A legend on the street ****
Théâtre de la Huchette (Paris 5) until January 30, and Comédie Nation (Paris 11) in February. 1:20 am
Who was Sakine Cansiz, Kurdish activist murdered in Paris in January 2013? Ten years after this drama, never elucidated, it is in the theater where the question resonates today. Florence Huige, author and actress of this captivating single on stage, had unknowingly met the fighter just before her tragic disappearance: she, then anonymous, had told her about torture, combat, imprisonment, defiance , said he was receiving death threats. But, oddly enough, that day, he was on the street, perhaps homeless. And the actress had found him delirious, which is even more strange with his orange hair… In the end, who is delirious? From this inextricable story, confronting her condition as a witness to chance with that of the heroine of an entire town, Florence Huige has extracted this incisive and highly instructive show. Sown with uncertainties, it raises a lot of questions about these wars in the Middle East that, from Daesh, have spread to Europe.
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Retracing aloud the research she carried out with the Kurds of Paris after the murder of Sakine Cansiz, the actress recounts an invisible and forgotten people. It challenges, in passing, his Westerner’s gaze suddenly overcome by reality, forced to admit his ignorance. With just the right amount of humor and self-mockery, the haunting music of bouzouk player Issa Hassan as a counterpoint, a little gem of documentary theatre. A.C
A month in the field *
Théâtre de l’Athénée (Paris 9), until February 4. 2:15 am
Four years after Alain Françon, it’s Clément Hervieu-Léger’s turn to seize Tourgueniev’s famous pre-Chekovian work in Michel Vinaver’s very beautiful translation. There is a waltz of feelings, in a summer, where each of the characters hides their game before showing their cards and declaring their impossible love. In the center of this captivating tumult, Natalia Petrovna falls in love with the handsome Alexei, whose only fault is dangerously sympathizing, in her eyes, with the very fresh and marriageable Verochka… But before that, she herself she declared more than a friend of her beloved Rakitin, a friend of her husband.
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To this overwhelming weather vane, Clémence Boué lends the agitation of a borrowed, nice, unloved but quickly annoying bourgeoisie, with this somewhat unequivocal way of highlighting each of her movements and therefore the cruelty of class differences, loneliness, dissatisfaction. Apart from a kind of forced liveliness that infects all the actors, we don’t really see what this staging brings in its clean and chic style perhaps, but weak in vision and relief. The first part seems boring while the work is so beautiful… The second, more animated, is worth the energy of the troupe and the charm of some of the actors such as Juliette Léger, Daniel San Pedro, Louis Berthélémy, and of course Mireille Roussel and Jean-Noël Brouté, even if their appearances are fleeting. A.C
Source : Le JDD
