-WALLY
-January 12 to 22, 2011
-Théatre de la Marguerite.com
31 rue Sade 06600 Old Antibes
“Why do the rich never lend to the poor?… Because they’re well aware that money doesn’t buy happiness…” While Wally’s message is often “social but nevertheless cheerful,” one shouldn’t be too easily fooled by his jolly demeanor; his witty remarks, delivered nonchalantly, and his seemingly benign nature conceal a humor much more biting than it appears.
Performing solo for about ten years now, he reinvents a modern form of Music-Hall, blending humor and song in a completely personal style.
An exceptional showman, Wally masters above all the art of interactive performance.
An efficient composer, excellent guitarist, who also plays the piano and accordion, equipped with a beautiful voice, he steps onto the stage with genuine ease. His sources of inspiration are diverse, but his art of playfully skewering everyday life with good humor and common sense remains his main trademark. Intuitive and imaginative, he presents his show in new or at least unusual forms, through gags, songs (sometimes very short, as Wally is a master of brevity), and absurd or burlesque “performances”. His exhibition “art for nothing” (featuring a belly-scratcher, automatic thumb-twirler, sugar-breaking machine, etc.) and his video (2 DVDs released by Polydor) have become playgrounds where Wally hones his human comedy.
Despite all this, Wally, being a true man of the earth, keeps his feet on the ground and constantly puts things into perspective: “When I think of all the energy we expend,” he says, “to one day remain completely unknown…”
LE FIGARO: “His show looks like anything, but anything masterfully controlled, in which he brandishes ‘the poor man’s tear gas’ (a manual onion chopper extended with a funnel), sings a cappella the letters to the editor from a TV magazine, invents a musical comedy in a supermarket parking lot (an extraordinary exercise in style), embarks on an unlikely gymnastic performance, invents techno at ten decibels, performs the music for the unemployment office’s answering machine (‘a big hit of recent years’), presents a pack of twenty five-second songs, improvises with overwhelming good nature… It’s huge, it’s delightful.”
