We have never seen a spectacle as unique as this.
An usher asks spectators in the front rows to hide their bags under the seat and not to pet the dog (Miki).
Inspired by the work and writings of Michelangelo Antonioni, the piece by Guillaume Poix and Lorraine de Sagazan, (the cousin of the singer Zaho de Sagazan) does not begin like the others.
The Vieux-Colombier room serves as a setting for a comfortable living-dining room installed in the middle of a bifrontal layout.
The stage covered with a thick green carpet is topped by a giant screen which projects images of rough seas, collapsing lands and immense expanses of desert.
Le Silence
is a piece that is out of the ordinary, almost without words and edited like a long sequence shot.
At first we have the vague impression of witnessing a domestic scene.
Neither the woman (prodigious Marina Hands) nor the man (perfect Noam Morgensztern) speak.
Barefoot, she mechanically bounces a tennis ball, tries, without insisting, to attract the dog's attention, downs glasses of strong alcohol like David Hemmings in Antonioni's
Blow-Up
(1966).
Julie Sicard and Noam Morgensztern.
Jean-Louis Fernandez
Her husband puts away the shopping he has just bought, sits down and stares fixedly in front of him.
Dejected, prostrate.
Tears flow down their faces, silently.
The man's sister (Julie Sicard) moves boxes of clothes and toys.
Detonations break the silence, startling the characters and the room.
We barely dare to breathe.
The man's mother (Nicole Garcia) leaves a message on the voicemail.
She can help, so don't hesitate to ask for her.
A relative (Stéphane Varupenne) rings the doorbell, murmurs a simple “hello” before removing his jacket, hugs the man without saying another word, then takes a drag from an electronic cigarette.
“I would like the spectators not to be attentive but available,”
Antonioni said.
Like Baptiste Chabauty's character who stares at the audience from both sides, they are helpless witnesses to a pain that pushes the couple to the borders of madness.
We understand that we are facing a grieving couple.
She moans, bites her lips, sinks her teeth into a tennis ball.
We remember the scene of the imaginary and mimed tennis game from
Blow-up
.
Haggard, head in hands, her partner holds back her cries.
Bursts of life arise too rarely.
Through the dog who follows his mistress.
This will change.
His companion invites him to come closer to him.
They embrace, but the suffering returns, unbearable.
Heavy with unsaid words, the silence that Guillaume Poix and Lorraine de Sagazan establish kills slowly.
We leave the theater troubled and upset.
NOTE: Until March 10, Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier Paris 6th. Loc. : 01 44 58 15 15