Phèdre

No sooner has he married Phèdre and had a child with her than Theseus entrusts them to his eldest son Hippolytus, and leaves to join Pirithous fighting the underworld. But Phèdre secretly loves Hippolytus and Theseus is soon declared dead...

Phèdre has such a powerful and strong personality that many directors cast mature women in the role, forgetting that the son of Ariadne's little sister is so young that he is never named... Racine's Phèdre is not the age of Theseus but that of Hippolytus, and, like him, she is above all light (the meaning of the word Phèdre in Greek), modesty and purity. Tragedy does not strike because he is younger (or because he is her stepson) but because Phèdre believes Hippolytus to be "unfeeling", that is to say completely alien to everything stemming from the body and love, and because Love is blind, failing to unite the two people whom everything should bring together.

Phèdre and Hippolytus burn together with contradictions they cannot control, struggling together to reconcile that mixture, typical of youth, of energy and fragility, absolute and intransigence, purity and complexity, violence and passion.