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    Review: In Milo Rau’s ‘120 Days of Sodom,’ Sadism Gets in the Way

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    The provocations in Milo Rau’s stage adaptation, featuring actors with Down syndrome, confuse the production as it grapples with weighty issues.Is anything even shocking on a stage anymore? Simulated rape, coprophilia and torture all feature heavily in Milo Rau’s “The Last Generation, or the 120 Days of Sodom,” a theater production starring actors with Down syndrome that opened Saturday at the Théâtre de Liège, in Belgium.The show was inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini’s brutal 1975 film “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom,” in which a group of libertines inflicts sadistic acts on imprisoned young people, and the point, presumably, is to get a reaction from the audience. But the torments inflicted on the characters feel like an annoyance rather than a meaningful transgression in this day and age, and stand in the way of a work that actually has much more to say.Rau, a high-profile Swiss director who is now at the helm of Vienna’s prestigious Wiener Festwochen festival, is certainly adept at showing and contextualizing extreme violence. Just in recent years, he has recreated the violent murder of a gay man in Belgium (in “La Reprise — Histoire(s) du Théâtre (I)”); the collective suicide of a family of four (in “Familie”); and the massacre of farmers in Brazil (in “Antigone in the Amazon”).Yet while these stage works were based on real events, “The Last Generation” delves into fictional barbarity. Pasolini’s film was an adaptation of the Marquis de Sade’s 18th-century novel, transposed to Italy at the end of the second world war. The torture party became a metaphor for the twilight of Mussolini’s Fascist regime.In Rau’s reinterpretation, he has opted to work with Theater Stap, a Belgium-based professional company of actors with learning disabilities. (A previous iteration of “The Last Generation,” in 2017, featured Theater Hora, a similar Swiss ensemble.)Alongside 10 Stap performers, four actors without Down syndrome play their persecutors. As often with Rau, commentary is woven into recreations of scenes from “Salò.” The cast members discuss their feelings about Down syndrome, violence and Pasolini’s film. (One admits sheepishly that the movie made her laugh.)Jacqueline Bollen, Robert Hunger-Bühler and Koen de Sutter play three of the four persecutors in the production.Dominique HoucmantIn many ways, this setup lessens the effect of the violence. The Pasolini scenes only form a portion of “The Last Generation” and are often set on a small stage within the stage. At other moments, the perpetrators become outwardly protective of their castmates with Down syndrome, taking them by the arm to move around the stage, or interview them about their personal lives.Their answers, in some cases, are then stitched together with moments from Pasolini. After Gitte Wens and Gert Wellens, two Stap members, discuss their real-life relationship, an actor asks them to be intimate. Then, as they lie on a bed, they are pulled apart and shot, as happens in “Salò.”The idea of casting performers with learning disabilities as torture victims has caused debate in the Belgian media. In interviews, Stap’s members have insisted on their agency in the process of making the show and their desire to do more than feel-good productions. They are obviously gifted performers, and deserve to tell the stories they want to tell.What is less clear is whether the story of “120 Days of Sodom” really serves Rau’s purpose, and theirs. A key theme throughout is how genetic testing is leading to the slow disappearance of people with Down syndrome. According to the play, nine out of 10 couples who receive a prenatal Down diagnosis in Belgium opt for an abortion. Rau posits that as a result, the actors onstage may be part of a “last generation.”One of the non-Down actors, Koen De Sutter, is tasked with delivering a monologue inspired by the story of a man who chose, with his partner, not to have a child with the condition, and harbors some regrets.The torture portion of the evening doesn’t shed much light on this delicate issue, and it is a tricky proposition within the constraints of theater. Are scenes in which actors pretend to rape each other and eat excrement any worse than what can be found in a handful of clicks on pornography websites? What reaction are stage depictions of scalping and eye-gouging, performed using prosthetics, supposed to elicit at a time when social media is full of actual filmed violence?In an interview for the Théâtre de Liège, Rau said that his goal was to comment on societal decline today, especially the quest for physical perfection and what he called “Belgian fascism.” In “The Last Generation,” there are pointed digs at the political history of Belgium, where Rau was based from 2018 until this summer as director of the playhouse NTGent. “We were all collaborators — maybe the best in Europe,” an actor says early on about Belgians in World War II, triggering slightly shocked whispers from the audience.Yet “The Last Generation” is vague about what fascism means today, and doesn’t connect the dots between Belgian politics, “The 120 Days of Sodom” and decisions to abort fetuses with Down syndrome. Many scenes are powerful and intriguing on their own: “I hate Down’s,” one Stap actor screams repeatedly at one point, while throwing food to the floor. I would have liked to know more — ideally without having to watch a performer fake-pee on a colleague’s face.The Last Generation, or the 120 Days of SodomTouring theaters in Belgium through Dec. 21; ntgent.de. More

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      ‘Antigone in the Amazon’ Review: The Drama Is Brazil’s Land War

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      The Swiss director Milo Rau drapes a traumatic episode of Brazilian history with a Greek tragedy on a Belgian stage.GHENT, Belgium — You can’t say the Swiss theater director Milo Rau doesn’t practice what he preaches. Art and activism are deeply intertwined in his work: As part of his “trilogy of ancient myths,” he rehearsed and filmed part of an adaptation of Aeschylus’ “Oresteia” in Iraq in 2019. In the next installment, “The New Gospel,” inspired by the life of Jesus, he staged a film, using refugees in Matera, Italy.For the third project, “Antigone in the Amazon,” Rau has turned his focus to Brazil and the Marxist-inspired Landless Workers Movement in which farmers have been occupying unworked fields and growing crops there.Last month, Rau and actors from NTGent theater in Belgium helped Brazilian activists re-enact the murder of 19 of these farmers, in 1996, by a military police unit. This action, at the site of the massacre on the Trans-Amazonian Highway, became a national talking point in Brazil.That’s all before any part of “Antigone in the Amazon” reached the stage. The play had its premiere on Saturday at NTGent, where audience members were greeted by politically-inspired banners in the theater lobby. On each seat was a copy of the “Declaration of 13 May,” a new manifesto against the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and “neoliberal green-washing,” signed by a long list of intellectuals and activists.Arriving after so much political action, the play feels like an afterthought. Watching its four actors narrate the history of Rau’s project and the making of the re-enactment, aided by ample video footage shot in Brazil, it often looked as if the production was a mere repackaging of the events that led to its staging.Not that it isn’t well-crafted. Over his term at NTGent, Rau, who will depart later this year to become the artistic director of the Wiener Festwochen, has perfected the art of bringing real events onstage, by laying bare the process and inviting audience members to think along. In “Antigone in the Amazon,” two Flemish actors from NTGent, Sara De Bosschere and Arne De Tremerie, address the audience at regular intervals, explaining the tricky process of making the show and the ethical issues it raised.At one point, they are shown onscreen performing a scene from “Antigone” for the residents of a remote Amazonian village, who sit in a circle around them. De Tremerie then comes forward to reflect on the experience. He talks about the sense of privilege he couldn’t shake while he was there, and the risk of leaning into “a guilt complex disguised as activism.”This is a welcome bit of self-reflection, since Rau is sometimes at risk of leaning into the figure of the white savior. The first part of his trilogy, “Orestes in Mosul,” felt especially grating in that regard: In it, survivors of war in Iraq revisited trauma through fictional scenes involving murder, yet they were unable to travel to meet the audiences watching them in Ghent or Paris — a situation that left me wondering exactly who or what I was clapping for.I occasionally wondered the same thing about “Antigone in the Amazon.” Still, it is a more balanced, effective production than “Orestes.” Two Brazilian performers, Frederico Araujo and Pablo Casella, join the Flemish cast onstage. A third, the Indigenous activist Kay Sara, was supposed to join them and play Antigone, but we are told early in the show that she had “decided to go back home, with her people.”Instead, in addition to other roles, the charismatic Araujo plays a gender-fluid Antigone, the Greek heroine who opposes her uncle Creon, the ruler of Thebes, when he decrees that her brother Polynices won’t be buried or mourned after his death on the battlefield. Only a handful of scenes from the classic tragedy are featured in Rau’s play, all in service of the production’s metaphor: The Landless Workers Movement is Antigone, rising up against injustice.The Indigenous philosopher Ailton Krenak as Tiresias. Some scenes are performed live onstage, while others feature actors who were filmed in Brazil.Kurt van der ElstSome scenes are performed live onstage; others feature Brazilians like the Indigenous philosopher Ailton Krenak (as Tiresias), who were filmed. The level of emotion that emanates from the screen often makes more of an impact than the stage action: The actress Célia Maracajà’s quiet dignity is breathtaking when she appears as Eurydice, Creon’s wife. Even the dirt that covers the nearly bare stage, to match the setting of many scenes in Brazil, feels like a prop compared to the vividness of the film.Many in Ghent rose to their feet at the end of “Antigone in the Amazon.” Yet even then, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to review. In writing about this play, am I actually being led to evaluate the ideals of the Landless Workers Movement? Or a re-enactment that took place in Brazil, in a social context few in Europe know anything about?The question isn’t unique to Rau: Whether you agree with the vision of the world that underpins a piece of theater tends to impact your appreciation of it. Yet in some of Rau’s productions, the political messaging is the point. Reviewing them feels like being asked to rate their inherent “goodness.” Who, with any empathy at all, would pan Indigenous activists saying lines from “Antigone” into Rau’s sympathetic cameras?While political theater, as a genre, has a tendency to speechify about sociopolitical issues from the safety of the stage, Rau at least gets up close to his subjects. In that sense, I reflected after the applause had died down, “Antigone in the Amazon” actually feels more like long-form journalism than theater. Drawing on extensive research, Rau distills historical facts, commentary and anecdotes, sets up compelling scenes and characters, all to educate his audience; even “Antigone” feels like the metaphor a shrewd writer might use to describe a just struggle against an inequitable system.But we don’t typically review a reporter’s work as art. In putting this strand of political theater onstage, Rau is, simply, reporting effectively.Antigone in the AmazonThrough June 10 at NTGent, and on tour in Europe; ntgent.be. More

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      The Best (and Worst) Theater in Europe in 2022

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      The Times’s three European theater critics pick their favorite productions of the year — plus a turkey apiece for the festive season.Matt WolfFour favorites from The Times’s London theater criticFrom left, Samira Wiley, Ronke Adekoluejo, Sule Rimi and Giles Terera in “Blues for an Alabama Sky” at the National Theater.Marc Brenner“Blues for an Alabama Sky”National Theater, LondonWhen the American writer Pearl Cleage’s 1995 play crossed the Atlantic this fall, it was the high point of a variable year for the National Theater, England’s flagship playhouse. Set in adjacent apartments in 1930s Harlem, the play takes an unsparing look at a cross section of Prohibition-era Americans yearning for release from the racism and homophobia that mar their daily lives. An expert Anglo-American cast was led by Giles Terera (“Hamilton”) and the Juilliard-trained TV actress Samira Wiley as roommates who talk of packing up and moving to Paris; at the helm was Lynette Linton, making a terrific National Theater debut with a production that embraced freewheeling comedy as well as deep sorrow.Daniel Fish and Jordan Fein’s reimagining of “Oklahoma!” at the Young Vic.Marc Brenner“Oklahoma!”Young Vic Theater, LondonIt was an indifferent year for musicals in London, until the arrival from New York of a much-lauded revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1943 “Oklahoma!” The dilemma of the farm girl Laurey Williams (a dazzling Anoushka Lucas), forced to choose between the affections of two men, possessed an unusual urgency. And the directors Daniel Fish and Jordan Fein found a primal darkness in the material that made a buoyant-seeming American classic look very bleak. In February, the production is set to transfer to the West End for a limited run.From left, Emilia Clarke, Indira Varma, Daniel Monks and Tom Rhys Harries in Anya Reiss’s interpretation of Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” directed by Jamie Lloyd at the Harold Pinter Theater.Marc Brenner“The Seagull”Harold Pinter Theater, LondonThe director Jamie Lloyd revived Chekhov’s 1896 play in a stripped-back, modern-dress production, with the cast seated on plastic chairs against a nondescript chipboard set. The absence of props and period detail helped focus attention on the anguish at the heart of this celebrated work. You felt, more acutely than ever, the thwarted passions that drive a play about artistic ambition and misplaced love. Indira Varma was in peak form as the charismatically self-regarding actress, Arkadina, and she was superbly matched by the Australian actor Daniel Monks as her suicidal son, Konstantin. The “Game of Thrones” alumna Emilia Clarke made a memorable West End debut as the hopeful young Nina.Lennie James, left, and Paapa Essiedu in Caryl Churchill’s “A Number,” directed by Lyndsey Turner at the Old Vic.Manuel Harlan“A Number”Old Vic Theater, LondonCaryl Churchill’s 2002 play has been revived many times, but rarely with the scorching intensity that the director Lyndsey Turner and the designer Es Devlin brought to bear at the Old Vic in January. Nominally about genetic cloning, Churchill’s hourlong drama moves beyond scientific inquiry to address more human issues, like sibling hatred and the slippery nature of happiness. In the superlative cast, Paapa Essiedu excelled playing three cloned sons who confront a toxic parental inheritance, as did Lennie James as a father who wants to make a fresh start.And the turkey …From left, David Harbour, Bill Pullman and Akiya Henry in Theresa Rebeck’s “Mad House,” directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel at the Ambassadors Theater.Marc Brenner“Mad House”Ambassadors Theater, LondonDysfunctional family dramas are a staple of American drama. But they rarely come drearier and more overwritten than Theresa Rebeck’s “Mad House,” which had its world premiere in the West End this summer. Rebeck, a New York theater regular, gave the play’s choice role to a fellow American, David Harbour; he played one of three children gathered at the home of a cantankerous father (Bill Pullman) roaring his way to the grave like a dime-store King Lear. The writing felt borrowed and inauthentic, and the director Moritz von Stuelpnagel couldn’t lift an evening rife with tired confessions (“none of us had a childhood”) and clichéd plot devices (the belated emergence of an all-important letter). More than once, I groaned.Laura CappelleFour favorites from The Times’s Paris theater criticRomeu Costa, left, and Rui M. Silva in “Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists” at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord.Filipe Ferreira“Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists”Bouffes du Nord, ParisTiago Rodrigues, the incoming director of the Avignon Festival, was on a roll in 2022. He brought several revelatory productions to Paris this fall, none more so than “Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists” at the Bouffes du Nord. The unlikely subject of the play, which Rodrigues also wrote, is a fictional Portuguese family that hunts down and kills fascists, following a tradition passed down through generations. Is that an honorable contribution to society, as most of the family members believe, or is doing harm always unacceptable, even when fascists threaten democracy? Rodrigues and his cast walk a fine line to avoid caricature, yet the conversations that result onstage — starting with the youngest daughter, who experiences doubts about her right to kill — are consistently thoughtful and engage the audience critically, without feeling forced.The cast in “One Song,” developed by the Belgian artist Miet Warlop.Christophe Raynaud de Lage/Avignon Festival “One Song”Avignon FestivalSome of the best shows to debut in France in the past year brought unclassifiable feats of virtuosity onstage, like “One Song,” which played at the Avignon Festival. Created by the Belgian artist Miet Warlop, it was another idiosyncratic entry in the “History/ies of Theater” series that the Belgian playhouse NTGent has developed in collaboration with the festival. In “One Song,” a group of musicians/competitors perform a single song on a loop while doing an extreme workout. (A violinist plays while doing squats and leg lifts on a high beam.) Throughout, as the performers thoroughly exhaust themselves, a male cheerleader and a group of fans take turns encouraging and booing them, while a referee mumbles incomprehensibly in the background. The instant standing ovation in Avignon wasn’t merely a way to reward the performers for their efforts: “One Song” lingered in the mind as a wild, exhilarating study in absurdity.Pierre Guillois and Olivier Martin-Salvan in “Fat People Skate Well. A Cardboard Caberet.”Gestuelle“Fat People Skate Well. A Cardboard Cabaret”Paris l’Été FestivalAnother oddball success, “Fat People Skate Well. A Cardboard Cabaret” won a number of awards in France this year, and they were thoroughly deserved. The show’s two actors and directors, Olivier Martin-Salvan and Pierre Guillois, tell their story almost entirely through dozens of cardboard objects. Words written on the signs and boxes, of various shapes and forms, explain what each represents — including a “fjord” and a “fly swatter” — and with the help of assistants, Guillois, a lithe, clownlike figure, in boxer shorts throughout, manipulates them at lightning speed. In the tale he spins, Martin-Salvan’s character goes on an adventure around Europe to reconnect with a siren, all the while mumbling in a mix of gibberish and English. How does this all add up, you ask? The duo’s fantasy world coheres thanks to extraordinary stagecraft in this “cardboard cabaret,” and the result is serious theater magic.Juliette Speck as Caster Semenya, the South African runner and Olympic gold medalist, in “Free Will,” directed by Julie Bertin at the Théâtre Dunois. Simon Gosselin“Free Will”Théâtre Dunois, ParisTheaters that cater to young people often fly under the critical radar. With Léa Girardet and Julie Bertin’s “Free Will,” however, the Théâtre Dunois in Paris landed a hit for all ages. This new play explored the life of the South African runner Caster Semenya, an Olympic gold medalist caught in a long-running fight with her sport’s governing body — and repeatedly banned from competition — because of elevated testosterone levels. Girardet and Bertin, two gifted young writers and directors, depict the frequently inhuman treatment of Semenya (the excellent Juliette Speck) with instructive clarity, weaving together verbatim excerpts from court proceedings and witty spoofs of femininity standards that even top athletes are forced to abide by.And the turkey …From left, Julien Frison, Denis Podalydès and Christophe Montenez at the Comédie-Française in “Tartuffe,” directed by Ivo van Hove.Jan Versweyveld“Tartuffe”Comédie-Française, ParisThis “Tartuffe” was supposed to launch France’s yearlong celebration of Molière’s quadricentennial in style. Staged by Ivo van Hove for the Comédie-Française, a descendant of Molière’s own theater ensemble, it offered an intriguing experiment: a reconstruction of the play’s 1664 original version, censored by the French religious establishment and subsequently lost. Yet van Hove undermined it with a stultifying black-and-white production that had less to do with Molière than with his own directorial tics. The suited cast was left to wrestle with bewildering character arcs: When Tartuffe, who fakes piety to secure a position within a bourgeois family’s home, attempts to seduce the wife, Elmire, van Hove manufactured a love story between the two — leaving Marina Hands, as Elmire, to take Tartuffe’s abuse with puppy-eyed adoration. Thankfully, stronger Molière productions followed at the Comédie-Française later in the year.A.J. GoldmannFour favorites from The Times’s Berlin theater criticA scene in Claudia Bauer’s “humanistää!,” an exploration of texts by the experimental Austrian writer Ernst Jandl.Nikolaus Ostermann/Volkstheater “humanistää!”Volkstheater, ViennaThe director Claudia Bauer’s “humanistää!,” which premiered at the Volkstheater in Vienna in January and traveled to Berlin for Theatertreffen, the prestigious German theater festival, in May, is rightly one of the most acclaimed German-language productions of the year. This theatrical homage to the Viennese experimental poet and writer Ernst Jandl (1925-2000) is a musically supercharged and visually arresting work from one of Germany’s very best theater directors. Exuberant performances from the Volkstheater’s excellent actors are perfectly calibrated to this gleefully surreal production, in which 10 of Jandl’s key works come to eye-popping life in a Gesamtkunstwerk that combines spoken word, music, dance and pantomime. While delighting in Jandl’s linguistic games, the production, which remains in the Volkstheater’s repertoire, crackles with fresh and euphoric inventiveness. This is the one show I can’t wait to see again.The ensemble in “Oasis de la Impunidad” (“Oasis of Impunity”), directed by Marco Layera, at the Schaubühne’s Festival International for New Drama, or FIND.Gianmarco Bresadola“Oasis de la Impunidad”Schaubühne, BerlinThis show, from the Chilean director Marco Layera and his company, La Re-sentida, is brilliant but harrowing: I don’t ever want to revisit it. A coproduction between Berlin’s Schaubühne, where it premiered in April, and the Münchner Kammerspiele, the rigorously choreographed exploration of state violence is one of those extreme works of art that is all the more disturbing for the delicate artistry of its execution. Darkly comic in some places, poetic or balletic in others, this “investigation into the origins and mechanisms of violence,” to quote the program, feels like being trapped in a carnival of torture and brutality that is profoundly unsettling for the performers and spectators alike.“Crazy for Consolation,” directed by Thorsten Lensing.Armin Smailovic/Salzburg Festival“Verrückt nach Trost”Salzburg FestivalThorsten Lensing’s long-awaited follow-up to his 2018 adaptation of David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest” is possibly even more astonishing. In “Verrückt nach Trost” (“Crazy for Consolation”), which premiered at the Salzburg Festival, in Austria, in August, Lensing and his group of four brilliant actors achieve something close to a theatrical miracle. The lengthy and often surreal play, which revolves around an orphaned brother and sister who go through life craving love and human connection, is one of the most profoundly moving new plays I have seen in a long time. The work’s emotional impact has much to do with the finely chiseled performances of Ursina Lardi, Devid Striesow, André Jung and Sebastian Blomberg, who guide us through a long evening of unpredictable and incandescent episodes, including what is quite possibly the most moving monologue ever written for an octopus.The “Hamilton” cast in Hamburg.Johan Persson“Hamilton”Stage Operettenhaus, HamburgIn October, the German premiere of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Pulitzer- and Tony-winning musical, “Hamilton,” landed with volcanic force in Hamburg. The first production of the show in a language other than English, it was a herculean undertaking. The ingenious translation of Miranda’s abundant and inventive lyrics took four years, and the cast hails from 13 countries. Hard to believe, but the original Broadway production, directed by Thomas Kail, is already seven years old; if anything, this one seems galvanized by its new language and cultural context. There has never been a show like this before in Germany. From the dazzling linguistic feats of the translators to the convincing and handsome staging and gripping, Broadway-caliber performances, everything about “Hamilton” in Hamburg feels revolutionary.And the turkey …Christian Weise’s “Queen Lear” at the Maxim Gorki Theater.Ute Langkafel“Queen Lear”Maxim Gorki Theater, BerlinGermans love their Shakespeare, and Berlin has seen many fine stagings of the Bard’s work, both traditional and deconstructed. Christian Weise’s goofy sci-fi production of “Queen Lear” at the Maxim Gorki Theater is possibly the most bewildering Shakespeare reimagining ever conceived. The modern-language adaptation is by Soeren Voima, an authors’ collective, and it recasts Shakespeare’s darkest play as an outer-space soap opera with echoes of “Star Wars” and “Doctor Who.” The chintzy, low-budget aesthetic, the hammy acting and the lightsabers are all good, if mildly tedious, fun for the first hour. But hark! There are two more hours to go! The only thing this intergalactic spacewreck of a production proves is Lear’s maxim that“nothing will come of nothing.” More

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      Avignon Festival Gets Its Buzz Back

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      With striking premieres in the main program and enchanting discoveries on the supplementary Fringe, the eminent event in European theater is flourishing after some difficult years.AVIGNON, France — After two years of pandemic-related disruption, the Avignon Festival is well and truly back. As the event, a longtime highlight on the European theater calendar, got underway here last week, there were familiar sights everywhere. All around the small city center, buzzing crowds filled the streets, while blasé regulars zigzagged between performers handing out fliers for some 1,570 Fringe productions.That’s 500 more shows than last year, when the open-access Fringe — known as “le Off,” and running in parallel with the Avignon Festival’s official program, “le In” — attempted to find its feet again after the 2020 edition was canceled. While coronavirus cases are rising again this month in France, even masks have been few and far between in the Avignon heat.In the “In” lineup, one world premiere captured the boisterous mood better than any other. “One Song,” developed by the Belgian artist Miet Warlop at the Belgian playhouse NTGent, is loud, preposterous and extremely entertaining — if a little troubling. It requires superhuman feats from a group of musicians, dressed like sports competitors, who are alternately cheered on and screamed down by performers cast as zealous fans, in front of a mumbling referee.A double bassist plays his instrument horizontally while doing ab crunches; one of his colleagues must jump up and down to reach a keyboard set above his head. A metronome sets the often wild tempo for the production’s “one song,” composed by Maarten Van Cauwenberghe, which the group performs on a loop. It could hardly be more literal: Its opening lines are “Run for your life/’Til you die.”The cast in “One Song,” developed by the Belgian artist Miet Warlop.Christophe Raynaud de Lage/Avignon Festival Near the end of the performance I saw, the physical extremes that Warlop pushes her cast to execute became a little too real. A violinist who plays on a high beam, sometimes balancing on one leg, became disoriented after jumping off the beam and hit her head hard against it. Despite the concussion risk, she climbed back up and kept going, her face tight with pain.When the show ended with much of the cast collapsed from exhaustion, the instant standing ovation for the show was more than earned, yet it also felt like “The Hunger Games” for theater aficionados. Still, it is a classic Avignon production: ripe for debate long into the night.Other productions from the official lineup were less invigorating, but together they made for a respectable lap of honor for the Avignon Festival’s departing artistic leader, the French writer and director Olivier Py. His eight-year tenure has felt muddled, with quarrels about the event’s dearth of female directors and several ill-conceived premieres on Avignon’s biggest stages.That was especially true of productions at the open-air Cour d’Honneur, a majestic stage inside the city’s Papal Palace. This summer, however, Py corrected course with a high-profile and thought-provoking show, Kirill Serebrennikov’s “The Black Monk.”“The Black Monk” was first staged at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, Germany, in January, yet much has happened since. A message against a red backdrop during the play’s curtain calls at Avignon — “Stop War” — was a reminder of the conflict in Ukraine and Serebrennikov’s status as a high-profile Russian dissident, who was put under house arrest in Moscow in 2017 and prevented from traveling outside his native country for five years.Kirill Serebrennikov’s “The Black Monk.”Christophe Raynaud de Lage/Avignon Festival Not that war features in “The Black Monk,” which is based on an 1894 short story by Anton Chekhov. Despite its scale — four parts, a running time of nearly three hours and an expanded cast of 22 in Avignon — it is more personal than political in nature, and mainly focused on the descent of one man, Kovrin, into delusion and megalomania.Each part of the show focuses on a single character’s perspective. First there is Yegor, Kovrin’s childhood guardian; then Tanya, Yegor’s daughter, who marries Kovrin. He makes for a terrible husband, unsurprisingly, and in the third and fourth parts, his recurring hallucination — a black monk — takes over the stage as well as Kovrin’s mind.At the midway point, the structure starts to feel repetitive, and a few people walked out as a result. Yet Serebrennikov wisely pivots to a more operatic approach in the second half with a large chorus of singers and dancers, all in black monk’s cowls. The result aptly fills the expansive Cour d’Honneur stage and testifies to Serebrennikov’s obvious craft and passion for the characters, although the choreography remains too generic to fully carry the piece to its intended destination.On other stages, the mood was also bleak, as it often has been under Py. “Iphigenia,” staged at Avignon’s opera house, sneaked in a nod to Py’s successor, the Portuguese writer and director Thiago Rodrigues. The director, Anne Théron, opted for Rodrigues’s 2015 retelling of the myth of Iphigenia, sacrificed by the Greeks in exchange for the wind needed to carry them across the sea to Troy. It is a delicate, evocative version, told by characters who remember — or refuse to remember — the story even as it happens, as if the tragedy was bound to happen over and over again.Bashar Murkus’s “Milk.”Christophe Raynaud de Lage/Avignon FestivalChild sacrifice also features in Bashar Murkus’s “Milk,” albeit in a very different context. Murkus, a young Palestinian director based in Haifa, took maternal milk as a central metaphor for this wordless work about mourning mothers. The women onstage cradle mannequins, slowly then frenetically; milk flows from the fake breasts they wear, ultimately filling the stage. The result is full of arresting tableaux, despite a subpar musical score.For vibrant, energetic theater, however, the best bet remains to delve into the motley Fringe offerings. This year, for instance, nine companies from the French island of Réunion, in the Indian Ocean, banded together to present an invigorating mini-series of shows.David Erudel and Lolita Tergémina in “The Game of Love and Chance,” directed by Tergémina.Sébastien MarchalOne company, Sakidi, is performing Marivaux’s “The Game of Love and Chance,” a classic 18th-century French comedy, in the Creole language spoken on Réunion (with subtitles). Réunion Creole is very rarely heard on French stages, and this vivacious production by Lolita Tergémina, at the Chapelle du Verbe Incarné theater, suggests that is a shame. Since the language is heavily influenced by French, a lot of it is understandable without the subtitles, and the translation is full of images that make Marivaux feel fresh again.New French plays often come to Avignon for a trial run, too, and at a theater called 11, the playwright Jean-Christophe Dollé has landed a hit with “Phone Me.” This well-crafted intergenerational story revolves around what now feels like a 20th-century artifact, the phone booth. There are three onstage along with three central characters — a member of the French Resistance during World War II and her son and granddaughter, in the 1980s and 1990s — whose secrets converge in this unlikely setting.Amal Allaoui, left, and Alice Trocellier in “Tales of the Fairies,” directed by Aurore Evain.Mirza DurakovicAmong 1,570 shows, there is a special kind of delight in happening upon a gem like “Phone Me,” or “Tales of the Fairies,” a bright, family-friendly production at the Espace Alya. The director and scholar Aurore Evain is part of a French movement aiming to reclaim the legacy of forgotten female artists, and in Avignon, she has revived two fairy tales by the 17th-century writer Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy.On a pocket-size stage, at lunchtime on a Monday, Evain’s three actors and musicians brought a demanding queen, a kind prince and some very helpful animals to whimsical life. Call it a sprinkle of vintage Avignon fairy dust: There was certainly some in the air.Avignon Festival. Various venues, through July 26.Off d’Avignon. Various venues, through July 30. More

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      The Moment of Death, Live Onstage

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      The Swiss provocateur Milo Rau’s latest work explores the ethics of voluntary euthanasia with real footage of an assisted suicide.DOUAI, France — A serene woman greets the audience at “Grief & Beauty,” the Swiss theater director Milo Rau’s latest production. As spectators take their seats, she appears on a video screen above the stage, silent, in a red sweater and black-rimmed glasses. Then, minutes into the show, we learn that Johanna, as she is identified, died on Aug. 28 — by choice and in Belgium, where euthanasia is legal.Real footage of Johanna’s death is the macabre centerpiece of “Grief & Beauty,” the second installment in Rau’s “Trilogy of Private Life.” The first, “Familie,” recreated a family’s real-life collective suicide in eerie detail. Like “Familie,” “Grief & Beauty” had its premiere in Ghent, Belgium, where Rau is the artistic director of the NTGent theater. This month, the show traveled to Le Tandem, a playhouse in the northern French city of Douai. Further tour dates are scheduled in France and the Netherlands.“Grief & Beauty” flirts even more closely with the choice to die than “Familie.” Instead of turning the subject matter into a drama, Rau actually shows us the moment a lethal injection killed Johanna. Yet while she is the heart of “Grief & Beauty,” the production barely scratches the surface of her life.Voluntary euthanasia, which is legal in only a handful of countries, has become a subject of fascination for Europe’s experimental theatermakers in recent years. In 2018, the Belgian choreographer Alain Platel also filmed a dying woman and played the footage throughout his 100-minute work “Requiem for L.” The next year, Marcos Ariel Hourmann, a doctor convicted of practicing euthanasia in Spain, where it is illegal, put on an interactive show in which he asked the audience members to judge him.“Grief & Beauty,” like Platel’s production, was created with the consent of everyone involved, and Rau details in an interview in the program the research that went into the production. His team, including the four actors onstage, met with health care workers and bereaved relatives, as well as patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Some of them also visited Johanna last summer, we are told during the show.Princess Isatu Hassan Bangura, who was born in Sierra Leone, in “Grief & Beauty.”Michiel DevijverYet for most of it, Johanna takes a back seat to the actors’ stories. Instead of zeroing in on euthanasia, Rau assembled a motley cast of professionals and amateurs who have all experienced grief, albeit in different ways. Arne de Tremerie talks eloquently about his mother’s multiple sclerosis; Staf Smans, the oldest cast member, recounts the deaths of his sister, mother and daughter in quick succession. Princess Isatu Hassan Bangura, who was born in Sierra Leone, touches on another kind of pain —— that of being exiled and losing, as she puts it, her “African side.”Each of these performers speaks either directly to the auditorium or to a camera positioned to the right of the stage, which relays their monologues on the screen above. In keeping with Rau’s habit of mixing reality with semi-fictional scenes, they then perform vignettes set in an apartment. A kitchen, a bedroom and a bathroom are visible; at one point, an actor mentions that several items in the décor, including a handmade quilt, belonged to Johanna.Here and there, the script returns to her life. We learn that she witnessed the bombing of Rotterdam in the Netherlands during World War II, when she was 4; that she loved classical music; and that she once performed as a singer at NTGent. Out of the hours members of Rau’s team spent with her, it’s not much. Instead, she hovers mostly silently above “Grief & Beauty,” her eyes and expression alive and sympathetic.Before her death is shown, Johanna speaks briefly. “I always said I would go with a smile,” she says, before adding: “I have a lot of sleep to catch up on.” The injection follows.We watch as one of her eyes closes involuntarily, and her breathing becomes halted. In Douai, some around me cried openly. (Euthanasia is illegal in France, but according to an April survey by IFOP, one of the country’s leading polling organizations, 93 percent of French people support it in cases of terminal illness.)“Dido’s Lament” from Henry Purcell’s opera “Dido and Aeneas,” which opens “Grief & Beauty,” returns at this moment, along with more personal anecdotes from the cast. Yet no matter how hard Rau tries to interweave their stories with Johanna’s, her presence is overpowering. She belonged in a production of her own.Death has also long haunted the repertoire of the French director and choreographer Gisèle Vienne. This fall, audiences in France have a chance to revisit those works: The Festival d’Automne à Paris, a prestigious annual event taking place across numerous venues in the French capital, is devoting a retrospective to Vienne. Her latest production, “The Pond,” was presented at the Théâtre Paris-Villette in September, and revivals of several older works are scheduled before the end of the year.“Kindertotenlieder,” created by the French director and choreographer Gisèle Vienne. Mathilde Darel“Kindertotenlieder,” created in 2007, returned this month for four performances at the Centre Pompidou with a new cast — that is, a new human cast, since the stage is mostly populated with highly realistic dolls and robots. When “Kindertotenlieder” starts, it’s difficult to gauge just how many of the hunched-over teenagers in the darkened, snow-covered space are real.When the five actors do move and speak, “Kindertotenlieder” is no less disquieting. Although there is no linear story, the murder of a teenager by one of his peers gives a starting point. When the murdered boy’s ghost, the killer and others talk, it’s often to themselves, and the American writer Dennis Cooper’s text for the production is as chilling as it is over-the-top. (Sample line: “When I grow up, I want to behead your wife and kids.”)While the play’s title, which means “Songs on the Death of Children,” is borrowed from a song cycle by Gustav Mahler, the live music — introduced as a “memorial concert” for the dead boy — is by the duo KTL. To their moody, emo-adjacent songs, slow, violent interactions play out: A doll is strangled; two men kiss before one shoves the other, viciously.In “Kindertotenlieder,” as in “Grief & Beauty,” death is at the fingertips of the living. Neither production is for the faint of heart, but compared with the relentless angst of Vienne’s teenagers, there is relief in watching Johanna say her peaceful goodbye in “Grief & Beauty.” From time to time, reality still manages to be more soothing than fiction. More

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      Theater Review: 'Yellow' in the 'Sorrows of Belgium' Trilogy

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      Theaters have been closed in Belgium since October. An on-camera production was born out of necessity, but its look at Nazi history offers a fascinating blend of theater and cinematography.A year ago, filming was hardly a priority for most theater companies. Luk Perceval’s “Sorrows of Belgium” trilogy, commissioned by the Belgian company NTGent, shows how fast the business has adapted. In 2019, the first installment, “Black,” was recorded only for archival purposes; the second, “Yellow,” premiered this month in an eye-catching version designed primarily for the screen.It was a pragmatic decision in Belgium. As in many countries, theaters have been shut since a second wave of Covid-19 hit in October, with no reopening date in sight. A group of arts workers and venues called Still Standing for Culture has ramped up protests; on March 13, it marked the anniversary of the first Belgian lockdown with around 250 symbolic performances and marches.The film version of “Yellow” may have been born out of necessity, but it offers a fascinating blend of theater and cinematography and sheds light on a chapter in Belgian history that most foreign viewers would be unfamiliar with. Having delved into the atrocities in Congo under Belgian colonial rule in “Black,” Perceval focuses here on Flemish collaboration with the Nazi regime before and during the Second World War. (The final production in the trilogy, “Red,” is planned for next season and will tackle the terrorist attacks that shocked the country in 2016.)“Yellow” is still tentatively scheduled for a stage run at NTGent in May, and is supposed to travel to the Landestheater Niederösterreich in Austria in the fall. According to a spokesman for NTGent, Perceval, one of Belgium’s best-known directors, wanted the film to be “as different as possible” from what audiences would eventually see in the theater.That goal has undoubtedly been achieved. As I watched “Yellow,” I kept wondering how certain transitions, involving cuts between scenes in different parts of NTGent’s building, would translate onstage. The filmmaker Daniel Demoustier also leaned into a period aesthetic by shooting “Yellow” almost entirely in black-and-white, and the camera hovers near the characters’ faces as fascist slogans worm their way into their psyches.The production is based on a new play by the Belgian-born writer and director Peter van Kraaij, interspersed with speeches and other historical material. Its choral structure and allusiveness require a little work from the audience early on, but the characters soon fall into place. The main story line revolves around a fictional Flemish family of Nazi sympathizers. The son, Jef, leaves for war on the eastern front and sends letters home; his sister, Mie, wishes she could join him and enters into a correspondence with another soldier, Aloysius.Lien Wildemeersch, left, plays the daughter in a Flemish family of Nazi sympathizers in “Yellow.”Fred DebrockThe family’s father, Staf, clashes with his brother Hubert, who opposes the German occupation and hides a young Jewish woman, Channa. Her story — told to Hubert rather than explored in depth — feels a little like a token in the larger arc of the production. The link between Nazi collaborators and the Holocaust seems obvious enough without it. Then again, that may be an optimistic view.“Yellow” eloquently charts the rise of Rex, a far-right Belgian party that advocated collaboration during the German occupation and encouraged men to enlist for war. Its founder, Léon Degrelle (played by Valéry Warnotte), makes appearances and voices his admiration for Hitler alongside Otto Skorzeny, an Austrian SS officer.Perceval’s depiction of collaborationists left me with mixed feelings. The film’s many close-ups bring out a sense of disconnect in the main characters, their eyes glazed over yet betraying a chilling inner fire; Hubert and Channa, on the other hand, are empathetic even in moments of despair. The contrast is visually effective, but it also positions fascists promoting murder as delusional rather than fully rational — a complex debate that occurs again and again when it comes to extremism.The choreographed scenes peppered throughout “Yellow” reinforce that impression. The actors often dance to heavy drums on and around a large table designed by Annette Kurz, in a state of trance; in one instance, an actor shouts war statistics into the camera as the others writhe. It brought to mind the troubled legacy of German modern dance, which favored choral group numbers. Some of that movement’s choreographers ended up collaborating with the Nazi regime, too, and contributing sweeping tableaux to its propaganda.The cast is faultless: Lien Wildemeersch (as Mie) and Peter Seynaeve (who plays the father), especially, hold one’s attention in every scene. Under the circumstances, “Yellow,” which will be shown again for 48 hours beginning Friday, is a stunning achievement; I’d like to see how live performance recalibrates the audience’s perception of it.NTGent isn’t the only Belgian theater looking for virtual ways to salvage the season. Several are in the process of building online platforms, including the Brussels-based KVS. On KVS 24/7, it will stream the premiere of the French-language production “The One (et Demi) Man Show” from Thursday through Sunday.Ismaël Saidi’s “Muhammad” at the Théâtre de Liège.Dominique Houcmant GoldoThe Théâtre de Liège, in the French-speaking region of Wallonia, started an app in February and has already shown Ismaël Saidi’s “Muhammad,” a new one-man show about the Islamic prophet. In late April, its Émulation festival for emerging artists will also be available to watch online.Still, the most creative local response to the circumstances belongs to the Théâtre l’Improviste, in Brussels. This venue dedicated to improvisation has opted to translate its craft to YouTube, with a little help from the audience.Two weekly live shows, “Visio” and “#Hashtag,” bring actors together for online comedy sessions in French. Viewers determine the premise of the improvisation via YouTube’s chat feature. On a recent Sunday, for “Visio,” I joined a dozen attendees who determined that the actor Patrick Spadrille would play a character in the Seychelles; that the second performer, Ron Wisnia, would be one of his employees; and that Spadrille, tired of his tropical getaway from the pandemic, would look for an excuse to return to Belgium.The chat feature is turned off during the hourlong show so the actors can perform uninterrupted. Their exchange strayed from the initial rules, as always with improvisation, but Spadrille and Wisnia were seamlessly reactive as a roguish fraudster and his seemingly gullible right-hand man.The cast for “Visio” and “#Hashtag” changes every week, with actors tuning in from Belgium, France, the United States and Canada. As with “Yellow,” the benefits for viewers at home are real: Each production offers a window onto Belgium’s creative scene.It’s tempting to think of this as a silver lining in the pandemic, but given the scale of damage reported by the Belgian culture sector, that would probably be a step too far. It is better than nothing, but in the meantime, stages remain dark. More