It’s a very rare talent to know how to lead the audience by the nose during an hour and a half show, and then return the night to a state where they are no longer themselves or have done something else entirely. When the alliance works between a text and its staging, this audience is no longer the master of its thoughts. It becomes the toy of a low-noise plot manipulation through the articulation of cues such as acting, music, sound effects, lighting and set design.
At Vegetarianashow presented by the Italian Daria Deflorian at the Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe is a perfect example of the power of metamorphosis and the capacity of persuasion of the theater. Entering the Ateliers Berthier hall without preconceived notions, captivated by a venomously charming performance, the viewer leaves gathered in a cause he never imagined would touch him so closely. This cause is embodied by Yonghye, his heroine vegetarian (2007, Feathered Snake, 2015), novel by Han Kang, South Korean writer who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in October.
Yonghye decided that he would no longer eat meat. Her husband discovers her in the middle of the night sitting in the kitchen, emptying the fridge. Meat goes in the bin, soon to be joined by eggs and then milk. The vegetarian eats a large piece of lettuce. The groom is crying. Why?, he asks her. “I had a dream”she replies. Just four words and the door opens to the unknown.
Kafkaian orbit
In three parts, reliving three years of Yonghye’s life, the novel moves into a disturbing reality. The first stage with the words of the heroine’s husband, the second stage with her brother-in-law, the third sequence with her sister, three characters whose normative anchoring is synonymous with brutality. That, conjugal, of a misogynistic husband who despises his wife; that, sexual, of a brother-in-law who subjects his sister-in-law to tendentious erotic games; the devastating one of a sister who has the vegetarian locked up in a mental hospital to bring her back to what she believes to be sane.
If it were just about choosing food hygiene in Han Kang’s pages, the comments would no doubt stop there. But the heroine says it again and again: “I had a dream. » And this text, which goes beyond everyday life to reach the rank of allegory, suddenly finds itself placed, by the work of Daria Deflorian, in a Kafkaian orbit. The same strangeness, the same hidden vengeance exercised against those who separate. Yonghye’s future is neither animal nor human. It is a becoming plant. She, who dreamed of the man’s spilled blood, claims she just needs a little water and sun and sits with her feet up and her head down. It is a tree whose foliage is found underground and not in the sky. She has decided her fate, and she stands by her decision. Result: the world around her is disrupted and is seen for what it is: mundane yet monstrous.
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