No actor treads casually on the golden tiles of the beautiful Théâtre de l’Epée de bois (Paris 12).e). Not least Simon Abkarian, whose black figure and eyes masked by the drooping brim of a felt hat appear in a doorway at the back of the room. Old stone walls, evening light, dreamy fog taking over the setting of a neglected bar where only two musicians are seated (bouzoukist Grigoris Vasilas and guitarist Kostas Tsekouras). It feels like we’re inside Café Müller the Pina Bausch versionexcept that the dance (because dance and rebetiko will exist) takes place behind the scenes of an ancient war.
During this performance of Menelaus rebetiko rhapsody, the slowly waving man with polished shoes on his feet is the Greek Menelaus, whom his wife Helene left behind in Trojan Paris. “I’m suffocating. why did you leave », laments Simon Abkarian, in an elegiac voice. The hero breathes in and out. A breath of air to thwart the suffocation into which the violence of heartache plunges him. He needs torrents of words to tame the flow of feelings that shake him from side to side.
The anger, the humiliation, the amazement, the need, the lack, the jealousy, and this insatiable desire that survives the absence: it all deserves to be told, in the rawest terms. (“To hell with Sparta”) to the most noble (“my wife my sister my friend”), through the criminal self-portrait. The more Menelaus insults Helen, the more he flogs himself: “I who am the weak, the feeble, the undecided, the meek, the helpless, the good, the easily influenced, the slave of the flesh. »
A broad and lyrical word
Carried by sublime music, these words echo among the wooden tables and chairs. Abkarian grabbed her with the eagerness of a swimmer looking for a lifeline. This text sticking to his skin reverses perspectives. The historical context is swept away by today’s world. Politics leaves the battlefield to rush into the intimate. Menelaus is taken from the pages of tragedy to appear alone in the light. After the figure work of Electra (Superficial Electra) and Hélène (Helene after the fall), this time the author zooms in on the male psyche. War rages inside a man who follows his moods as if he were following enemy soldiers. No sword at the end of the arm, just broad, lyrical words, for which we forgive his excesses (there are some) and his excessively systematic transitions between praise and invective.
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