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Paris
Theatre Diary
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January 2006 There's been a marked display of "average" on show this month in Paris. One might see this as an improvement over the capital's standard fare of "awful" and "please never again". But being dreadful is at least some kind of an achievement.
Take for example Emmanuel Demercy-Mota's 2004 staging of Ionesco's Rhinocéros, revived this month at the Théâtre de la Ville.
The precisely constructed ensemble work of the opening scenes promised much. As the offstage rhinos hurtled past, waves of panic overcame the 14-strong cast - the mere crash of a falling bicycle provoking chaos. In the second scene, banal office politics became the conduits for acts of playground-like brutality.
And with the rhinos re-imagined as Munch-like spectres, Ionesco's anti-Nazi parable became a neo-capitalist nightmare. Individuals metamorphosed into bland consumers - conformist zombies devouring all in their path.
But for all its clever ideas and polished set-pieces, it was a production entirely lacking in balls.
Like most of the principal actors, Serge Maggiani as Bérenger was uncharismatic and limp-wristed to say the least. Ionesco's unlikely hero may only commit to saving humanity at the play's end, but that certainly gives him no right to bore us for nigh on two hours before this.
Outside of Demarcy-Mota's group orchestration the rest of the cast didn't manage much better. Like Leicester City under Martin O'Neill, organisational skills succeeded where great individual talent fell short. But theatre needs personality, spirit, excitement. Not a bunch of well drilled journey-men heading for mid-table obscurity.
Worse though came in the shape of Marius von Mayenburg's suburban satire Eldorado.
Directed by the German Thomas Ostermeier, it was a play less written, more pieced together from a Tesco Value "Contrived-Play-Kit". One overdone premise (capitalism is bad); a startling unoriginal plot device (husband tries to conceal loss of job from wife by leaving for the "office" every morning); a clichéd and over-wrought climax (husband seeks nearest rope and strong branch as alternative to the truth); all finished off with the "touching" coda in which said husband returns from the dead (in vest and y-fronts) to console wife (also in equally unappealing underwear).
Total disaster was avoided by strong performances from the cast of six. But why stage such rubbish in the first place?
A question mark must also hang over bringing the Iranian troupe Siah Bazi to the Théâtre du Soleil.
Eighteen months ago, the group's theatre in Tehran was shut down by the Islamic authorities. Prior to the show, an emotionally laden documentary by the Iranian Maryam Khakipour charted the plight of the venue's actors and musicians since. As one regular lamented, "Before, I worked in a theatre, now I drive minicabs."
Seeing the vanquished troupe emerge proudly onto the stage after the film was an inspiring moment. It's a shame then that their performance didn't provoke the same feelings.
A trite, pantomime like affair, Saadi, agence de gaieté, peddled an un-amusing and frankly tired brand of slapstick humour. Indeed, its unimaginative plot-line and hackneyed characters made the Carry-On films look positively sophisticated.
Perhaps the troupe could never have competed with the drama of their own struggles, so movingly depicted in Khakipour's film. But even in Iran theirs is not a unique story. Surely there are more deserving cases.
It's perhaps strange then that a self-styled "sci-fi musical comedy ecological fable" was this month's pick. But Philippe Quesne's D'après Nature was a charming exercise in on-stage silliness.
A group of tree-hugging vegetarian types and a dog gather together, their aim to journey to the earth's upper atmosphere and repair the damaged ozone layer. The text is rarely spoken - instead surtitled dialogue is projected above the actors as they inaudibly mumble. One individual persuades his fellow voyagers into making a human reconstruction of Bruegel's Parable of the Blind. Others play campfire music, go digging for vegetables or make space helmets.
The show's appeal lay in its total unpredictability and refreshing lack of self-importance. If events looked to be getting too serious, the group's dog was guaranteed to down the tone by inappropriate licking at the front of the stage. As the cast arrived in the stratosphere they hid in the theatre's wings and played idiotic country and western songs.
Quesne's is a serious message about man's intransigence in the face of impending ecological disaster, but at no time does he ram this message down our throats. Although they hardly ever spoke, his characters were real, absurd, lovable; far more enthralling than anything in Demarcy-Mota or Ostermeier's highly polished productions.
Indeed, the real problem with these "well-made" shows is their total lack of ambition. They lack fantasy, surprise, imagination. They do nothing to spirit us from the mundane to the sublime. More than any theatrical turkeys, these exquisitely wrapped bores are the real nails in theatre's coffin.
Reporter: John Cardale
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