Elsewhere
Elsewhere
✭✭✭✭✭
by Victor Hugo, directed by Laurent Pelly
Théâtre de Carouge Atelier de Genève / Théâtre National de Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées, Théâtre de Carouge
May 14-June 2, 2013;
Théâtre de la Criée, Marseille, FRA
June 12-15, 2013
Aïrolo: “Quand l’estomac trahit, l'amour est en danger.”
Victor Hugo (1802-85) was France’s foremost Romantic playwright having written such classics as Hernani (1830) and Ruy Blas (1838). Yet, after the failure of his epic play Les Burgraves in 1843, he withdrew from the stage to concentrate on poetry and fiction producing such masterpieces as the as epic poem La Légende des siècles (1859) and novels such as Les Misérables (1862).
Little known is the fact that Hugo returned to writing drama late in life. After his death a collection of plays was found that Hugo wrote while in self-imposed exile on the island of Guernsey. These were published under the title Théâtre en liberté in 1886. In these plays, written without expectation of their ever being performed, Hugo was free to experiment in both style and subject matter in a way he had never done before. The result are plays unique in French drama that have only recently begun to attract the attention of contemporary directors. One of these, Mangeront-ils? (“Will They Eat?”), written in 1867 but not staged until 1907, has just received a fantastic production by director and designer Laurent Pelly.
The play, a comedy combining of fantasy and satire, constantly evokes parallels with Shakespeare’s The Tempest and the legend of Tristan and Isolde, but it seems to do so in order deliberately to overturn them. The action is set on the Isle of Man sometime in the Middle Ages. Christianity has come to the island but so long ago that some buildings, like the cloister in the play, is already a ruin. There are two strange inhabitants in this heavily forested part of Mann (as it is known). One is Zineb, a sorceress who has just turned 100 years old and is ready to die. The other is Aïrolo, a man of nature and a thief. His name suggests a blend between Shakespeare’s Ariel and Trinculo, but he also combines aspects of Caliban and, from The Winter’s Tale, Autolycus.
Into this part of the island, Lord Slada has fled with his beloved Lady Janet and have taken refuge in the cloister. Rather like Tristan and Isolde, who were pursued to Brittany by King Marke, the couple have been pursued to this spot by the King of Man, who planned to marry Lady Janet, and by the King’s retinue of archers and his counsellor and fool Mess Tityrus.
Slada and Janet face a dilemma. Seeking sanctuary in the cloister means they are protected from the King as long as they remain there. However, for reasons having to do with Hugo’s negative view of organized religion, the couple cannot eat or drink because all the vegetation on the cloister grounds is poisonous and as are all its streams. While the lovers are willing to die together, they also admit they are hungry and thirsty after three days in the cloister. The King plans to have a huge feast just outside the cloister walls hoping to draw the two out to face their doom. Aïrolo hears his plan and vows to help the couple. Aïrolo’s plan is aided immensely when he moves the dying Zineb to safety and she prophesies to the King that he will die when Aïrolo dies.
As the designer Laurent Pelly great innovation is his conception of the forested Isle of Man. Instead of trees, the stage erupts in huge bending, tapering poles. The action thus looks as if it is taking place on Victor Hugo’s ageing scalp among his remaining hairs. The “sea” in the distance off the edge of a cliff has become a blurry manuscript in Hugo’s handwriting. This brilliant concept makes it seem as if the creatures of Hugo’s fantasy are running wild on top of his own head. The humanoid set also reinforces the English pun Hugo intends in making symbols of the Isle of Man and the King of Man. With Hugo as the “man”, the play also becomes, as so many see in The Tempest, a play about the powers of the playwright.
For her part Charlotte Clamens gives a wonderfully warm portrait of Zineb. She may be called a “sorcière”, but Clamens plays her as a wise woman with healing powers, deeply in connected to the world of nature and its powers. There are many ways to ruin this kind of role with clichés, but Clamens and Pelly avoid them all by portraying Zineb by emphasizing the realism of the character. She does not appear like a sorceress in any conventional sense but more like a homeless woman whose “knowledge” we almost believe may be a fantasy.
Pelly has costumed both Aïrolo and Zineb in rags that look as if they characters have lived in them all their lives. In contrast, all the court figures are costumed in renaissance garb – the would-be tragic lovers in black and their would be captors all in white. The King and Mess Tityrus also differ from the lovers in that their costumes also incorporate modern elements – ties and shirts with standing collars for both and trousers and a modern greatcoat for the King.
Georges Bigot’s Roi de Man is a portrait of megalomania, though Bigot manages to bring out the insecurity that lurks behind it. The proof is that the King can so easily be turned from his extreme statements by the wiles of Mess Tityrus. For his part, Philippe Bérodot is a constant delight as Mess Tityrus. At first we think Tityrus is merely a flatterer, but soon enough Bérodot shows us through gesture and tone of voice (not to mention direct address) that Tityrus plays with the King, whom he regards as an idiot, to get what he thinks best for the kingdom and most of all for himself. Tityrus says outright that he will leave the King if he finds something more favourable elsewhere. Since the name Tityrus links the character to the deities of the forest, we shouldn’t be surprised that he ultimately supports the powers of nature.
Just as Hugo satirizes tyranny with the Roi de Man, he satirizes romantic love with Lady Janet and Lord Slada. Both Charlotte Dumartheray and Cédric Leproust fill them with the youthful passion of a Romeo and Juliet but they also allow us to see glimpses of reality beneath their rhetoric of undying love. Pelly has emphasized the comedy of their passion by casting Leproust as Slada, who still taller than Dumartheray even when he kneels. These two may talk fervently of dying for love, but they are a bit peckish, too, which bespeaks a desire to eat (as per the title) as well as love. 54 years ahead of Brecht and Weill’s Das Dreigroschenoper (1928), Hugo posits the notion “Erst kommt das Fressen, dann die Moral” (“First comes eating then morality”) with its implication, “First comes food, then idealism”. By linking the death of the Roi de Man to Aïrolo’s death Hugo makes the parallel mocking statement, after John Locke’s Of Government (1689), that “...a very pretty way of being a governor without government, a father without children, and a king without subjects”.
Mangeront-ils? is such a fascinating, meaty play that it deserves to be better known. Its satire on government and romantic love meshes well with the ideas George Bernard Shaw professes and the play would find a natural home at the Shaw Festival if anyone would take a look at it and have the courage and imagination to stage it. On the other hand, Pelly’s current staging that originated at Théâtre National de Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées, where he is Artistic Director, is so perfect, it’s hard to conceive of a better one. It deserves a much wider audience that the lucky theatre-goers of Toulouse, Geneva and Marseille, and one can only hope than someone chooses it to be part of an international theatre festival. It’s a wonderfully invigorating example of how a director’s creativity can turn a forgotten work into a revelation.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: (top) Philippe Bérodot and Georges Bigot; (bottom) Jérôme Pouly. ©2013 Polo Garat-Odessa.
For tickets, visit www.tcag.ch or www.theatre-lacriee.com.
2013-06-03
Geneva, SUI: Mangeront-ils?