In the performance hall of the Center Pompidou, before being presented at the Théâtre des Quartiers d’Ivry, Peter Handke’s play burns with a new relevance, that of suburban cities, in the striking production of Sébastien Kheroufi. Anne Alvaro, Casey, Reda Kateb and the director play the main roles in this choral epic among fifty actors. Handke’s poetry blazes with cruel fury.
“Woe to you if you dare to express who we are”
@Christophe Raynaud-De-Lage
So says Hans, the worker and brother of Gregor, the eldest writer, the one who went to town, who left his family, his childhood friends and his environment. Gregor, played by Reda Kateb, a fragile and slender figure, dressed in a well-tailored black raincoat, intellectual-rimmed glasses, returns to see his brother and sister. His inability to act on the tragedy of these miserable situations, which have not changed for decades, first comes through words that depict guilt and forgiveness. But between them and him, the concrete workers, the forklift workers and the intellectual, Peter Handke does not set up barriers. It is the author’s vibrant, poetic and fiery language that weaves a reconciling web. It is she who equalizes men and women, and in this magnificent piece, the worker and the supermarket cashier speak the same language as the intellectual. Dialogues, monologues, songs, poetry depict a fraternal musicality, sometimes violent, always passionate.
From villages to cities
@Christophe Raynaud-De-Lage
Sébastien Kheroufi grew up between the working-class neighborhoods of Hauts-de-Seine and the Parisian Emmaüs homes. Transported by the social and political lyricism of the piece, he transposes it from the Central European countryside of the 1960s to the cities that surround French capitals today. The stage space is a concrete island, occupied by a house in the shape of a transparent cube, filled with bunk beds and white bags full of sand. It is an abandoned space, like its inhabitants. It is an island of solitude and resignation that young workers and women with tired smiles sing about. From the outset, people talk about Arabic and French. Sébastien Kheroufi plays Hans, the heroic worker, emperor of misery and courage. The director and actor takes the text head on, rolls it in the tar and makes it blaze in the light. His brother Gregor remains in the shadows, observing this crater of humanity where everyone speaks the right word, whatever their rank.
The star Anne Alvaro
@Christophe Raynaud-De-Lage
In the middle of a crowd of extras who are the real inhabitants of the cities, the actress Anne Alvaro appears, among the trees of a cemetery of which she draws the solar circle. Brown priestess with burning black eyes, witch of Shakespearean tragedy, inspired Cassandra, the actress accomplishes the miracle of a powerful and simple incarnation, that of a luminous tragedy which tells the fate of humans. At the end of the show, rapper Casey (Nova), a formidable storyteller with volcanic energy and impressive breath, crushes our feelings of despair and fear in a monologue with Nietzschean power. Let’s take hold of ourselves, live in our bodies and minds, walk slowly and breathe very hard! This vitalist poetry would awaken the dead, the music gradually unfolds its bass until it invades the space. Like the rebirth of humanity. A success.
Helen Kuttner
