2023-10-07 12:04:39
“A comedy written at a time of danger. NOW. » Sylvain Creuzevault’s note of intent is as clear as the last words that will appear at the end of his piece Edelweiss [France Fascisme] : “Beware of your desires. They arrive. »
It is with a sense of urgency that his company has seized the history of the intellectuals of the French extreme right, from the end of the 1930s until the collaboration and the purge. Edelweiss is the title of a military march, written in 1938 and translated into French at the time of the creation of the Legion of French Volunteers against Bolshevism in 1941, which fought within the Wehrmacht.
A distance through buffoonery
And it is through comedy that the director of Demons and Brothers Karamazov chooses to address this flammable material. He thus keeps at a distance the speeches of these French journalists, writers, and politicians, referred to on stage only by their first names. Their surnames – Doriot, Déat, Laval, Rebatet, Brasillach, Céline… –, like the historical events in which they took part, are projected onto a translucent curtain at regular intervals.
Between these scansions, the apparent rationality of their speeches and their deep desires inhabit a cold setting, that of the tribunal before which they will find themselves judged at the end. Scenes where the grotesque constantly mixes with the tragic, the pettiness of power with the nostalgia of power and the darkness of impulses with the love of words.
How does fascism insinuate itself into the minds of a generation? Starting with those, cultivated, sometimes erudite, of these intellectuals, who through ambition, cynicism and thirst for the absolute, embraced the fascist project? How can we understand this trajectory espoused by these men who are otherwise separated by everything? Beyond the writings and historical knowledge, the theater of Sylvain Creuzevault, who designed this play as a mirror to a previous work on a young German resistance fighter, invites us into the twists and turns of their journey, personal and collective.
A closed session that causes discomfort
The scenes follow one another, carried by magnificent actors, who participated in the writing of the play and each take on several roles in this spiraling madness. Lucie Rouxel, in particular, manages to paint the dark nuances of Lucien Rebatet, Frédéric Noaille portrays an exalted and offbeat Louis-Ferdinand Destouches (aka Céline), or even Charlotte Issaly a Robert Brasillach, still vibrant but lucid in front of his judges.
Like the large projection of the painting by Brueghel the Elder, Mad Margot, the discoveries multiply at a frenzied pace to make us aware of this story that we would like to be frozen in a few stories and other trial reports.
Certainly, the stage bias eventually wears out, the recurrence of historical references becomes heavy, the buffoonery redundant. We try in vain to leave this closed door to hear its echoes outside, in a society barely outlined by a character from time to time, like that of the concierge. The parallel with our current affairs may also seem a little too strong. But at the end, Edelweiss hits the mark, arousing the spectator’s discomfort, and even more, his disquietude.
#Sylvain #Creuzevaults #theatrical #warning