They are awful, dirty and nasty, but terribly funny, all these characters that Didier Bénureau sketches with an ogre's appetite and irresistible ferocity.
For his new solo on stage, currently at the Studio des Champs-Élysées, in Paris (8th arrondissement), the 67-year-old comedian, driven by infernal energy and fire in his body, takes us into a dark corner, where cover the monsters he embodies with renewed gluttony.
If he drinks in humanity, it is down to the dregs.
The manure fertilizes, it is said, the man draws from it what nourishes his imagination, building dazzling portraits or settling on length, old-fashioned sketches, as they say, which he masters perfectly.
He is this CRS instructor with chanted speech and empty expressions — “They listen to me loud and clear!”
», “Furthermore and in addition” – and advocating action;
the cantankerous old mother who calls her daughter to agonize her with insults.
How odious she is!
“What the hell are we kidding,” she hisses.
The hit of soldier Morales taken up by the audience
There is also this greedy, racist and misanthropic old neighbor — “Ah, this poverty, what can we do about it, we can't give to everyone.
And then, we don't know where it's going.
So, we give nothing to anyone, like that, we know where it stays” —, the gay who slept with the Germans and who will be shorn at the Liberation — “We took dearly during the war, well, during the war, after especially” — who goes to the Department of Veterans Affairs to see if he would not be entitled to a pension for what he suffered…
He still puts on the costume of a cynical President of the Republic - "We are in the same boat, I hold the helm and you row";
“The richer the rich, the bigger the crumbs” – from a transvestite bishop founding the Association of Belgian transvestite bishops, pronounced “ATEuB”.
Mixing old sketches and new ones, he covers hits, including his song about soldier Morales.
Starting with the tribute awarded by his brother in arms, “You who loved her too much, and sometimes even abused her, here you are in the hole.
Sleep soldier Morales, sleep in your box.”
Before moving on to the song itself, a classic that the room covers.
“Morales, Morales… disappeared on the field of honor to save the three colors (…), you who wanted to travel, here you are scattered”.
Songs, there are others, caustic and grating, sometimes scatological too, Bénureau sometimes going French, at times overflowing into the terrain of uncertain taste.
Broken jaws and cracked helmet
At times adorning himself with a few wigs of the most beautiful effect, he twists his body and being to give birth to his characters, diction accidental, or dragging, hissing, the voice high or deep, squeaky, a face contracted with grimaces or completely relaxed, multiplying the poses and postures, the approaches again, we see him tense, angry, arched, angry... Bénureau composes with his rich palette, to amuse his gallery of characters.
They are vile or simply stupid and allow him - even if he always insists on starting from the character - to address, implicitly, themes such as consent, ecology, politics or police violence.
Listening to him recount his horrors, we drink whey.
Not skimmed, nor even semi-skimmed, but “whole”, the title of this new show.
Behind the excess and the darkness, a certain affection for the human race can be discerned, its broken faces and its cracked helmets.
In playing these twisted people, he turns out to be brilliant.
" Entire "
,
by and with Didier Bénureau, at the Studio des Champs-Élysées (Paris 8th), Wednesday to Saturday at 8:30 p.m., Sunday at 4 p.m., 36 euros