PARIS — Some performances come at just the right time. On Monday, the French author Virginie Despentes was greeted with a roar when she stepped onstage at the Théâtre Bobino for “Viril,” a performance that was part rock concert, part feminist monologues. After Roman Polanski’s triumph three days earlier at the César Awards, France’s equivalent of the Oscars, Despentes had just published a furious opinion piece in the French newspaper Libération — under the headline “From Now On, We Get Up and We Leave” — and the youthful crowd was clearly on her side.
The contrast with the chill that had descended during the Césars ceremony spoke to a deep rift in the French arts world. Led by Adène Haenel, a handful of actors and directors walked out after Polanski, who has been accused of sexual assault by multiple women, was named best director. (Polanski denies the accusations.) In her piece, Despentes pointed the finger at French cinema’s disregard for gender inequality, writing that “the real message is: Nothing must change.”
French theater, which shares many artists with the film industry, has some of the same problems. Yet audiences can vote with their wallets. Alongside “Viril,” which was presented for one night only as part of the “Paroles Citoyennes” festival, a number of female-led productions are currently among the best nights out in Paris, and bring diverse characters — mythical, historical and contemporary — to the fore.
Take away the period setting and some scenes from Catherine Anne’s “I Dreamed the Revolution” (“J’ai Rêvé la Révolution”) could easily belong in the collection of feminist texts in “Viril.” Performed at the Théâtre de l’Epée de Bois, the play was inspired by the 18th-century writer Olympe de Gouges, whose political pamphlets were influential during the French Revolution and who advocated women’s rights, even publishing a “Declaration of the Rights of Woman.”
Anne — who wrote the text, co-directed with Françoise Fouquet and plays the role of Gouges — focuses on the activist’s final months. Gouges was arrested in 1793, at the time of the Terror that followed the Revolution, and sentenced to the guillotine. Many former revolutionaries lost their lives along with Gouges because of political disagreements with the new regime, and “I Dreamed the Revolution” explores that bloody period. In the play, the mother of the young guard tasked with watching Gouges becomes fascinated with her, and covertly gives her a key to escape.
Anne captures the openhearted, infectious confidence in justice that leads Gouges to refuse the offer. Opposite her, the guard (Pol Tronco), who childishly believes his superiors, and his illiterate mother (Luce Mouchel) grapple with moral dilemmas about political loyalty and women’s role in social movements, in scenes that take place almost entirely in the family’s home and in Gouges’s cell, divided only by a screen onstage.
A final, didactic excursion into the present — featuring two contemporary characters who tell us about Gouges’s importance — feels forced, but the rest of “I Dreamed the Revolution” is sharply written and to the point.
Not that female directors should be expected to bring only overtly feminist stories to the stage. The lovers of “Pelléas et Mélisande” have a timeless quality, like the medieval legend of Tristan and Isolde, which the playwright, Maurice Maeterlinck, drew on heavily. His play, which premiered in 1893, is less often seen these days than the opera that Claude Debussy based on it, but the director Julie Declos has come up with a convincingly graceful production at the Théâtre de l’Odéon.
The challenge lies in Maeterlinck’s symbolist style, which resists psychological realism at every turn in favor of evasive dialogue and sibylline details. A prince, Golaud, happens upon Mélisande in a forest. She is lost, and there is a crown at her feet, which she begs Golaud to leave behind. Where does she come from? What happened to her? The two characters promptly marry, and we never find out.
The central, forbidden love story, between Mélisande and Golaud’s brother, Pelléas, is hardly even articulated. When they first meet, she simply loses her wedding ring in a fountain — a silent acknowledgment that the wheels of their doomed relationship have been set in motion.
Declos directs with restraint, working hard to sustain Maeterlinck’s dreamlike tension. The initial encounter in the forest is filmed and projected on a screen, and Golaud and Pelléas’s family castle is represented by a mostly empty two-tier set. Light is a central symbol in the text, and Mathilde Chamoux’s shadowy lighting leaves the lovers nearly in the dark at key moments — a counterintuitive yet effective choice.
It is refreshing, too, to see the cast strip back the stereotypical gestures of onstage romance and aim for stillness. Looking apathetic is rarely a quality onstage, but Alix Riemer, as Mélisande, manages to project detachment without being bland. She seems to grasp her love for Pelléas, played by Matthieu Sampeur, only at the last possible moment, and after Golaud kills him, she convincingly suppresses any memories of the event. Regardless, she dies of a broken heart.
Similarly, realism isn’t the goal in Elsa Granat and Roxane Kasperski’s new play, “V.I.T.R.I.O.L,” which just had its premiere at the Théâtre de la Tempête. In it, the playwrights map the warped inner world of a man in the throes of a mental health crisis as he summons other characters — his ex-girlfriend, her new boyfriend and three musicians — to spar with or support him.
The first half of the 90-minute production, which Granat also directed, is as captivating as it is strange. Olivier Werner, who plays the nameless central character with a sense of manic despair, initially appears to show up at his ex-girlfriend’s door, much to her distress. But he also controls her and her new partner like puppets at times: A table onstage is set with figurines that represent them, and whenever Werner shakes or throws them, the actors wobble and fall, too.
This device renders every scene brilliantly unpredictable, as the cast alternates between believable domestic drama and absurd physical theater. “V.I.T.R.I.O.L” is a portrait of Werner’s restless mind, and resourcefully mimics its fits and start.
The second half doesn’t quite build on that promise, unfortunately, in part because it sidelines the female character (a playful performance by Kasperski) in favor of an emphasis on theory, as the men discuss excerpts from radio interviews with psychology experts. The relationships “V.I.T.R.I.O.L” sets up may be imaginary, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t reach a meaningful conclusion.
Granat, who is also an actor, is still relatively new to stage direction; she can certainly build on this idiosyncratic offering. As France fights over old narratives, it’s worth remembering that women are writing new stories.
Viril. Directed by David Bobée. Festival “Paroles Citoyennes”/Théâtre Bobino. Further performances in Rouen, May 12-16, and at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, July 1.
J’ai Rêvé la Révolution. Directed by Catherine Anne and Françoise Fouquet. Théâtre de l’Epée de Bois, through March 8.
Pelléas et Mélisande. Directed by Julie Duclos. Odéon – Théâtre de l’Europe, through March 21.
V.I.T.R.I.O.L. Directed by Elsa Granat. Théâtre de la Tempête, through March 29.
Source: Theater - nytimes.com
