Built in 1980 by Jean-Claude Pasche alias Barnabé, the Servionnais theater has taken a turn since 2018 to devote itself to large productions in the Anglo-Saxon style. He celebrates his sixty years with the musical “Robin Hood, lame comedy” to be seen until February 23.
The Barnabé café-theater, located in Servion in the canton of Vaud, is celebrating its sixtieth anniversary. Built in 1980 by the director, actor and theater director Jean-Claude Pasche alias Barnabé (1940-2020), a fan of revues, it has been directed since 2018 by Noam Perakis and Céline Rey, both at the same time actors and directors.
The duo is responsible for a radical shift in production: no more revues, already too numerous in Romandie according to him, and welcome to Anglo-Saxon musicals. A genre of music that Barnabé himself was a fan of, spending his time between London and New York to see the latest productions.
“We worked a lot with Barnabé, remembers Céline Rey in the Vertigo show on December 27. He participated in shows of our company, the Broadway company. I directed him vocally too, because I do the vocal direction of the company’s shows. He was a lover of the text. Personally, he taught me a lot about prosody, that is to say the text set to music.
Substantial resources
“The theater is a fantastic tool because it was developed to produce great shows, mainly revues,” continues Noam Perakis. “We are one of the rare theaters in French-speaking Switzerland, if not the only one, to own a turntable for example, that is to say a stage which allows objects, people and decorations to rotate.”
And the means are indeed substantial: with a budget of three million per year, the theater notably has its orchestra, its own set workshop adjacent to the stage and a costume making workshop, housing a collection of more than 10,000 pieces.
The turn taken by the theater is risky, but proves profitable. “The heart of our artistic line is to make a sort of musical comedy hub. We started in 2019, where we produced the musical ‘Sister Act,’ which was a huge hit. We said to ourselves that we had was very lucky. But the following year, we had an even bigger success with the musical ‘Hollywood’ and so on. The artists are very talented in French-speaking Switzerland. It often surprises the public to know that these. professional musical theater artists come from here,” says Noam Perakis.
“Robin Hood, lame comedy”
For its last musical comedy of 2024, the theater team offers the public a so-called “crappy” comedy, a translation of the so-called comedies goes wrong in English. “It’s an English tradition,” explains Noam Perakis. “These are shows that come from a company that made ‘The Play That Goes Wrong’, or the play that goes wrong. But they also created ‘Peter Pan Goes Wrong ‘, ‘Magic Goes Wrong’ and so on Each time, during the show, nothing is going to happen as planned. It’s disaster after disaster and it’s hilarious. say, ‘why don’t you take this code from goes wrong and make it a musical with all the ingredients we love in Anglo-Saxon musicals?’”
During the performance, the French-speaking audience is sometimes surprised: “I think that part of our audience has seen the poster. But we also have an audience who regularly comes to the Barnabé theater regardless of the production, our first fans. And indeed , this audience is not expecting this messed up musical comedy. They are very surprised by the first ‘messups’ and even more seduced afterwards”, concludes Noam Perakis.
Radio subject: Pierre Philippe Cadert
Web adaptation: Myriam Semaani
“Robin Hood, lame comedy”, Barnabé café-theatre, Servion, until February 23, 2025.
