Extremely funny, the new show from the Geneva troupe of Founders is inspired by the famous novel by Miguel de Cervantes to invent “Quixote, modern chivalry”. A treat of absurd humor to discover at the TPR in La Chaux-de-Fonds from May 2 to 4, then on tour in French-speaking Switzerland at the end of the year.
“In a village in the Channel, whose name I don’t want to remember, there lived not long ago one of these gentlemen with a spear on the rack, an old-fashioned leather shield, a greyhound for hunting and a skinny dog. “. Installed behind a sort of skylight that is part vintage television, part radio studio, David Gobet has all the makings of a pontificating speaker. He reads, or rather paraphrases, “Don Quixote de la Mancha”, the father of all novels, the deliciously zany volume by Miguel de Cervantes, dated 1605.
And here, on this same theater stage, a few centimeters from his nose, a parallel life takes place. Installed in their association premises, Anne and François, alias Anne Delahaye and François Herpeux, carefully prepare cardboard panels in preparation for a mysterious action planned for next Sunday.
The comic magic is running at full speed
The connection with Quixote? The first took windmills for hostile giants. The latter could well attack a future wind farm. And my whole thing is shaking quite a bit, entangled in its clumsiness, its logistical problems, its illusions and its formidable desire for heroic action. Quixote, as we know, ends his battle hanging on the wings of a windmill. Anne and François will return from their action with their clothes torn, boxes pressed on their heads and faces worn out.
In “Quixote, modern chivalry”, the comic magic of the Geneva troupe of Founders is in full swing. The trick: tell us a story while tinkering with the decor (here demonstration panels) and pretending not to tell us said story. In the past, the Founders had already seized Molière’s “Dom Juan” and “Tartuffe”, then Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary”, which saw the Bovarys’ bourgeois living room gradually invaded by trinkets purchased by mail order until suffocation.
The Founders prefer the side roads
In this “Quixote”, the challenge is not to adapt a world novel with its dozens of characters, situations and landscapes to the stage, but to make the theater stage quixotic, for the duration of a performance. Omar Porras and his Teatro Malandro had previously magnificently told the epic of the lord of La Mancha, who became a character observing his own fiction in a formidable mise en abyme imagined by this genius of Cervantes.
The Founders preferred the side roads. David Gobet the narrator will come out of his skylight to join the two oddball activists. That rascal Cervantes would have stolen his own lines. It is therefore a question of showing solidarity and demanding compensation. And the three zigotos on the plateau adorn themselves with high-sounding chivalrous surnames to better impress their new enemy.
On the public side, there was no fear, but there were cascades of laughter. Don Quixote, the man who prefers utopia to reality, has hit the nail on the head again.
Thierry Sartoretti/olhor
“Quixote, modern chivalry”, TPR, La Chaux-de-Fonds, from May 2 to 4, 2024; L’Usine à gaz, Nyon, November 14 and 15, 2024; Théâtre du Passage, Neuchâtel, November 19, 2024; Benno Besson Theater, Yverdon, November 22, 2024; Spot, Sion, November 28, 2024; Nebia, Bienne, December 5, 2024; Nuithonie, Villars-sur-Glâne, December 10 and 11, 2024.
