You must have the faint of heart. Not that one would betray him here the Greek Euripides (484-406) and the two tragedies that the director of the belgian Ivo van Hove binds in a single large movement. Electra (413 av J.-C.) and Orestes (408 av J.-C.), two of the biggest pieces of this author so distant, but so close in the clear translation of Marie Delcourt-Curvers edition (Folio). Two-piece, which follow in time but also in the continuity of the action.
This action, We can summarize it abruptly. It is the home of Atreus. Seven years earlier, Clytemnestra had been convinced by her lover Egisthe to murder her husband, Agamemnon. Electra, the daughter of the king, was sent to the countryside by her mother and married to a peasant. Two young people arrive on a beautiful day that claim to give him news of her brother, Oreste. It is him of course. The oracle of Delphi asks him to kill Egisthe and his sister, in a movement of wildness that will inundate the plateau more than two hours, is that it also kills their mother. Oreste runs, but becomes crazy as the Érinyes pursue it. What will happen to him?
Mud fat
The frame is also appalling that relentless. In a space only occupied by a building claim with the door open seems to give the vacuum and the black (the hut of Electra, the palace of Argos), a space completely covered with a mud fat, and where does shine as the drums hammered copper timpani Trio Xenakis, the actors, the costumes brown and green, or royal blue, will throw all their forces in the thoughts and actions breakthrough. The emasculation of Egisthe by Electra quickly leaves hear that, here, we will stop at no atrocity.
For this release stage, Ivo van Hove and Bart van den Eynde have had to give up some of the details and blooms of the text. We can see here is to ask questions that relate closely to our world: exile, war, revenge and radicalization. Nothing yet that sounds like a lesson. It is in the most vivid of the theater, with the screen of the microphones well mastered, and the capacity of each of the fifteen performers to go to the greatest violence to the abandonment, if one takes the central trio. Electra, the sublime Suliane Brahim, boyish skull under her short wig, the voice of a child sometimes. Oreste, upsetting Christophe Montenez that, to flower of skin, makes us feel the torment is excruciating, the anguish of a human heart and those who are inflicted by the gods and the furies. It is beautiful. Pylade, ami, the very sensitive Loïc Corbery, ideal. All are admirable, precise, focused on their partitions difficult. When, at the end, in her dress of gold, comes Apollo, to appease the spirits dislocated and promise peace to Orestes, we can breathe finally…
Electra/Orestes, the comédie Française, Place Colette (Ier). Tel.: 01 44 58 15 15. Schedule: 20 h 30 and 14 h in the morning. Until 3 July, alternating. Duration: 2 h 10 min without intermission. Seat: from 5 to 42 €. Please note that the show will be broadcast live on may 23, in 200 cinemas, and then rebroadcast .
