La Ville dont le prince est un enfant (play)

La Ville dont le prince est un enfant is a 1955 play by French dramatist Henry de Montherlant. The title, literally translated, The City Whose Prince is a Child, is taken from Ecclesiastes 10:16: "Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child, and thy princes eat in the morning!"

Henri de Montherlant was born 20 April 1895, and one of his first works was started in 1912 under the title Serge Sandrier, and continued to be transformed for four decades before being published in 1951 and the definitive version in 1967. It was inspired by the adolescent years of Montherlant, particularly his formative years in Institution Notre-Dame de Sainte-Croix commonly known as Collège Sainte-Croix de Neuilly in 1912. It looks at the difficulties in the life of André Sevrais as a young man 15–16 years of age in a Catholic school in France, his friendship and love for a younger boy aged 11–12 years.

An amended version would be republished in 1969, before Montherlant's death on 21 September 1972 under the title Les Garçons (literally The Boys), that takes a fresh look on the story with André Sevrait becoming the character Alban de Bricoule, who already served as a double in Montherlant works Le Songe et Les Bestiaires.

Philosophy student André Sevrais attends a Catholic boys' school in Paris, where he becomes fast friends with his younger schoolmate, a little rebellious boy named Serge Souplier. This friendship between the two youngsters does not go unobserved by the Abbot of Pradts, who harbors a secret obsession with Souplier and uses his position of authority to try to handle the adolescent Servais, with the pretext of protecting the youngster Souplier; ultimately, however, he is undone by his own hand.

Christophe Malavoy directed in 1997 a film entitled La Ville dont le prince est un enfant, also known by its English language release title The Fire That Burns. In the movie version Malavoy played the role of Abbot of Pradts and Naël Marandin the role of André Sevrais and Clément van den Bergh in the role of Serge Souplier. The film also featured Michel Aumont the role as superior of the school.

The play was first translated for broadcasting as The Land where a Child is King by Henry Reed and broadcast by the B.B.C. in 1962 and later translated as The Fire that Consumes by Vivian Cox with Bernard Miles, and staged at the Mermaid Theatre in 1977.

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