A show by François Cervantes is always totally implausible and completely true! The Marseille side perhaps!
It even features ghosts, that’s saying something!! And even stronger, the people in my neighborhood! Without excluding prisoners. Or all kinds of people you’ve never met or passed without seeing them.
Today, for example, Cervantes has invited to dinner in the Theatre of a vague cousin the vivacious X (she is not named) and Robert her sweet husband.
The table is set, and they arrive on stage, a little embarrassed, because they have never been in a Theatre. But conviviality, trust in others, in life too, that is their business.
Then a confusing dialogue begins at first, then increasingly warm between these two characters (fake invited guests) and the (real) spectators. The excellence of the dishes prepared by the stage manager of the Theater and the good wine help, the evening turns into a party. So why not invite Sylvie, their slightly handicapped daughter (she has writing prizes but can’t read), take Sylvain the (fake) stage manager on the story of his life, and also Agnès the great aunt who died as a child…
It’s jubilant. Full of humor and mixed emotions, unpredictable knitting of words and very physical acting, clowning and gravity, evocations of missing people, human beings or black rhinoceroses.
And like Robert, we think of them when we have to leave. Melancholy mixing dead and alive, visible and invisible. However Schubert accompanies us when the stage empties and it is a heartbreaking joy.
Daniele Carraz
Le repas des gens, Théâtre des Halles until July 21 at 6:45 p.m., closed on July 3, 10 and 17. From €5 to €22. Tickets theatredeshalles.com and tel 04 32 76 24 51
