2023-06-02 18:30:17
Since Antiquity, she is the one whose history has been swallowed up by the theater. Eclipsed, obliterated by the bravery of her sister Antigone, made by tragedy a symbol of rebellion against injustice. “Sister of…”, “daughter of…” too (Oedipus, Jocasta… a genealogy to say the least eventful), and if Ismene also had something to tell for herself?
She arrives, wearing magenta pumps and draped in a chic stole, looking vaguely borrowed. A desk and a microphone await him on a fairground platform covered in bottle-green plastic. She confides her hesitation to come out of her reserve, and finally her decision to accept the invitation to give her side of the story.
Given in one of the enchanting corners of the Domaine d’O pine forest, this show simply named Ismene is a jewel with a discreet and delicate sparkle. He grips the audience with those subtle emotions that make fragile theater an immortal art. Woven around a female character, Ismene is also a feminine piece in the very heart of its creation: the magnificent and surprising text by Carole Fréchette is directed by Marion Coutarel and carried by the extraordinary Mama Prassinos. Accompanied from time to time by a remarkable soprano (Mia Mandineau), the actress embarks the assembly in a multicolored story between humor and communicative sensitivity.
Gracefully taming the vagaries of the open air (like the passage of this helicopter while the spectators hold their breath, hanging on Ismene’s lips), Mama Prassinos travels in the small rectangle of the set from which suddenly emerge the traces of a immemorial past. Like his character, we regret that the end of this real fake conference has come.
An actress with a scalpel
A little later in the evening, another actress will illuminate the fallen night in the large amphitheater of O. An actress who plays an actress, or rather two mirror actresses in the diptych staged by Ivo van Hove based on two plays by Ingmar Bergman, After the rehearsal et Persona.
Taking up a staging imagined in 2012 at the International Theater in Amsterdam, he has the two opuses, lasting an hour and a half each, played by the same actors: Charles Berling, Justine Bachelet, and especially Emmanuelle Bercot who dominates this cast. with stunning intensity.
In the first room, After the rehearsal, she is Rachel, the ghost of an actress summoned by the memories of a director (Charles Berling) in search of the absolute. The absolute, this painful illusion that precipitated Rachel into alcoholism and violence. Swinging dangerously between tears, cries and despair, Emmanuelle Bercot is consumed with her character on the set: ” My face… “she repeats, her hands on her face, as if to contain the bleeding from a gaping wound.
In Persona, the second piece, Emmanuelle Bercot becomes Elizabeth and has no more words. Exit the rage of the fallen Rachel, place in the white and thick silence of amazement: at the end of a performance ofElectraElizabeth, to whom however everything seemed to succeed, decided not to speak any more.
The eternal essence of tragedy.
These two characters embody several facets of the multiple threads drawn by Bergman’s two texts, confronted here by Ivo van Hove in a fascinating reflection on theatre. In the second part, Emmanuelle Bercot first appears completely naked on a dissection table lit with pale neon.
This striking image, of which the director has the secret, clearly contains the depth of the subject: autopsy of the mystery of the theater, of a sometimes destructive desire, of the chimeras of truth.
Persona continues at the edge of the water, in a formidable lakeside scenography, with a disturbing camera between Elizabeth and her nurse (Justine Bachelet). The latter’s logorrhea contrasts with the silence of her patient. After the howling fury of the first part, Emmanuelle Bercot, speech returned to a terribly expressive body, delivers here a poignant performance. Rare in the theatre, the actress and director imposes herself in the eternal essence of tragedy.
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