The Satin Shoe et Squid Gamesame fight? The comparison may be surprising but it is not totally far-fetched. Paul Claudel’s epic play holds the viewer for seven hours at the Comédie-Française, during the time of the Conquistadores. It’s a bit like “bingeing” your favorite series except that you don’t go to the Salle Richelieu in your pajamas although you can snack there between two acts.
Will Don Rodrigue end up being loved by Doña Prouhèze? Will she prefer the poisonous Camille? Will her guardian angel save her from temptation? Over three decades, hearts race and we enjoy ourselves! Four parts (and three intermissions, one of which lasts an hour and a half) take you like a groundswell into a world outside of time with twists and turns worthy of a masterfully written luxury soap opera. Éric Ruf, adapter, director and scenographer, won his bet: no one left the room during the breaks! “They wanted to know the end or live the experience to the end once they had started,” comments the latter. You don’t get bored for a second as everything is so varied.
A theatrical adventure
Marina Hands, Florence Viala, Danièle Lebrun, Alain Lenglet, Serge Bagdassarian, Didier Sandre, Christophe Montien, Birane Ba, Baptiste Chabaudy and Laurent Stocker, are among the many elected on the stage. They are all breathtaking. “It’s an adventure,” confides Laurent Stocker. It’s a challenge like one you don’t think you’ll experience often in your life.” He plays four important characters and appears throughout the play sometimes as a simple extra. Like his partners, he is part of the “banda” of silhouettes present on the set… “This saves the actors from having to wait for their appearances on stage,” explains Éric Ruf. It’s tiring to sit around doing nothing, it’s like leaving a cup of coffee and finding it cold. I didn’t want to let the actors get cold. »
Each and everyone is therefore also a spectator of the play. “Certain scenes upset me each time I see them and I think that this will be the case with all the performances,” admits Laurent Stocker. We will not say which ones, so as not to “disclose” a plot where there is no shortage of adventures and humor. Sometimes obese warrior, scholar, prisoner or king of Spain, he dazzles with the versatility of his talent and ends up exhausted and delighted. “I collapse on the way home and sleep for half an hour during the big intermission,” he said. It’s draining but so joyful to experience this adventure.” And to make us imagine the backstage where makeup artists and performers work diligently without the spectator suspecting this excitement.
-A public success
In this organized chaos, the sets are minimalist but they are not lacking as the costumes by Christian Lacroix, the music by Vincent Leterme and the lighting by Bernard Couderc constantly enchant. “Order is the pleasure of reason: but disorder is the delight of the imagination,” wrote Paul Claudel. Éric Ruf has made these wise words his own. “I didn’t expect to have so much fun,” a forty-year-old spectator confided to us at the end of the performance, admitting to having “been dragged to the theater” by her husband “in exchange for a dinner at the restaurant.” This idea greatly amuses Éric Ruf. “People expect seven hours of great lyrical poetry that you have to see once in your life, a bit like Mont Saint-Michel,” he comments. It’s wonderful when they come to tell me that they were surprised by the richness of an adventure where they weren’t bored and where they even laughed.”
The audience, charmed, lets themselves be carried away. All age groups were represented in the room. From the old gentleman who was regularly caught closing his eyes (no doubt to better understand the subtleties of the text) to the student keen on Claudel, annotating the text with enthusiasm. “Luckily we didn’t have a pair,” Sacha Guitry would have said nastily at the end of the Satin shoe in 1943. With all due respect, Mr. Guitry, we disagree with you so much that we will return there a second time, only too happy to set foot in those shoes again.
