2023-06-11 15:42:51
The beginnings of the downpour will not have discouraged the spectators whose umbrellas draw, on this Saturday evening, a pretty colorful serpentine on the pavement of the Grandes Écuries. On this stormy pre-summer evening, the vagaries of the sky forced the organizers of Mois Molière to decide at the last minute to withdraw from the show, which should have taken place outdoors, in the courtyard.
While the public takes their place, well sheltered, in the stands of the Equestrian Academy, volunteers and actors are busy setting up the decor on the stage hastily positioned in the middle of the sawdust usually trodden by Bartabas’ horses. Due to lack of time, not all the elements can be reassembled. “You have to imagine there, windows, and on this side, maps of France and coat racks”, tells the director Xavier Lemaire to the audience. He will speak again at the end of the performance to shed some light on the work carried out with the co-author of the play Pierre-Olivier Scotto.
Tell the absence
A very simple exchange that could sum up the atmosphere of the “Month Molière”, a festival dedicated to the art of Molière, which honors contemporary authors and creations (no less than 16 for this edition, many of which will be then programmed in the “off” of Avignon). The opportunity for the troops to unveil their shows in front of an enthusiastic and indulgent assembly. This was the case this weekend for Back to school 42, welcome childrenimagined by Xavier Lemaire and Pierre-Olivier Scotto.
The piece transports the public to October 1942 at the Victor-Hugo school in the 11th arrondissement of Paris. The establishment for young girls has 123 registered students, but on the first day of school only 19 of them show up. Where have the others gone? All bore Jewish surnames… What if the rumors were true? What if these little girls had been arrested, along with their families, by the French police? To evoke the roundup of the Vél’ d’Hiv, on July 16 and 17, 1942, the show takes a completely original path. Without however managing to find the thread of a true narration, he tries to tell the absence, these 4,115 children (out of nearly 13,000 arrests) who would now be missing.
An enthusiastic audience
Carried by an energetic troupe – Anne Richard, Isabelle Andréani, Émilie Chevrillon, Fanny Lucet, Dominique Thomas and Michel Laliberté – the play takes hold of a terrible subject while using the codes of comedy. A mixture of rather perilous genres, whose relatively approximate mastery, with a form of happy end quite surprising, yet does not seem to confuse the public.
The memory of the Holocaust and the Second World War will still be on the program following the festival, which should be marked on June 15 by another creation. Doloresdirected by Virginie Lemoine, tells the tragic story of two flamenco dancers in Berlin in the 1930s. Many other professional and amateur shows will follow, scattered in some sixty places across the city.
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