And so it’s been more than three years. I had planned
to write more about theatre and have seen more plays, some excellent, but here
I am again; it was another Vincent Macaigne season in December 2017.
"Je suis un pays – created in 2017 at the Théâtre Vidy
in Lausanne, seen at Nanterre-Amandiers in Paris on 30 November 2017, as part
of the Paris Festival d’automne. Will be shown again at the end of May-early
June 2019 at the Théâtre de la Colline (go and see it if you have a chance).
Could not see the other two of VM’s plays at the Festival, hopefully, next
time.
----
The best thing about the play was the conversation my
friend and I had in the theatre foyer during the interval, waiting for the play
to resume, wondering how it would end. In the best possible way, theatre
spilling over into *real* life, sort of. I love it when it happens (far too
rarely, obviously). My friend said: “These young ladies over there look like
typical girls studying ‘the arts’”. And I said: “No worries, soon, they’ll be
looking like us [not spoken kindly: nearing middle age, (in my case:)
ordinary].” And then my friend said: “I, for one, never looked like them
[stylish, confident, unabashedly fabulous?].” Hey, me neither, and this could
be the saddest thing.
(Or maybe not. We still have ourselves.)
Do we ever become what we thought we would become?
Were we ever what we thought we were? Is the dream of what we could have been
sweeter than the dream of what we would one day become? Etc. Exciting stuff.
“Je suis un pays” made me sad in the profoundest, most
delicious sense; the sadness has been lingering for days, then weeks. Despite its
incredible display of artistry and (seemingly) accusatory and righteous tone
(look what *they*’ve done to us!), what it boils down to (but why would anyone
want to summarise is another matter) is this strange acceptance of time
passing, of opportunities lost, of hidden treasures turned into buried menace
that will one day come back to haunt us. The fear of blindness, the desire to
feel alive – and connected (to another human being, to a cause), even at the price
of losing yourself, even if it means killing something that can’t be killed.
The doomed project of life.
Everything I had loved about VM’s theatre first time
round was there, and more: the props, the clever, fearless use of the stage,
the megaphones (try whispering in one), the careful manipulation of the
audience. The latter couldn’t have been better, actually: the crafted balance
between participation and the “fourth wall” – just when you’ve lowered your
guard enough you’re reminded who’s the boss (I was told by the suddenly very
strict usher to stop taking pictures). I love how you wonder: how many bottles
of blood will be spilled? Then you look: there’s a whole box of them. And then
you wait, at the edge of your seat, for the last drop to fall.
(You know what’s going to happen, we will all bleed,
we will all fail, we will all die; we relish every second).
What I appreciated most about “L’Idiot”, VM’s previous
play, (- and could not quite believe it possible – and the courage of the
project seemed almost unimaginable -) was the unsettling combination of the
tragic and the funny - and the unbalancing of expectations. Here, I thought,
although all the by now familiar elements were present, we have a messier, less
perfect yet somehow more daring offering, with no classical text to serve even
as a spectre of origin (or a crutch; Prince Myshkin, I now remember, arrived on
stage on crutches in 2014). In “Je suis un pays” (based on VM’s own play, we are
told), we are sent into a dystopian world of a near future, steeped, as a
dystopian world should be, in myth and grisly fairytale, yet a world so
recognisably our own.
This time, I had a bit of a problem with the overtly satirical angle of the play - this nagging icky feeling - but the satire could be what makes it most effective (more on this later). But then, as I was laughing and gasping with the rest of the audience I could not help thinking if, all said and done, the laughter was a symptom of some sort of fear, a reluctance to talk about difficult things directly. There is a striking scene where, upon hearing a devastating news, a character begins slowly to undress, apparently for no reason other than to express despair. The scene is so long and the movements so exaggerated that just the right mix of emotions is created; let’s try and name them: sadness, compassion, embarrassment, titillation at the sight of a beautiful body being revealed, curiosity, more embarrassment. Well, it was quite funny, actually. With the group of teenagers sitting in front of us (where did all these young people suddenly come from?), I laughed, a little uncomfortably.
Why don’t you, as it were, just take your shirt off
and tell us? Chill us to the bone as we know you can? Or just remain silent? We
can take it, we are ready (I thought).
But then again, does this reluctance to dwell on
despair, this refusal to admit vulnerability belong to the play – or to the
audiences themselves? Wouldn’t we rather laugh and wonder than risk boredom?
Or, God forbid, feeling? And if so, is it so bad?
This same tension bothered me throughout those scenes
of political and social parody that are so accomplished, so funny and
exhilarating - and I suspect play the biggest role in drawing the crowds to VM’s
theatre. I couldn’t help feeling entranced
and yet it was an unsettling experience. Without going into too much detail, at
various points in the play, you find yourself in the middle of a party where
you are a guest and yet you are the butt of a joke, you are having fun and you
are the one being made fun of, your own desire to enjoy yourself, to escape the
routine of your everyday life and, possibly, to gain access to something that
is greater than your sad little existence are equated with the megalomania of the
very media star or power-drunk politician that are being mocked. The very star
and politician who had stolen your life from you.
It is both very easy and impossible to point out the
“baddies” in the story, the effortlessness with which the blame appears to be
apportioned (the evil forces, the media, the politicians, the mother – and the “adults”
in general) is at once depressing and revealing, as, obviously, toward the end
of the story it becomes all too clear that the responsibility is, indeed, ours,
that, without quite realising it, we have crossed the invisible line and become
the adults we so hate, we have no one else left to blame.
Even though all the cast were brilliant and yes, fearless, I felt most taken by Candice Bouchet, a very young (indeed!) actress who appears in different (interconnected) roles and who, for me, carried the show. During her first monologue I felt that I could have gladly spent the next three hours just listening to her story. A rare case of an almost complete surrender, an actor who could have easily taken her audience into battle (or, of course, to slaughter).
And, indeed, whether it is to victory or downfall that
the play leads you I was not sure (and this is a good thing). Although, like in
“l’Idiot”, there is a scene of sacrifice towards the end (almost verbatim), this
time, rather than being liberating, it felt more puzzling, but I hope the
confusion was more daring and, ultimately, more productive; not settling the
scores, not finding a solution, not giving up (and returning to Switzerland –
and blissful numbness) but recognising and accepting the challenge of having to
stay alive.
And so we left the theatre at the end, it had snowed lightly,
or was it just the overspill of the artificial foam that stagehands had been
clearing out?
