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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 16, 2020 15:50:22 GMT
So, I went as scheduled to the theatre this week. I was not sure what to expect in this new world. The bar of the theatre had been pleasantly transferred out into the (closed) street. The café-restaurant next door was also greatly benefiting from the theatrical activity. (I had lunch with mossie once at that place.) It was a balmy evening. Before long, it was time to queue up for decontamination procedures. The main theatre has 655 seats. I suppose they limited capacity to 50%. Perhaps a bit more because most people go in groups of 2 or more and you only need one space between each group. The play was as impressive as expected. The actors were able to touch each other. When it was time to leave, we filed out row by row under the instructions of the staff.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 17, 2020 2:11:57 GMT
Interesting and still rather shocking to see people milling normally & not wearing masks. It looks as though @half the people in the audience have elected to go maskless.
I'm glad you enjoyed the play, especially after all this time.
Questions: What is that stack of four round objects next to the seated guy in the 3rd picture?
What was the decontamination proceeding?
Did you mask?
When you say the actors could touch each other, was that to a normal degree, or did you feel things had been altered to minimize physical contact between them?
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 17, 2020 3:30:54 GMT
I have no idea what those round things are.
100% of the audience wore masks to go in, but like at the cinema or a restaurant, you can take your mask off when you are seated.
There is apparently a debate about this in Belgium where people have been complaining that "we are the only country in Europe that has to keep a mask on to watch a movie."
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Post by lugg on Jul 17, 2020 18:42:49 GMT
So pleased you got to go K2 and enjoyed the play . I have just heard from the team at The Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff - the performance I had booked for in November 20 has been cancelled until Oct 21. It was a surprise for my sisters birthday - I will likely never tell her , just now to come up with another treat.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 17, 2020 20:07:12 GMT
I have no idea what those round things are. I saw the photo on my big wide screen computer downstairs, and it seems to have electrical wires coming from it, so it might be spotlights for after dark.
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Post by kerouac2 on Sept 19, 2020 10:35:22 GMT
I received notification of my first covid cancellation. I had a ticket for September 27th, but all performances are cancelled at the place in question until the 30th.... Rescheduling....
(One non symptomatic crew member tested positive, and that is all it takes to force a cancellation.)
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 4, 2020 20:26:55 GMT
So, I saw the play today and felt very lucky since there is every chance that everything might be shut down again in Paris as of tomorrow.
Mes Frères is fascinating and disturbing. It's about 4 brothers living in a forest. They are all lumberjacks and woodworkers and are suffering from extreme sexual frustration. There is a woman cooking and cleaning for them and she is the object of all of the phantasms. Every night each of them gets up in turn, totally naked, to live out a fantasy in front of the woman's locked door. This results in the door being covered with semen and blood; a step ladder wearing a wig and a number of other abominations. I confess that I am always impressed by actors who can perform a significant period of time totally unclothed, and this play included two major French actors (Frédéric Pierrot and Pascal Greggory) now aged 60 and 66 whom one does not systematically expect to see displayed this way. The other two actors were younger, so no big deal.
It is both funny (grotestque) and not funny at all (extremely unhappy people), but the servant solves the problem by killing them all.
That little video does not show the most impressive part of the decor, which was on the left side of the stage. It was a jumble of about 20 giant logs piled haphazardly into which the brothers disappear every time they go to work.
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 7, 2021 18:42:39 GMT
Yesterday I went to the theatre of the Centre Culturel Wallonie-Bruxelles to see "The Quest" by Cédric Eeckhout. He performed in English to prevent Belgian controversy, but probably also because he has performed this everywhere in Europe with subtitles in the necessary language on a screen behind him. Since he switches sometimes from English to French to Italian, he pretty much had to stick to the format so as not to disrupt the visuals. Before the performance started, I was able to snap a few photos of the stage, which immediately indicated that this would yet another peculiarly Belgian experience. On the right side of the stage was his cat Jésus. On the left side of the stage his mother was peeling potatoes. Clearly Cédric would be standing in the middle, but to respect the rules, I could not take a photo when the performance began.
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 7, 2021 18:52:41 GMT
He arrived wearing a suit of armour. The show was about Europe, more specifically the EU, and how it had paralleled his catastrophic love life with an Italian, a French person, a Hungarian, an English person, etc. It was clever without being brilliant. People were recruited to help the mother peel potatoes since everybody was supposed to receive frites at the end of the show. The cat sang a song. At one point, Cédric said he couldn't stand it anymore, so he disappeared and returned stark naked. Jésus enveloped him in his fur until his mother arrived with an apron for him to wear. Yes, it was all extremely Belgian, especially when the mother got a chance to speak. She had been married to a Flemish man, which was fine, but they went to the Netherlands once "and those people are horrible!" Reminded me of someone.
Frites were distributed in little traditional paper cones, with little paper flags of all of the European countries on toothpicks. The theatre was competely full and the applause at the end were tremendous. Even more surprising, upon exiting the theatre, an open bar was set up with free champagne and other refreshments. That doesn't happen often (and probably not at every performance).
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Post by kerouac2 on Nov 25, 2021 17:45:23 GMT
Wajdi Mouawad is an amazing playwright. He is Lebanese but grew up mostly in Québec even though his family lived in Paris for 5 years as refugees before their welcome expired and they were forced to leave. But now he is living in Paris again and on top of that is the director of the major theatre where I saw his play Mère. It is about the 5 years he lived in France as a little boy after fleeing Beirut during the civil war.
The mother (Mère) is the central character of course. She is the tyrant of their Parisian microcosm (the father has remained in Beirut for work) and as the months pass keeps saying "we're going home in a month or two so don't get used to this." Domestic chores are performed onstage, including the chopping and peeling for meals, the television often drones on, and everybody waits for the telephone to ring. Telephone service to Lebanon is erratic, so you never know when a call might finally get through.
Besides the mother, teenage daughter and young son, there are two other people on stage from time to time. One of them is the author himself who narrates certain events and shows bombings and massacres on a big screen at the back of the stage. But he doesn't exist for the other characters because he is actually the little boy, many years later. And the other person is the incredible appearance of the Belgian journalist Christine Ockrent. She was the queen of the evening news on French television in the 1970s and she was the one who showed the situation in Beirut and the slaughter of the Palestinians in Sabra and Chatila to the rest of us. It is as though (for Americans) Dan Rather or Tom Brokaw suddenly came on stage in a play. Christine Ockrent comes on stage with her podium and microphone and reads the news just like she used to (she is 77 now, so she was in her 40s back then), but she also interacts with the family. The mother protests about her spending just 2 minutes on Lebanon and then talking about the social security deficit or the current strikes. "That's just the way it is." Sometimes the little boy has questions, and she answers them. Then her equipment is wheeled away until later...
The bombings continue and you never know if the father survived until he finally manages to call. The mother becomes more and more hysterical (the actress was really incredible), but life must go on no matter what. Even though she is Christian, she is the typical Jewish mother, bitching about everything. At the beginning the little boy only speaks Arabic when other family members call ("Speak French to them! They'll think you haven't learned anything in the French schools!). A couple of years later, the boy only speaks French when they call. "Speak Arabic to them! They'll think you've forgotten the language!").
Language was an important part of the play since half of it was in Lebanese. At the beginning, the author made a point of explaining that the subtitles were translated literally instread of figuratively. "In Lebanon, we say (FX#£napxw) 50 times a day to mean "dear, sweetheart", etc. The literal translation is 'the one I hope will bury me'." This is very significant in the Lebanese context. There were quite a few other extreme expressions, so the audience had to laugh sometimes even when the situation wasn't funny.
Anyway, the play goes up to the time when the family was forced to leave France. Other countries had rejected them, but Canada accepted them. The father was still stuck in Beirut. The narrator-author explains that the last time he cried was when his mother died in the 1980s. She was buried in Montréal, and her husband was buried last year with her after dying of covid.
And now here he is in Paris, 40 or so years after the first time, and life goes on. Thank you and goodnight.
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Post by lugg on Dec 18, 2021 19:22:43 GMT
We usually see a panto at this time of year and having missed out for the last couple of years decided to do something special..... So to the Royal Shakespeare Company Theatre to watch The Magician's Elephant last night. ( Apols Bixa in advance - its a musical ) LFTs done that am, Covid Passes required and up-loaded and masked to the hilt ; it was still very enjoyable, maybe we appreciated it even more What a lovely evening. We thought the show was fantastic, the voices, acting, music and production just wonderful. A real feel good ending for me. One of the reviews I read said it appeals to most people aged from 6 - 106 and certainly that seemed to be ( almost) the age span of the audience. As we left I looked around and there was a huge buzz and lots of smiles so I think the majority of others enjoyed it too. More info here. www.rsc.org.uk/the-magicians-elephantI will do a short postcard of Stratford Upon Avon although it was a flying visit.
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Post by bixaorellana on Dec 18, 2021 19:33:17 GMT
I looked at the trailer and >wow!< That is quite an elaborate production and it must have been so much fun and so refreshing to enjoy such an upbeat, well-presented event in a wonderful setting along with other appreciative theater goers.
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 18, 2021 19:33:49 GMT
It sounds excellent to me. I am going to the theatre again next Friday (the 24th) which would seem like a sad outing to some, but this particular theatre is walking distance from home (only about 300 metres), and I will be home early enough to feast on whatever I have decided to consume in splendid isolation.
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Post by lugg on Dec 22, 2021 19:12:04 GMT
It was great - and no not a sad outing to me at all - sounds a good way to spend Christmas Eve
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 22, 2021 19:26:58 GMT
And maybe my last chance for some time, since it is not impossible that we are heading for lockdown again.
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 26, 2021 18:57:22 GMT
I have always loved the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, which has the advantage of being on my street. It was built in 1876 and obviously traversed all sorts of situations over the years before finally closing in 1952. For its reopening, it was turned over to Peter Brook in 1974 whose first production there was one of Shakesspear's rarer plays -- Timon of Athens. I went to see it even though I wasn't living in this area at the time. One of the most interesting things about the theatre is that it has been left in its "abandoned" condition. Obviously, all of the necessary security measures have been added but nothing has been done to spiff it up. In the early days, we had to sit on pillows, but now they have (at last) installed upholstered benches. I've seen a few things there over the years, including Isabelle Huppert in a whispered monologue by Sarah Kane, but I have not been there as often as I should. Anyway, I returned on the 24th to see Vincent Dedienne, a popular actor and comedian, in a one man show. It is sold out for all four weeks, so I am lucky to have thought to buy a ticket in time. The piano on stage was never used, but it was wheeled away at the end so that we would know that the show was finished. Everybody was masked of course and showed their vaccination passes to be allowed to enter the theatre. There are something like 480 seats on three levels. If they decide on a 500 maximum crowd restriction in the coming days, this will be one of the lucky places. Like many theatres in Paris, the entrance is not at all glamourous.
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Post by mich64 on Dec 26, 2021 19:37:18 GMT
Even though there might have been roughly 480 people, it looks like if would have felt intimate and enjoyable.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 16, 2022 12:36:14 GMT
The Tartuffe that theatre-goers know is the modified version from 1669. After much controversry, particularly from the eccliastical spheres, the original work had two acts added (act 2 and act 5) and the events toned down considerably. In other words, censored. The version that the Comédie Française is presenting this year is the original uncensored version from 1664, quite raw and with the additional rawness of the 21st century. Also it only lasts an hour and a half with no intermission, which appeared to be a godsend last night instead of the other version's two and a half hours. No food and drink is allowed in cinemas and theatres at the moment, and this really tested the limits of the traditional spectators who are used to guzzling champagne during every intermission, so they were happy to be released earlier than usual. Or at least they thought so, because last night there was an additional homage to Molière for his 400th birth anniversary after the play. The other performances will not have this.
As is often the case in modern productions, this presentation was an eye opener. The actors wore contemporary clothing and there was practically no décor. It all starts with finding filthy trashy vagabond Tartuffe on the street and taking him in, as any pious wealthy bourgeois family should do. All of the family strip him naked and bathe him, and he is given new clean clothes. (I have seen scenes like this in plays in France regularly over the past few years, and I always wonder what it is like to stand nude in front of an audience of 500 people right from the start.) Anyway, things move along quickly and in no time Tartuffe is pretty much in charge of the family because he is so good at pointing out their moral failings while presenting himself as saintly, not being perfect but always striving for perfection as evidenced by the little whip he uses to mortify himself. His shirt has red marks on it from the bloody welts on his back.
Things go too far when Orgon, the head of the household, disowns his son so that Tartuffe will inherit all of his wealth. A trap is finally set for Tartuffe who has been doing his best to seduce Orgon's wife, who is not at all indifferent to his advances. Tartuffe finally gets caught when Orgon's wife is tearing off his trousers to give him a blow job, and the family settles back to normal... sort of.
The programme makes a point of saying that certain scenes can shock young spectators. (I like the way that they don't care if older spectators are shocked -- that's the way it should be.)
The Prime Minister and the Minister of Culture were in attendance last night.
Before the performance, it was announced that Denis Podalydès, who played Orgon, had been identified as a contact person of a covid case. He tested negative but was obliged to perform the entire play masked.
Anyway, it was a great evening as far as I was concerned. I don't go to the Comédie Française often enough.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 16, 2022 18:55:07 GMT
I don't know if I have ever seen two plays in two days apart from at the Avignon festival, but today I went to see the sensational Les Imprudents. It is based on television interviews done by the writer Marguerite Duras (1914-1996). Contrary to most writers' media appearances, she was the one doing the interviewing in the 1960s and she selected ordinary people of all sorts and ages -- coal miners, schoolchildren (here is an example: www.ina.fr/ina-eclaire-actu/video/cpf07003784/marguerite-duras-et-le-petit-francois ), other writers, ordinary people... Today's play was based on the transcripts of a lot of these interviews, so it was mostly real, with people of course saying the most incredible and down-to-earth things. There were three people on the stage and that's where you understand once again (if you had ever forgotten it) that good storytelling makes all doubt fade away, no matter what the age or sex of the storyteller and with no décor (just think of how campfire stories can be scary). There were three people on stage and they played out the excerpts with total conviction, sometimes whispering, sometimes shouting. A "lemon setter" played a major part. I had to look up the name and discovered that the English name is "English setter" because they are yellow rather than red like the Irish ones. There was a lot of talk about dog walking in the Bois de Boulogne. Most of the dog walkers go to the same place at the same time every day, so they know each other very well. But they almost never learn the names of the people, just the names of the dogs. ("Come back right now, Mirza!") So the people are given the names of their dogs : Monsieur Bonbon, Madame Butch, Mademoiselle Tommy or whatever. In the final part of the performance, the creator of the play, Isabelle Lafon, finally goes into a Marguerite Duras imitation which is extremely moving since she would have been at the end of her life at the time. She first tells of more or less stalking the house in Neauphle-le-Château, using her dog as a prop. She is invited indoors and a truly incredible conversation ensues. It is probably fictional, but those of us in France saw Marguerite Duras on television all the time back then since she was a major controversial media figure, so we know exactly how she talked and held herself. It is wonderful to see a play on a totally different theme from time to time. During the applause at the end, an English setter ran on stage to enthusiastically licked Isabelle Lafon. This was probably a fiction, too, because I was in the front row and saw that she had hidden some dog treats in the cuffs of her jeans, and that is what the dog wanted.
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 17, 2022 22:01:18 GMT
Tonight I went to see Vimala Pons's Le Périmètre de Denver at the CentQuatre. It was totally inredible since Vimala Pons plays every single character in various body suits and masks and strips everything off at the end of each sequence. And I mean everything. She even detaches fake penises to get don to her basics. But one thing that had everybody flabbergasted was that she balanced an array of boulders on her head, a staircase, a table and chairs, a huge pile of boxes, a brick wall and a car. I was sitting in the second row and could not see any wires no matter how hard I looked. And she played with our suppositions, by rearranging the boxes before lifting them on her head so that everybody could see that they were not attached to each other. Everything came crashing down and broke, but only when she decided it was time.
The plot? It was all of the people at a thalassotherapy clinic explaining how it was not they who killed the person who died.
This video does not show any of the effects but presents all of the characters, all played by Vimla Pons.
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 20, 2022 20:46:15 GMT
This is the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Great Gatsby, so it seemed appropriate to go and see Gatsby Le Magnifique today at the Théâtre du Châtelet, one of the biggest theatres in Paris. This was not actually a new production since it was part of the Avignon festival in 2018, where it ws just called "Le Magnifique." Gatsby is played by rapper Sofiane Zermani, although of course the main character is Nick, played by Pascal Rénéric. Both of them reprised their roles, but Daisy was Lou de Laâge this time. They are the only characters in the play, although the hugeness of this theatre called for a bit more, and this was provided by 10 musicians and a pianist. It was an excellent condensation of the novel, making one want to read it again for the rich descriptions. I can't show you the play of course, but at least here is a bit of the theatre.
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Post by mickthecactus on Feb 20, 2022 21:19:15 GMT
Great theatre!
Awful book....
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 25, 2022 4:13:45 GMT
The opera was A Quiet Place by Leonard Bernstein. It is not performed very often. It's about Dinah and her family. Dinah dies in a car crash in the prologue and the opera really starts at her funeral. Lots of angry people, some who have not seen each other for more than 20 years. Some of their psychiatrists are there too. In act 2, we move on to home life. One of the characters is from Québec so part of it is in French. Then there is François has been both the lover of Dinah's son and the husband of Dinah's daughter. The ghost of Dinah wanders around to watch what they're up to. In act 3, the kids reconcile with their father after a final big fight. Operas are always a bit ridiculous, but that's the whole point.
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Post by whatagain on Mar 25, 2022 7:17:10 GMT
Fantastic building.
Each time i see a pic of those stairs, i see Bourvil in a german uniform, do you ?
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 3, 2022 8:02:49 GMT
And excellent evening at Théâtre Antoine to see the epistolary play Les Amants de la Commune. This being the 150th anniversary of the Commune, there have been a number of plays presented on the theme. The only two characters are Isabelle Carré and Pierre Deladonchamps. She plays a housemaid in a fancy household. He is an army officer. They meet at the theatre. She has accompanied her employers and he arrives with a bouquet of flowers which he gives her. The next day she is sent back to his place to return the flowers and apologise, since they were clearly meant for the star of the play and not her. Except no. And they spend the night together. That is just the prologue. It is time for the letters to start since the police officer has just left to crush the Prussian army. This is a simple military operation that should take no more than 48 hours (where have we heard that before?). The officer is taken prisoner and the housemaid is dismissed for her dreadful moral failings since a neighbour saw her returning at dawn. So they have plenty of time to write. She quickly takes up with the Commune after nearly starving from having to eat rats and crows during the siege of Paris. She discovers that women are just as respected as men and have all sorts of rights and freedom if they claim it. She meets Louise Michel and is totally enthusiastic. She is also pregnant. The POW has heard terrible things about the Commune and supports law and order. The Communards have been executing priests, which is inexcusable. And the whole country is against the Parisians. The Prussians release their French prisoners so that they can return to their country and crush the Communard scum. The relationship goes a bit downhill... It is amazing how competent actors can put so much passion and rage into just reading letters on a stage. p.s. At the end, the officer has been executed by a firing squad for refusing to shoot Communard prisoners, and the maid spends 10 years in exile in New Caledonia before being allowed to return to France. She left her baby with her former employer, who was childless. It should be noted that the authorities in France took a very long time to ever return any power to the city of Paris. We were ruled by higher authorities until 1977 with no say over anything that was done in the city.
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Post by kerouac2 on May 13, 2022 15:26:23 GMT
Although there are theatres in absolutely every corner of Paris, all of the big privately owned theatres are basically in two locations: the Grands Boulevards on the Right Bank and rue de la Gaîté on the Left Bank. Since the state of the world greatly reduced my theatre outings over the last few years, I hadn't been to rue de la Gaîté in a very long time. As always, I arrived early (you can only enter in the last 30 minutes in any case). The earthquake detector never moved. Parisian audiences seem to prefer to arrive in the last 5 minutes as though they had better things to do up until the last moment. However, this play was in its final week, so it was not at all sold out. However, the orchestra section was packed by curtain rise. I was up on the second balcony with the other poor people this time. In spite of the title ("Times Square"), it was a French play but of the most depressingly formulaic style. Just four characters, so cheaper to stage. One major theatrical star (Guillaume de Tonquedec) and three cheaper younger actors. The plot? A former big star lives in a flat overlooking Times Square (highly unlikely but okay...). He stopped acting 3 years ago to devote himself to his other passion, drinking. He is of course a recluse with an abominable reputation but one nice thing that he has done is to befriend one of those poor costumed "characters" who pollute Times Square to make a few bucks from tourist photos. The guy is a young Afghanistan vet with PTSD after a major mortal incident. Now he has a terrible stutter that prevents him from getting any sort of real job. The actor lets him come up for coffee and to use the toilet. Enter the young actress. She has heard that the actor is available to give her acting lessons. Where did she hear this lie? She works as a waitress in a restaurant and that's what one of the customers told her. Obviously the actor caves in to her determination and/or can't get rid of her. The 4th person is very minor, but he needs to exist to explain what is going on. It is the actor's brother, who set up the whole restaurant scam. In any case, the play was well written and very well acted, but I felt that I had seen the story 150 times already. Curmudgeon becomes nice, irritating young people prove their value and handicaps are overcome. It totally confirmed the validity of my continual search for more edgy material because this was just a perfectly packaged product for an aging bourgeois audience. I don't need this sort of thing, but I suppose that I'm glad that it exists to keep the theatres in business. And then the curtain came down.
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 28, 2022 8:04:08 GMT
This week I returned to the Bouffes du Nord (Peter Brook's old place) to see the Portuguese play Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists by Tigo Rodrigues. Briefly, a Portuguese family has had a tradtion of killing fascists for the last 70+ years. They kidnap one fascist a year and execute him (no women fascists in Portugal?). This year it is the turn of the youngest daughter Catarina to kill her first fascist, but she is hesitant. It should be mentioned that every single family member, female or male, has taken the name Catarina at this time of year, and they all wear long skirts in honour of the original Catarina. Only the fascist is dressed normally.
For two and a half hours, we have family debates about the need to kill fascists, both funny and serious, and did I mention that all of this is in Portuguese (French and English overtitles on screens)? Generally, the audience is in favour of the young Catarina who doesn't want to kill. The fascist prisoner, who never speaks a word, doesn't look like such a bad person, and most of us are against killing people anyway. Catarina fails a final time to kill her target and gets shot by Catarina who is killed by Catarina who kills another Catarina and is killed in turn until they are all dead and only the fascist is left.
The fascist finally speaks to the audience and gives an impassioned fascist speech for at least 15 minutes, about eradicating the scum, the immigrants, the blacks, the gays, any weak person, as this is the only way for Portugal to regain its glory. He gives details about what is wrong with every group and how the mongrelisation of the races is even worse, because only pure white Portuguese deserve to live. And that's where it all ends. Everybody in the audience was ready to kill the fascist by then.
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 28, 2022 8:10:38 GMT
Yesterday I went to see the Argentinian spectacle Dystopia un poyo rojo #2 at the Théâtre du Rond Point on the Champs Elysées (so many changes there, so many things closed!).
It is basically a peformance of acrobatic dance and diverse shenanigans with a lot of use green screen video technology for unusual effects. Very pleasant and light. It only lasted 70 minutes because the two actors would have died of exhaustion if it had continued any longer.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 8, 2023 22:20:20 GMT
My first play of the year. (I seem to be about the only person here who goes to the theatre.)
Tom à la ferme is a Québecois play that was made into a movie by Xavier Dolan in 2013. I saw the movie, and the situation is so perverse that I felt a need to see the stage version. This particular version is a reprise that was already played last year, but tonight was the very first performance of the new season.
Tom arrives in a shitty rural farm for the funeral of his gay lover Guillaume. But nobody knows about the situation except the dead man's violent redneck brother Francis. He demands that Tom say nothing and confirm that Guillaume's lover was a woman called Hélène who only speaks English (so no phone calls) and could not come to the funeral.
Okay, so you can see both the funny and dramatic idea of where the play is going.
But it's more complicated than that. The mother wants Tom to stay for several days ("because you remind me so much of my son"), and Francis just wants to mutilate him. Which he does by making him do farm work and making sure that he is hurt all the time. They enter what is clearly an S&M relationship, and how on earth can it end?
Well, it finally does end, with a shovel to the back of someone's head.
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 3, 2023 9:45:55 GMT
There's a screen above the stage with an old woman, alert and with a slight smile. We don't know what she is looking at or thinking of. The stage consists of 3 open fronted rooms, like a doll house -- bathroom, bedroom and kitchen. Of on one side, there are four chairs. An old man arrives, slowly strips naked and puts on his pyjamas. Three other people arrive -- a young man, a sixtyish woman and an African woman. The four people are all seated. Grief and Beauty is ready to begin. It is in Flemish with French and English titles. The young man leads the old man to bed, then he turns to the audience to tell his story, how he starred in a production of The Little Prince when he was 8 or 9, well, sort of starred because the star changed every day due to the kids being in school. So he starred one day a week. His mother has multiple sclerosis and is in a wheelchair now. She was embarrassed by the mobility scooter. The parents are divorced; it was the mother's idea so that her husband could have a normal life elsewhere.
The older woman runs the vacuum cleaner (the old man complains that he can't hear his television), makes coffee and distributes it. She talks about her life, too. She had many jobs and was a head accountant when she retired. People in her family died, one by one.
The African woman came from Sierra Leone. Her family was split up when she was eight, because her mother and little sister got a visa for Europe, but she and her father did not. They were only able to come eight years later. Everybody made fun of her accent in Flemish.
It sounds boring, but the performances were gripping. The young man takes the old man to the bathroom, undresses him and gives him a sponge shower then takes him back to bed. The old man had an impressive erection. I don't know if this was planned. His adult diaper is put on, then his pyjamas, then he is at rest again.
Anyway, these three are the carers, and we finally learn about the woman on the screen above, Johanna. She took advantage of the Belgian euthanasia law the day after her 85th birthday. The carers drank champagne with her, and her family and friends were there, too. Then she said goodbye and got the injection.
And this is of course what happens to the old man in bed now although he just has the carers, not the friends and family. It is all very gentle, and the rooms of the 'doll house' are lifted into the rafters. There is a light in back with a swirling tunnel of clouds around it. The young man sings an aria from an opera. The world is at peace.
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