Boulevard Montmartre, at number 8, in the shade of a porte-cochere, Pierre-Louis takes his evening dress out of his bag.
He quickly changes.
Here he is shirtless, in his underpants.
Hopping on one leg, he puts on black trousers and a white shirt, pulls a pair of suspenders, a red scarf from a pocket and puts on a flat cap.
Next door, in the queue, a tall brunette in a flowery dress ties a ribbon adorned with an egret around her head.
About forty people, who came in groups, wait happily in front of the Grévin café, just next to the entrance to the wax museum which is celebrating its 140th anniversary.
Caps, vests and hats, dresses and corsets, young adults on the go have come together to take part in an immersive theater experience,
, created by Les Sculpteurs de rêves.
An experience where the public is invited to break the fourth wall, the invisible barrier that usually separates the room from the stage.
Read alsoShow: the immersive revolution
The immersion begins from the queue with the distribution, on small papers, of the roles of each... I am therefore Auguste, postman, and I mow the parcels which have been entrusted to the postal administration... A sergent de ville comes out of the cafe, cibiche in beak.
Not very regulatory.
A fake mustache is stuck under his nose.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the experience in which you are going to participate is not an escape game, but immersive theater.
Attention
, he specifies,
you do not have the right to touch the actors, unless they ask you to do so…”
The banter of Arletty
We are in 1907, the Wolves of the Butte and the Tombeurs de la Goutte d'Or have joined forces to invest in a bourgeois café on the Grands Boulevards.
Inside, dim red light.
We hear an accordion.
Aligned on the zinc, glasses full of an indeterminate mixture await us.
Everyone is invited to taste.
“Bottoms up!”
recommend the bartender.
There is a taste of apple.
"We hate the bourgeois, the roussins and the work"
announces Marthe, a young actress in hair and petticoat who applies to find the banter of Arletty.
A gapette apache leads us into the back room where there is a padlocked trunk.
It contains the loot of the band.
Cleverly, one of my associates manages to open it.
But the nest egg was numbed.
There is a traitor.
It's up to us to unmask it.
After a second round of period drinks, I will drag Marthe into the whirlwind of a swaying waltz.
As a true marlou, I undertake it.
She announces to me to be a
"marmite"
(prostitute who maintains a pimp).
I would have suspected it.
I improvise.
“It's always a pleasure to dance with a pretty gisquette”.
I don't think she understood the meaning of the word... There follows a duel with the surin, an arm wrestling, an Apache wedding... Over the course of a scenario where we get lost a bit, we realize that the interest of the exercise is not in the plot but in the possibility of rediscovering, for 90 minutes, the pleasure of playing cops and robbers.
All of this will end in a song, a saw by Aristide Bruant, which we are invited to sing in unison.
Grévin Museum, 10, boulevard Montmartre, Paris 9th. Reservation:
www.apachesdeparis.com.
Until July 9
