Whipped by “Starmania” and Daniel Balavoine, “Le Cid” hits the heart in Villeurbanne

Published on December 18, 2024 at 12:14 p.m. / Modified on December 18, 2024 at 12:41.

3 mins. reading

Daniel Balavoine at Pierre Corneille, you won’t think about it! SOS to an earthling in distress echoing the despair of Rodrigue, the hero of Cid, who thinks he is forever deprived of his Chimène, it seems incongruous, right? Or even demagogic? And yet, at the Théâtre national populaire in Villeurbanne, this pop insert in the middle of Pierre Corneille’s large piece hits the mark. With his Story of a Cid, Jean Bellorini, 41, offers, until Friday in Lyon before the Théâtre des Amandiers in Nanterre, a beautiful show like those tales that we tell ourselves under the eiderdown to feel winged, carried by four superb actors on the thread of tragedy and by two musicians in tune.

We had to dare to rewrite like this The Cid, this tragedy which is the fear – and sometimes the happiness – of generations of high school students. You had to love it a lot, especially to lighten it without betraying it, to make it accessible to everyone without making it trivial. Jean Bellorini and his gang had this irreverence of reading butterflies, on condition of admitting that fluttering is an art in itself, a way of experiencing the text with cheerfulness and gravity. This is what distinguishes the director of the National Popular Theater, whose The Suicide, Soviet vaudeville by Nicolaï Erdman left his mark on the Théâtre de Carouge, just like his shadow play by Valère Novarina.

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