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The Avignon Festival 2006 - A Personal Encounter (Part II)The Artistic Associate and the Programming (3)Jacqueline Fletcher visits the 60th Avignon FestivalDateline: 26th July, 2006Anatoli Vassiliev - Mozart et Salieri. Requiem. Vassiliev has adapted the short story by his fellow countryman Pushkin for this piece. Staged in the Carrière de Boulbon one of the main problems was that it failed entirely to engage with the space. A stage had been constructed with an audience on one-and-a half sides: basically it was an end-on configuration as the action was addressed towards the audience in front and if you were on the side you missed a great deal. While the stage was open to the walls of the quarry on two sides, a lighting rig had been constructed above the stage space so that it became completely isolated from its surroundings in a pool of brilliant light, entirely separate from, ignoring even, the natural qualities of the venue. It would have been better staged in the Municipal Theatre. The Carrière de Boulbon is a magnificent space; craggy walls of limestone invest the venue with an atmosphere that begs for authenticity. It was first used twenty years ago to stage Brook's Mahabharata, which utilized the natural features to the full, with earth and fire and water, and ended with the first light of dawn. The nature of the theatrical spaces used during the festival is crucial to the success of the production. These are open air productions in 'found spaces' and, as George Banu pointed out during one of the discussions, those productions that have achieved a considerable measure of critical acclaim and audience response have used the space as a facet of the production rather than working against it or ignoring it. Nadj echoes these sentiments about the cour d'honneur and Jan Lauwers about the Cloître des Celestins. The first mistake was to programme this production, already performed elsewhere, in the Carrière de Boulbon. It felt all wrong; it was inauthentic; immediately one had a sense of pretension. Nor did I find anything metaphysical about the sound, the language, or the voices. Rather, the actors sounded to me to be resolutely bombastic; the natural rhythm of the language seemed to have been deliberately disrupted to no obvious effect. Pushkin's original was a verse narrative and I don't understand the need to disrupt the pattern of the poetry as it is not the rhythm of everyday speech. Nor did I find in it any of the qualities one associates with chanting. I was with a Russian-Canadian academic who was equally perplexed and disappointed. Mozart and Salieri strutted annoyingly around the stage engaged in verbal niceties: in this version they are apparently great mates. A chamber orchestra of clownish ragtag musicians, like a collection of vagabonds, wearing mismatched costumes assembled from various attics and jumble sales, played some nice music while the heroes of the piece bantered, postured and strutted a bit more or simply sat there listening and smiling. The orchestra could have been an interesting addition to the visual elements and carry some signification, but seemed to be entirely meaningless and their entrances, all staged singularly, with personal luggage or baggage, seemed to take forever. It skewed the pacing of the narrative entirely. Occasionally there was an appearance from a strange figure partly dressed in armour, but otherwise modern shirt, trousers, shoes and brown bowler, making strange stylized movements: what he was intended to represent is anyone's guess. One again, this enigmatic figure could have been engaging, but seemed a bit clumsy, especially as his strange pattern of movements were constricted by the requirements of the set. Instead of engaging my imagination with the illusion, I was wondering if he was going to get through that door without loosing balance. In the second part (though there was no intermission) Mozart and Salieri dined in a plexiglass enclosure at a table laid out in pristine white and steel and glass, while a full choir of about thirty people sang a requiem by Vladimir Martynov -- ad infinitum it seemed. The problem wasn't the music but the staging, and we musn't forget that theatre is for watching as well. This choir might be meaningfully attired for a Russian audience, but here in Avignon they looked like their costumes were on loan from the historical costume department of a silent movie studio. The ladies wore, in both costume and demeanour, something like a cross between ecclesiastical retro and pre-Raphaelite sweetness. The men where variously dressed as mediaeval monks with cowls and all, and some other rather clichéd ecclesiastical retro. They sat around singing on various parts of the set, neatly arranged, moved around in procession, still singing and carrying various large candles, flowers, branches and ecclesiastical paraphernalia, and did some twee little dance steps. It was toe-cringingly awful…and it went on and on and on as I wondered whether I'd manage to get the first bus back to Avignon at 1am, watched the moths attracted to the spotlights and a couple of deranged pigeons, obviously as perplexed as I was by the venture, flapping around and alighting on the rig. I was thoroughly relieved when Mozart quaffed the poisoned wine. The biggest surprise of the evening was that Salieri, horrified that Mozart had drained the glass, shouted something which seemed to translate in the French surtitles as 'Not without me'. It seemed that he intended to accompany Mozart on his journey to the netherworld. It is difficult to know how to respond to a cultural product from another region which differs in taste so much from one's own. One should try to understand, and I usually do try very hard to get to grips with the event on all levels, metaphysical, spiritual, physical, and textual. From reading the programme notes it seems to me that Vassiliev has been aiming too high. He claims that he worked with the actor to achieve Mozart's special laughter, 'a "joyous" laughter, a "happy" laughter…an almost celestial joy'. A Russian critic refers to the 'ritualisation' of the second part: 'Mozart and Salieri remain throughout enclosed in their air bubble, a bubble that is bathed eternally in the sacred river of the Requiem composed by Vladimir Martyrnov.' (1) Sorry, but no, that's not what I experienced at all. Perhaps, this serves to prove that there is no such thing as universality even on the level of metaphysics and spirituality. (1) Anatoli Vassiliev and Natacha Isaeva (quoted from Théâtre/Publique, June 2006) in programme notes. >> Next page
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