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Post by kerouac2 on May 21, 2023 16:12:12 GMT
Some of you may have heard of Pathé Live, which distributes spectacles around the world in 70 countries and 1700 cinemas. Their top two draws are the Comédie Française (since 2016) and the Bolshoi Ballet (since 2008). They also show the MET in France and various pop concerts around the world.
Anyway, this morning I went to see one of their classics, Shakespeare's 12th Night staged by Thomas Ostermeier, the famed German director. His staging was very faithful to the original play with weird musical interludes which were probably inserted to wake up the spectators back in 1602. I'm pretty sure he went off the grid by not having anyone wear trousers, and their underwear left absolutely nothing to the imagination. And then there were the sequences without underwear either.
There was a short interview before the play explaining that it takes place after a shipwreck in Illyria, the current day Albania. The incredible little detail is that same sex marriage was authorised in Illyria from the year 1000 to 1700 with the benediction of the Pope. Later Popes got rid of this for some reason, but the play makes much more sense when you are privy to this little factoid.
It was 3 hours and 10 minutes well spent.
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Post by mickthecactus on May 21, 2023 16:20:38 GMT
That sounds good.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 4, 2023 18:37:55 GMT
I saw the Mel Brooks film The Producers when it first came out in 1967. It was extremely controversial but it also became a cult hit very quickly. If you are not aware of it, it is about a Jewish Broadway producer who used to have a lot of hits but now he has a lot of flops and is in serious financial difficulty, even though he has been financed so far by a string of elderly rich mistresses. His timid accountant explains that he can make a shitload of money on a flop just by getting more investors than necessary. When they lose their money on a flop, they know it was a risk and they also don't know how many other investors there were. They start looking for the worst imaginable play and find the most offensive play imaginable, written by a deranged Nazi. It is called "Springtime for Hitler." Then they get the worst director and the worst actors. Unfortunately, after the initial gasps, the audience loves it because it is so over the top. It becomes a smash hit, and then the real problems begin... Anyway, you know how real world producers are, so in 2002, it was revived as a real stage musical on Broadway in 2001 and ran for seven years. Since then, there have been stage productions around the world, and even Paris, in a country allergic to most musicals, the Alexis Michalik production has been running for 2 years. So I finally went to see it because the season ends this month and ticket price have been slashed. It was actually due to end in April, but it has been so successful that the run was extended. It's a quite impressive production with tap dancing Nazis, the Village People, singing Sing Sing convicts, lascivious old crones and a bunch of other stuff. I always check out the theatre before it fills up. The large bar-lounge was doing good business. The ceiling of these place is almost always the same. In the end, the theatre filled up to about 60%. But the expensive seats in the orchestra outweigh the sparse balconies. This isn't Broadway, so it was a pretty big cast for a private theatre. Yes, some of the cast had recently been in Sing Sing. time to go home
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 4, 2023 18:43:16 GMT
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Post by kerouac2 on Sept 28, 2023 19:16:26 GMT
I went to see Proches by Laurent Mauvignier this week. It had the inexhaustible theme of the family gathering where thingz degenerate. I am always amazed at how trite you might think that this theme could get, but there is always something new to discover. This time you have the parents and their two adult daughters with spouses awaiting the arrival of the son, who has just spent 4 years in prison. He is late but will he actually ever arrive or are they waiting for Godot? He is actually on stage right from the start but as a sort of ghost. He says a lot of things but the others do not see or hear him. And then the other guest arrives. He is the son's lover so definitely not welcome, but one of the daughters told him of the event.
The structure of the play is the usual progression -- first it is pretty funny with various ridiculous issues and sibling sniping but as things progress, it becomes pretty serious and nasty. The two sons-in-law are pretty much confused (one has fertility issues while the other one has a new baby that is not really desired), the mother tries to ignore all problems, the father is furious about everything, and the unwanted guest tries to be as invisible as the son.
I really enjoy this sort of play.
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 2, 2023 13:10:23 GMT
I saw a second play this week, which is rather rare, but the theatre is only about 300 metres from my flat, and there was a performance at 16:00 on Sunday, which I find to be an ideal time. It leaves the whole day free and the whole evening free with just a little cultural pause in between. This was called Un certain penchant pour la cruauté (A Certain Penchant for Cruelty) and was another family group event. We have the mother and father, their teenage daughter and another guy who is always there, purported best friend but actually the lover of the mother, maybe even the biological father of the girl. And they have been in touch with an association to take in an illegal African immigrant whose arrival is the point of the play. So we go through the initial racial and cultural mistakss (ha ha), and then tensions begin to build (no more ha ha). They start ripping into each other for countless reasons, and the daughter gets pregnant, and you know what that means. Or do you? And who tipped off the cops about their illegal guest? The possibilities in these family plays are endless.
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 17, 2023 12:00:54 GMT
I went to one of the biggest private theatres of Paris to see a new production of the Eugène Labiche classic Un chapeau de paille d'Italie, which he wrote in 1851. It entered the repertoire of the Comédie Française in 1938 and you can find a major production somewhere in France every year or so. It has been made into a movie five times, but the last production was Russian and that was back in 1974. The first American production of the play was titled Horse Eats Hat but the English title has now been standarised to The Italian Straw Hat. It is basically a typical French vaudeville farce where the protagonist Fadinard is a wealthy young Parisian about to get married, but on the morning of the wedding he is riding in a carriage in the Bois de Vincennes and his horse eats a straw hat hanging on a tree. The owner was making love or whatever one does in the bushes with her muscular military companion who demands that Fadinard replace the hat with an identical one "or else." And so through five acts, Fadinard goes all over Paris with the entire wedding party following him in eight carriages. He goes a hatmaker and gets in trouble because she is an ex-lover but finds out that a similar hat has just been purchased by a baroness, so he has to go there next with more insanity in store. She is having a reception for a famous singer and she mistakes Fadinard for him and makes him sing. His wedding party has also walked in because they think it's a restaurant so they start eating and drinking. But the baroness gave the hat as a gift to her goddaughter, who is the young woman whose hat was eaten at the beginning. So he goes to her place and her husbands thinks that he is a burglar and they fight. Meanwhile the wedding party is in the square downstairs wondering WTF under the pouring rain and they all get arrested for disturbing the peace. Everything works out in the end of course, this being a French farce after all. The actors got a standing ovation at the end (and there were at least 20 of them). What they did was so exhausting and boisterous for two hours that they absolutely deserved it. The play also had live music by the popular group Feu! Chatterton playing in the upper boxes on both sides of the stage. The first time I went to this theatre was in 1971 to see the French production of Hair. Even though modern theatres are never built this way, I'm glad that Europe has kept most of its historic old places. Most of them don't use those dusty old curtains anymore though.
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 3, 2023 17:58:41 GMT
Yesterday I saw an absolutely extraordinary spectacle that I never would have seen without the intervention of serendipity. I was in Paris with a friend who happens to be the principal of a semi-tough high school in the suburbs. Believe me, the stories he tells me of the situations he has to face are often hair raising. He has long suffered from insomnia, but he told me he only takes sleeping pills on the weekend to try to get a normal night's sleep, because during the week, it is more important to just put up with the sleepessness since he has to get up at 06:00.
Anyway, that's all beside the point. He told me that he had invitations for a play that night and would I like to come? There is a theatre section in his high school, so he is in contact with various places, in this case the Théâtre de Sartrouville, which is a surprisingly important place. Sartrouville isn't quite a dump, but there is nothing special about it except for th fact that it has a "CDN" (Centre Dramatique National) which is a special designation for important subsidized theatres around the country. Anyway, they had invited him to the final performance of Kaldûn.
Luckily it was at 17:00, or I probably would have declined, because I knew what an ordeal it would probably be to go there (and return!). Sartrouville is direct on one of the main commuter lines (RER A), but Citymapper said that it was a 47 minute walk from the station to the theatre. However, the website of the theatre said there was a shuttle for an hour or so before any performance from the station to the theatre. We were lucky because we arrived at the Sartrouville RER station at 16:10 and found the shuttle very quickly. It holds 8 passengers and we were #7 and 8. It was a long ride, so if there is only one shuttle van, it must only run about every 15 minutes.
Anyway, we got there and received our tickets. It was a much larger place than expected, one of the huge communist bunkers built in the 1960s. But it really was in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by apartment blocks without a single café or shop anywhere near.
Okay, so much for the boring details. The place was totally full, something that you don't expect for an 850 seat theatre in the middle of nowhere on a Saturday afternoon. Theatres in Paris would be lucky to fill 850 sets on a day like that.
Kaldûn was absolutely AMAZING. It covers three continents because it concerns the Commune in France, the revolt of Algerians at the same time and the exile of both groups to New Caledonia at the end of the 19th century where the Kanaks were also in revolt. (Yes, this is extreme left wing theatre.) It starts with a documented and authentic presentation of a Kanak man and woman in a human zoo at a World's Fair in Paris. "They will eat bananas, but they prefer human flesh when they can get it."
It also spans a hundred years of New Caledonian history. There are 15 people on stage, French, Algerian and Kanak, about half of whom are a group of amazing musicians. We have Louise Michel the legendary firebrand of the Commune of Paris and the Kanak leader Ataï who was decapitated by one of his own and whose head was exposed at the Museum of Natural History in Paris and also at one of the World's Fairs and which was only restituted to New Caledonia in... 2021. As for the Algerians, one of the leaders escaped to Sydney and made his way as far as Jeddah, where he asked the French consulate for assistance. Mistake, he was trapped in Jeddah for 15 years.
The French Communards were finally amnestied and were able to return to France. The Algerians were amnestied but were obliged to remain in New Caledonia for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, there was a famine in Brittany so many young Breton women were sent to New Caledonia to obtain a new life. They had speed dating in a confessional with prospective mates and had to choose a husband in 15 minutes. Mot of them were 16-20 years old and the men were 50 or 60.
That's not even all of the details, but you can imagine the complication of putting all of this into the same spectacle. It was magical, often uplifting and the music was amazing, as was the staging. It lasted about 2h30 and could have continued indefinitely. There was a well deserved major standing ovation at the end.
Getting home was a real pain. My friend had a direct bus to his place in the suburbs, lucky bastard. It took me two hours to get back to Paris, and the streets were covered with frost. I am still thrilled to have experienced this show which will now wander around France from various national stages to others, including of course a number of venues in New Caledonia.
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Post by bixaorellana on Dec 3, 2023 19:35:26 GMT
That's not even all of the details, but you can imagine the complication of putting all of this into the same spectacle. No ~ I absolutely cannot even begin to imagine it. Thank you for the video teaser, which is a fabulous eye-opener into the wonders of this production. It is mind-boggling in the scope of what it covers and mind-boggling as well as a feat of theater. I do hope you get to see it again. What part is played by the man at the beginning of the video.? It seems he is sort of hidden in plain sight in all the other scenes. Is he sort of an invisible historical narrator? I hope you don't mind my posting your excellent coverage of some history of "a human zoo at a World's Fair in Paris". I instantly remembered that when reading the introduction to this coverage of Kaldûn & feel it provides great background flavor. anyportinastorm.proboards.com/thread/5773/abandoned-garden-desolation
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 3, 2023 20:04:56 GMT
The man at the beginning -- incredibly enough -- is Abdelwaheb Sefsaf, who created and directed the spectacle and who also happens to be the director of the Théâtre de Sartrouville, which is already quite a lot, but he is also the principal singer in the show.
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Post by bixaorellana on Dec 3, 2023 22:14:53 GMT
Whew ~~ really impressive!
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 22, 2023 5:58:17 GMT
Success is a fickle and often unfair thing. Yesterday I went to see Jamais Seul in a small theatre (about 100 seats), but there were only 6 spectators. I got used to this in the days I went to Avignon every year, but it is more normal in Avignon since a lot of people are just starting out in their careers. This was a more established actor, alone on stage. Ryan is a war correspondent who has been captured by the rebels and is in a bare cell. His companions were also captured, and he has no idea what happened to them. He goes through phases of anger, hope, despair. He talks to his absent wife, who is pregnant. After two months, he learns that one of his missing colleagues, Alex, has been executed. His other colleague Saïd has been released as long as he helps the rebels. At the end, it is time for Saïd to execute Ryan. I guess this wasn't enough of a Christmas story to attract more spectators.
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Post by whatagain on Dec 22, 2023 18:09:17 GMT
We are going to see a ballet tonight.
Casse noisettes from Tchaikovsky.
Hazelnuts something in English ?
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Post by htmb on Dec 22, 2023 18:19:02 GMT
We are going to see a ballet tonight. Casse noisettes from Tchaikovsky. Hazelnuts something in English ? The Nutcracker
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Post by lugg on Jan 22, 2024 20:03:55 GMT
I went to see " Noises Off" on Saturday. Such innocent, gentle and farcical fun. Most of the audience was of a "certain age" from what I could see but in front of me there was a little boy maybe 7 ish ...he seemed to enjoy it too.
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 8, 2024 14:52:19 GMT
I went to the theatre at the end of my street last night, Peter Brook's old haunt. I love that place. It was opening night of La Mouche (The Fly). I have seen both movies and also the David Cronenberg opera about 15 years ago, so the plot holds no surprises for me, but it is always interesting to see how they will handle the subject this time. This production was not recommended for spectators below the age of 12. The crowd began to arrive. Seating is extremely narrow at this place, but I was lucky to have the seat next to the house doctor, who never showed. The theatre was packed. The play was excellent and hilarious, and the fly got in the machine of course again, with the usual result. The mad scientist's mother was a good mother because she covered for her son when the police came looking for the missing girl. As for the little dog, he came out for the curtain call to prove that he was alive and well and not that horrible thing with the guts on the outside that we had been shown in one of the accidents.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 16, 2024 20:16:49 GMT
This afternoon, I went to see Matthew Bourne's Romeo + Juliet with music by Prokofiev, currently at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris before moving on to Tokyo and Seoul. This is a modernised retelling. It takes place at the Verona Insitute, which appears to be a psychiatric hospital for bad boys and girls. The staff are stern and cruel of course. And things do not end well, no surprrise there.
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