Alone on stage, Charles-Étienne Beaulne is funny, brilliant and endearing throughout the play Nipple_Jesuspresented at the Théâtre La Bordée.
The last stretch of the season of pieces offered in formula 5 to 7 at La Bordée is in good hands, with Nipple_Jesus and its only actor, Charles-Étienne Beaulne.
In this solo, Beaulne plays a former bouncer at the bar Le Dagobert, on Grande Allée, who retrained as a security guard in an art museum to get away from the risks he could face in the world of bars. His new mandate at the museum brings him to monitor Nipple_Jesusa controversial work that mixes the woman’s body with the face of Jesus Christ, which is expected to be vandalized.
In the first segments of his monologue, Beaulne gives off what you’d expect from a bar bouncer with bulging biceps; more confidence in his muscle mass than in his gray matter and a good sense of humor with very familiar language.
But as the piece progresses, we feel his reasoning develop. Out loud, without losing any of his scathing frankness or his humor, he questions himself about art, about the people he can observe while monitoring Nipple_Jesus, and to a certain extent on politics. The more time he spends in front of “his work”, as he affectionately calls it, in his role of “gorilla”, as he puts it so well, the more this task values him. Until he realizes that ultimately, it is not a brain that the museum was looking for security, but rather strong hands.
In just one hour, Charles-Étienne Beaulne succeeds in making people laugh, make people think and make people feel, without ever losing the beautiful naive energy and excellent frankness of his character.
Nipple_Jesus is presented at 5:30 p.m., Monday to Friday, until May 17, at Théâtre La Bordée.
