‘Bérénice’ Review: Crushed by Isabelle Huppert’s Star Power

The Isabelle Huppert vehicle is a curious subgenre of French theater. At this point, its ingredients have grown predictable: They include a high-profile male director, like Robert Wilson or Ivo van Hove; a prestigious playhouse; and a central role that casts Huppert as a woman teetering on the edge of reason.

Huppert, 70, has adhered to this formula in a diverse set of plays in recent years, from Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” to Tennessee Williams’s “The Glass Menagerie,” and, in New York, Florian Zeller’s “The Mother.” She was the focal point in all of these, but this season’s entry, a “Bérénice” directed by Romeo Castellucci at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, goes much further.

The production does away with any pretense that it is about more than its star. Castellucci and Huppert have equal billing in all publicity material, down to the ticket stubs, and Huppert’s name is literally embroidered into the curtains that frame the stage. Some of the sentences that adorn them are barely legible because of the fabric’s creases, but one of them, a quote from a playbill interview with Castellucci, describes Huppert as “the synecdoche of theater.”

Under the circumstances, don’t expect to actually hear much of “Bérénice,” a 1670 tragedy by Jean Racine that is widely considered one of the greatest plays in French. For starters, most of the characters have fallen by the wayside. Huppert is the only performer who speaks, delivering Racine’s alexandrine verse to an empty stage — or, in one scene, to a washing machine.

Racine’s play offers a classic choice between love and duty: Titus, who is about to become the emperor of Rome, lives with Bérénice, the queen of Judaea. Custom dictates that a foreigner cannot become empress, however, and Titus renounces their love, leaving Bérénice shattered.

Here, a silent, model-like Titus, played by Cheikh Kébé, hardly crosses paths with Bérénice. (Imagine being cast as Huppert’s love interest and only looking her in the eyes during the curtain calls.) Kébé only materializes for a few wordless scenes, along with Giovanni Manzo as Antiochus, a close friend of Titus’s who is also in love with Bérénice.