The curtain crackles with bright red flashes as the heady and disturbing sound of Daft Punk's "Television Rules the Nation" fills the Bataclan hall.
Suddenly, Beigbeder appears on video, projected onto the fabric, his bearded face is enormous.
In red and black, he opens his mouth as in a silent cry of liberation.
In the same movement, the fabric splits in two on the stage.
He is there, in the flesh and especially in bone, his arms crossed, standing behind DJ Pone in the heart of a cloud of smoke.
Palms turned towards the hangers, supercharged, he beats the measure of his hands, pumps the air as if to raise the pressure. The room is standing and dancing. This Friday evening, the Bataclan looks like a club. “A year and a half, a year and a half,” he says. It's over, it's over! », He launches, euphoric. On the decks, Pone mixes and connects Michael Jackson, Manu Di Bango, the Stones, Eurythmics or even Lenny Kravitz, some spectators swing their hips on the set. For ten short minutes, the room becomes a dancefloor.
It is ten o'clock.
This is the joyful and liberating conclusion of the successful premiere of the “literary DJ Set” of the critic, writer and figure of Parisian nights who has just held the stage for an hour and a half with his scenic object not really identified.
We have identified its outlines a little better.
An electric and electrifying staging by Jérémie Lippmann, a neat, elegant scenography, carried by superb lights and sublime projections, a choice of powerful sounds, and texts of course.
In his “Literary DJ Set”, the writer and critic Frédéric Beigbeder, seated in his Pomare chair, takes the stage at the Bataclan for an hour and a half.
LP / Sylvain Merle
An anthology, Beigbeder had explained, of his writings for thirty years.
A mix, yes, and still scholarly, which "makes sense", as Pascal Légitimus underlines, crossed at the end.
It is about criticism of society, sex and drugs, childhood memories, but also love, fatherhood, old age, the health situation too, the starting point of the show.
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At the beginning, therefore, we hear the voices mixed on electro by Sacha Guitry advocating freedom, that of Sagan declaring to love "to drink, to dance, to do stupid things, to talk about it." I am 30 years old, I am not going to start living like a crouton because I am supposedly an intellectual! ". There is still Jean Cocteau, then the roaring guitars of Black Sabbath. Beigbeder is there, seated in his Pomare chair, known as “Emmanuelle”.
Stoic behind his dark glasses, in his pajamas and dressing gown, he listens, motionless.
With his beard and hair, he recalls the Dude, the character of Jeff Bridges in "The Big Lebowski", of the Coen brothers.
This is what this crisis has transformed him into.
“Oh, humans?
He is surprised.
How have you been for a year and a half?
It was a bit long this custody, no?
», He blurted out again.
He says it, he no longer "understands the world".
He introduces Pone and warns, ingenuously "at any time he can make you get up and dance (...) I decline all responsibility for what may happen".
At ease on stage, in his movements, his playing, his grimaces
His reflections of the moment take him back to the front, the 1980s, his twenties, his thirty and forty years which he finds in his books. Texts that the music illustrates or supports, involves. It's both light and deep, funny, cynical, sometimes outrageous, true. He builds bridges between yesterday and today, enjoying the disenchantment of the revelers in the cars that surround him. "The healthiest guy I know today is my old drug dealer, he became a yoga teacher." On stage, he is this man torn between Octave, his literary double with a thousand excesses, and the father of a family he has become. “My hair is long like Jesus' hair, but God didn't live that long. What a failure ”.
The neat and elegant scenography is carried by superb lights, sublime projections and a choice of powerful sounds.
LP / Sylvian Merle
He feels reborn and rising in him "this desire to party".
And at times is unleashed when Pone takes over the reins.
Here he is walking straight into the room, walking across the seats between spectators to the wild sound of "I Wanna Be Your Dog" by Iggy Pop's Stooges.
The moment is electric, accentuated by the strobe lights.
A back and forth, to then follow on the presentation speech of Octave, the advertising cynic of "99 F".
"Your desire no longer belongs to you, I impose mine on you (...) It is I who decides today what you are going to want tomorrow", he strikes on a captivating electro and panoramas of images passed to full speed.
20 years later, these words have not aged a bit.
It was therefore a first for the writer whose job is not, and he appeared surprisingly at ease on stage, in his movements, his playing, his grimaces.
He still clings too much to the teleprompter, but these are his words and no doubt that by force, he will know them to free himself completely and let the stage animal that was sleeping in him speak.
In the meantime, with his impetus for communication, this Friday evening he freed the room from this detention acquired for months.
And this question: Do we have the right to stand up and dance?
“Literary DJ Set”
by and with Frédéric Beigbeder, directed by Jérémie Lippmann ”, at the Bataclan. This Saturday evening, but also two new dates added to the start of the school year, September 23 and 24.
