For the last show of the season, James Thierrée and the troupe of Hanneton offered us a suspended universe from which multiple transformations, impressive mutations would arise.
The set: very long curtains in shades of green and brown. Nothing gloomy but full of mystery… A shadow theater illuminated by numerous lights resembling flying saucers that rise and fall with the sway of a long staircase.
A symbolic mini basin on the stage, all the more so when talking about amphibians. On the left, one notices a doll in place of a pianist; it seems disjointed as it jerks like an automaton at certain moments.
James Thierrée’s universe is poetic, lyrical, and of course, he owes a lot to his grandfather, Charlie Chaplin, for nothing! Humorous, slapstick, brilliant. This man and his small troupe from the worlds of dance, mime, street dance, wandering, and metamorphosis are brimming with inventions when it’s not the materials or musical instruments that prompt evolutions and recreations.
A singer, Mariama, launches into long melodies over this imaginary landscape. A “tough nut” who can’t stand wrong notes and a sort of little street kid, a Peter Pan, our James Thierrée, confront each other. The latter tries to get rid of a violin after playing it, but it sticks to his fingers.
We are reminded of Coluche, in a different arena, who, in an act, played the violin with boxing gloves. To envy the half-airborne, half-amphibious frog is the point. Two young girls envy it so much that they are about to dive into the basin and almost never come out!
James Thierrée’s character wants to move in slow motion as if the ground were shifting and absorbing each of his steps.
The frog conquers all, in fact, even if the singer, dressed in red, suddenly turns into a frog by a leg trick she secretly holds before falling, frightened by the emergence of a massive white amphibian as impressive as an ox because wasn’t it said that it “wanted to be as big as the ox”? And the red curtain, let’s save it for the end, an allusion to the red dress of the vocalist, floats and envelops each of the protagonists. And what can be said of this tenderly intermittent lighting?
It’s undoubtedly to better highlight the lantern perched above this mechanical arm of a machine from another era. We’re between the fire, Cirque Plume, and the colors, as well as the atmosphere of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s film: “The City of Lost Children.”
Let’s not forget the juggling: it’s about which of the two characters will knock over the most metal plates until the appearance of an improbable creature armored with these same plates. Progressive magic of elements, sudden short circuit when Electre meets Ondine, but it’s to better cast an even more enigmatic light again! The sources of inspiration are multiple, for example in the tramp.
Charlot of course grappling with the giant who keeps pushing him even when he’s let go, we smile with wonder like children, but James Thierrée has managed, over several realizations, to imprint his character. Here we are at a loss for words to describe the nimbleness of the leaping animal expressed in all its facets from the most humorous to the most poetic. Light, emotion, space, solid, liquid, descending, ascending, we run out of words but not images.
Truly, this show has well deserved its Molière award for the best visual show of the year.
Roland Haugade
