize us.
Photo credits: Lou Sarda / Jean-Louis Fernandez