1673 is the year of composition of the work: a new attack by Molière against doctors, which testifies, once again, to his visceral hatred for this category.
Molière is a sick man, who fears dying, but who also knows that laughing and making people laugh is a defense against what were his own evils: jealousy, pain, anxiety, melancholy. There is, therefore, behind comedies that seem to be made up of even farcical comedy, the shadow of a self-portrait.
And it will be a dreamlike and irreverent imaginary patient signed by Andrea Chiodi, funny and contemporary in bringing to the stage the family events of the hypochondriac Argante, surrounded by inept doctors and clever pharmacists, happy to fuel his anxieties for personal gain.
Like the miserly Harpagon, Argante is a victim of himself and a puppet of those around him, a prisoner of his own fear, an obsession – hypochondria – which in this new version of Molière's masterpiece will become the full protagonist.