Heralded by myriad Metro posters, another version of La Nuite Juste Avant les Forets, to play briefly at Theatre de la Ville/Les Abbesses just after I was to leave Paris, was crosslisted in Officiel des Spectacles as dance. It's hard to imagine anyone being more agile than Emeric Marchand, a dancer as well as actor, with movements and diction seemingly designed by brilliant writer Koltes. It's just as difficult to believe a richer theater could more suitably house the working class down-and-outer who tells his story. A secular journey by a Dante misguided by too many people and movements, whose pics and symbols he hangs on a clothes line throughout, it leads to no Paradiso.
In the fragrantly incensed Clavel, crowd noises dim as a shoeless guy, head bowed, with coat but no shirt and two suitcases (metaphorical baggage, as well) appears in the rain, umbrella down. To someone unseen he speaks of his life, mostly with a sense of having been betrayed, sometimes demanding reasons for and other times exploring answers to its perplexities. He derides politics, particularly on "the international scene," with the need for a military for "defense." He walks a tightrope, commenting on pseudo-chic 1940s and '50s fashions, sexual experiences, racism. On a soapbox he reenacts his communist activism. Through scarlet lights and shafts of white, he shouts, strips, dances across the stage to a precarious stance on a chair tipped backward, then falls breathless to the floor. Soon encircled in satin, he whirls with various movements, then breaks out to look for a lodging. Not easy, his spotlighted search or his "findings." He's always in danger, even when his atmosphere includes bubbles, lighter than usual music, and flowers.
What is ahead as he is right before mountains, the forest, a "place" for him but no work? He laughs, cries. It's red and raining. This journey has been a tour de force. Like him, we are drained. Are we at a circular end or beginning?
