TEHRAN – "Le Général inconnu" (“Unknown General”), a play by French playwright and poet René de Obaldia, is on the stage at Tehran’s City Theater, Chaharsu Hall.

Mir Alireza Darya-Beigi is the director of the play, which will be on stage until August 18.

Morvarid Jafari, Amir Hossein Rezaei, Shahrad Ghadiri, Fahimeh Shayanfar, Alireza Qorbanzadeh, Behrad Mohammadi, Afsaneh Niazi and Sara Moqaddam are the cast of the play. 

The play is about General Achille Beaulieu de Chamfort-Mouron who lives with his wife in a place with nine nested room and twelve heavy doors, like a tank. 

René de Obaldia began his career in 1960, thanks to Jacques Vilar, who presented his first major play, "Génousie," at the Théâtre national populaire. This was followed by Le Satyre de la Villette, with André Barsacq at the Théâtre de l'Atelier, a comedy that ranked him with his literary forebears Jacques Audiberti, Ionesco, Beckett. He was, for more than fifty years, one of the most-produced French playwrights on the planet, as well as the most internationally renowned (having been translated into 28 languages).

Critics have admired the ease of Obaldia's style. His plays always take place within a framework of contemporary times and concern modern subjects, treating these in a comical manner. In La Génousie, for example, Obaldia replaces normal speech (in French) with Genousian, a language of fantasy, dreams, and love.

In 1985, he was awarded the Grand Prix du Théâtre de l’Académie Française.

De Obaldia died in Paris on 27 January 2022, at the age of 103.

ZM/