“The Art of Joy”, an aristocratic, revolutionary and rock’n’roll fresco at the Nîmes theater

There’s definitely something exciting and scary about spending more than five hours in a theater. The fear is twofold when it comes to seeing the adaptation of The art of joyby Goliarda Sapienza presented by Ambre Kahan at the Bernadette-Lafont theater, in Nîmes). The novel offers such powerful images that readers (and readers, because there are some too!) already have a film in their heads.

This Saturday evening, shortly after midnight, on the sidewalks of the Place de la Calade, the excited public said to themselves that it is rare to see so much theater. And not just because it lasts a long time! There is this gigantic decor, this troupe, this music, these lights, these incessant staging ideas, this abundant language, these beautiful paintings like those we see at the Uffizi and the exceptional performance of Noémie Gantier, on stage from start to finish… Ambre Kahan embraces the Italian fresco while retaining all its scale, its complexity, its sensuality, to cross the first thirty years of the 20th century in Sicily, with the freedom of Modesta, a freedwoman who became a princess rebellious.

Modesta doesn’t care about morality

In a fast-paced first part, a queer narrator makes the story gallop. With intelligence, without any gratuity, the director mixes the revolutionary aristocracy of Visconti with offbeat humor and baroque rock’n’roll. Modesta likes men, she likes women, she likes love, she likes sex. She loves life, she loves the present that she lives with a “art of joy” which is not that of happiness. She also awakens to the ideas of her time in a troubled Sicily. With relish, she doesn’t care about morality, about all catechisms, she assumes her destiny and her desires.

After an Italian picnic, the second part plunges the audience into a darker, more melancholy atmosphere. The period of great hopes gives way to painful hours. The First World War, the Spanish flu, then this former socialist turned fascist Mussolini pushed Italy and Sicily into political violence and disillusionment. But only the living are right and in the heart of this world where death is at the end of the gun, Modeste remains alive, fighting, free, powerful, luminous, standing despite the shadows and the mourning. And it will still be, hopefully in the continuation of this monumental adaptation. Because in 5:30 hours, Ambre Kahan only tells a very small part of The art of joy…And we want more!