Two Theater Worlds Collide in Paris

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/15/arts/two-theater-worlds-collide-in-paris.html

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PARIS — French and British theater-makers may be just a hop across the English Channel from each other, but in some ways, they live in different worlds. France has long leaned toward the kind of director-led, concept-driven stage fare that many in Britain, raised on the importance of text and naturalistic acting, find vexing.

Yet a few British directors have made the jump to Paris and gained a following there, most prominent among them Peter Brook and Declan Donnellan. Both debuted new productions in the French capital this month ahead of international tours; both have found ways to bridge the cultural gap, with work that combines storytelling and a strong directorial voice.

Mr. Brook returned to a theater he has long been associated with, the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, to present “The Prisoner,” a philosophical tale about punishment and redemption. While the 92-year-old director is beloved in Britain, where he started his career in the 1940s, he has now resided in France for nearly 50 years.

In 1974, he discovered the Bouffes du Nord, a dilapidated 19th-century music hall in a less-than-upscale area, which had been closed as a safety measure in 1952. Mr. Brook oversaw its renovation with his theater company, the International Centre for Theatre Research. They preserved its threadbare charm, and while Mr. Brook handed over the reins of his artistic home to Olivier Mantei and Olivier Poubelle in 2008, he has continued to show new work there.

“The Prisoner,” which is performed in English and was co-written and co-directed by Marie-Hélène Estienne, will feel familiar to admirers of Mr. Brook’s work. Like many of his productions, starting with his epic “Mahabharata” in 1985, it looks to foreign shores for universal lessons and wisdom. Here, the main character, Mavuso (played by the excellent Sri Lankan actor Hiran Abeysekera), kills his father, who had discovered him in an incestuous act with his sister Nadia. (To complicate matters, Nadia was also engaged in a sexual relationship with their father; somewhat creepily, Mavuso tells her: “I love you the way Father loved you.”)

When Mavuso is imprisoned, his uncle, Ezechiel, a local public figure, arranges to have his sentence commuted to an unusual form of punishment: Mavuso is left outside the doors of a prison, and told to stay there, alone, until he believes he has paid for his crime. “You must keep the prison inside you,” Ezechiel tells him.

Nadia and local men visit Mavuso and try to convince him to leave, but the self-enforced ordeal turns into a rite of initiation. Even as the prison is torn down in front of him, a less than subtle metaphor, he persists.

The quiet lesson of “The Prisoner” – that redemption can only come from within – feels almost naïve in the messy world of 2018, and that may be the point. Still, the experience of watching it comes with a sense of disconnect. The story was told to Mr. Brook, who told the AFP news agency that he met the silent wrongdoer standing in front of a prison on a trip to Afghanistan before the Soviet invasion of 1979.

On stage, an Englishman, played by Sean O’Callaghan, clearly stands for Mr. Brook himself. He frames the story as his own, announcing as the play starts: “I was for a while in a faraway land.”

Watching “The Prisoner,” I wondered how Mr. Brook’s heavy use of spiritual ideas — plucked from India to Afghanistan to Mali — would fare if he were a young director starting out today. While critically acclaimed, “The Mahabharata” was criticized by some in its day for its Orientalist view. In an era when cultural appropriation is now a matter of debate, “The Prisoner” can leave an uneasy taste.

Mr. Donnellan has had an even more peripatetic career than Mr. Brook. In addition to his own company, Cheek by Jowl, he founded a troupe in Moscow in 2000, and has found a third home in France, where he is well-known for his punchy ensemble work. He returned this month with his fourth French-language production, a staging of Shakespeare’s “Pericles” that proved strangely unimaginative.

There is a reason Pericles is so rarely performed: Not only is the authorship of the play a matter of debate, with some scholars arguing that Shakespeare wrote only part of it, its structure and plot are remarkably weak. A number of elements echo other Shakespeare plays, including “A Winter’s Tale” and “The Tempest,” but the story of the Prince of Tyre, who wanders from shore to shore and loses both his wife and daughter before improbable reunions, never really coheres.

Not that Mr. Donnellan gave it his best shot. For reasons unknown, the England-born director opted for the hackneyed device of setting an entire play in a hospital room, with the main character either dreaming or hallucinating the action. Mr. Donnellan doesn’t even specify Pericles’ condition: Our hero is initially unconscious and attended to by his distressed relatives, only to be fitted with a straitjacket straight out of “A Clockwork Orange.”

The production backs itself into a corner with this gimmick, because Shakespeare’s play doesn’t support it. It leaves the actors to handle abrupt swerves in tone as the family and hospital staff turn into governors and brothel-dwellers, with no practical support from the static sets. The result was over-the-top acting from some in the seven-strong cast, including Camille Cayol as Thaisa. Christophe Grégoire somehow manages enough emotion to sustain the role of Pericles, and the scene in which he is reunited with his daughter Marina (Valentine Catzéflis) is the only truly affecting one.

British directors weren’t the only Anglo-Saxon presence in Paris this month: The young American playwright Aleshea Harris also visited with a new work, “Fore!,” commissioned in tandem by the California Institute of the Arts and the theater La Comédie de Saint-Etienne in France. Five French actors are joined by five based in the United States for the occasion, and the troupe is directed by Arnaud Meunier.

Ms. Harris has another play, “Is God Is,” currently evoking vengeance and Greek-style tragedy at the Soho Rep in New York, and “Fore!” explores similar territory. On a two-tiered stage, two families confront a collapsing world: One, the Atrides (like the mythical Greek family), sees their son fall for a mysterious silent woman who spits blood. Above them, the Halburtons, a family of political leaders, are seen reeling from a gun shooting that left the mother paralyzed.

The play folds myth into violent reality with some success, although Ms. Harris struggles to bring the competing arcs of the multifaceted characters to a convincing conclusion. Still, it’s a welcome trans-Atlantic collaboration that pushes everyone on stage, including the Saint-Etienne actors required to speak in English out of their comfort zone. The Anglo-Saxon and French theater worlds, shaped by different cultural expectations, still have a thing or two to learn from each other.