About the work
Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière wrote "Le Prénom" together, developing the plot jointly but writing the dialogue separately to preserve their individual voices. It premiered on 18 September 2010 at the Théâtre Édouard VII in Paris, directed by Bernard Murat; the German-language premiere followed on 4 November 2011 at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, in a German version by Georg Holzer.
Plot
At a dinner party in the flat of literature professor Pierre and his wife Élisabeth, her brother Vincent announces the name he and his pregnant wife have chosen for their unborn son: Adolphe. While Vincent points to the hero of Benjamin Constant's novel, the other guests immediately think of Adolf Hitler, and the argument over the name unleashes long-suppressed truths among the group.
Cultural significance
The play was an immediate hit, with foreign rights sold within its first week and film producers securing adaptation rights the following month. Nominated for the Molière award in both 2011 and 2019, it has since been translated into numerous languages and was filmed by Sönke Wortmann in 2018 as the German feature "Der Vorname."