It all starts with a game of billiards between three women and three men in a smoky and funeral atmosphere. It feels like a mafia-style movie like Scorsese. The lights go out. Then pale neon lights reveal the body of a dying man, almost naked, on a metal table.
Topped with a huge cross hung at the back of the stage, it takes on a Christlike appearance. This man who laments is Vincent Van Gogh, interpreted by the Belgian actor Thomas Coulans. He just shot himself in the chest.
The painter is on the verge of death. Around him take place his relatives. His parents, his brother, Théo, his landlady, Doctor Gachet, a prostitute, Paul Gauguin, but also the absurd Trabu and Poulet, two clown parasites.
A resolutely modern painting
The characters come and go in this funeral vigil. They are there to settle accounts and illustrate the artist's complex relationships with the world. We dive into the painter's private life. Van Gogh, on the other hand, is overwhelmed by his mistakes and grinds black. Fragile and vulnerable, he gestures on his bed in a slow and aesthetic death dance.
The atmosphere is freezing, the text cynical. Certainly contemporary, between real facts and pure fiction, the show plays on anachronisms to break the codes. The painter desperately tries to reach his brother by cell phone and we see him participating in a television program, Paul Gauguin wears a rococo shirt and a ring in the left ear.
Baroque music reinforces the often dismal, sometimes comical atmosphere. This is all that makes the singularity of this dreamlike piece, this darkness tinged with yellow dear to Vincent Van Gogh. The rendering is sublime, almost cinematographic.
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EDITOR'S NOTE: 4.5 / 5
"Too much yellow", until February 16 at Studio Hébertot, 78 bis boulevard des Batignolles (17th century). From Wednesday to Saturday at 9 p.m., Sunday at 2:30 p.m. 28 euros (29 euros on the Internet), 20 euros (21 euros on the Internet). Duration: approximately 1h30.