Marina Hands quit smoking. She also stopped drinking alcohol and eating sugar. The actress puts all her energy into preparing for a marathon. But the race she is about to embark on is of a special kind, it will last several hours. Exactly seven thirty, on the stage of the Salle Richelieu of the Comédie-Française, in Paris.
From December 21, the 542emember of the institution will be Dona Prouhèze, the heroine of Satin shoe, monumental play by Paul Claudel dating from 1929. Of the eleven hours provided for in the full text, director Eric Ruf kept two thirds.
The action, an impossible love in the time of the conquistadors, takes place over twenty years and on several continents. The dialogues evoke the Catholic faith and the search for the absolute, the grandeur of art and the weight of sin. It will be hard. “Trying, even, specifies the actress. You have to love theater to accept such a thing. » She smiles: “That’s my case. »
With her, there will be around twenty, beginners and veterans, to interpret kings of Spain, great ladies of the court, attendants, soldiers and adventurers… All dressed by the designer Christian Lacroix, all impressed by this sprawling work and all very proud. Like Birane Ba, 29, whose vocation was born when, as a schoolboy on a school trip, he came to the Comédie-Française. “In an actor's life, we tell ourselves that we will never play The Satin Shoe. There, we reach the Grail. »
Mythical piece of the repertoire
The play is so long, so complex to stage, that it has rarely been staged. A good word circulates about him, sometimes attributed to Jean Cocteau, sometimes to Sacha Guitry. Coming out of a representation of Satin shoe, one of the two would have launched: “Luckily there weren’t the pair. »
The premiere took place in occupied Paris, in 1943 at the Comédie-Française, directed by Jean-Louis Barrault, who revived the play a few years later, at the Odéon. In 1987, Antoine Vitez made an impression at the Avignon Festival and Olivier Py offered his version at the Théâtre de la Ville in 2003. The play is a myth of French theater, the white whale of directors.
“Listen carefully, don’t cough and try to understand a little. » On the evening of December 21, Claudel's apostrophe to the spectators will launch the race. Behind the scenes, Eric Ruf will observe every detail. The general administrator of the Comédie-Française since 2014 knows that this Shoe marks a milestone in his career.
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