July 2022 – Monsieur Miller

2022-07-10

Un amour de Blum

This afternoon we saw Un amour de Blum, by Gérard Savoisien, at Théâtre du Chêne Noir. Two actors tell (a dramatization of) the real-life story of Léon Blum, a former President of the French Council, and Jeanne Levylier, a long-time admirer of Blum who is 20 years his junior. Both are Jewish, he a socialist politician and she a cosseted Parisian bourgeoise. It is 1940, and we find Blum held as a political prisoner by the Vichy government. Jeanne arranges to visit him frequently, and soon expresses her love for him, leading to an unlikely amorous affair. She follows him from prison to prison, somehow free while he is jailed. Eventually, she makes the decision to join him in his imprisonment in Himler’s hunting pavillion just outside the concentration camp at Buchenwald. The two manage to survive and are liberated by the Americans in 1945.

The plays themes are about finding love in times of great hardship, transmuting fear into courage, and also living life with dignity to the end. The performance was very well acted, but the text is a bit repetitive. I think I understood most of the language, will double check that when I read the text which I purchased after the show. Overall enjoyable, but not hors du commun.

2022-07-08

Sans Tambour

Super weird. Very talented cast of 3 actors who sing, plus 5 musicians who act. Lots of playing with music, soprano doubling one of the actors, advanced techniques. Opened by playing around with record player realized by musicians.

Lots of demolishing the set. Lots of debris everywhere. No clear, coherent plot, many story lines loosely interwoven. Lots of slapstick, which helped when they had to improvise in the presence of very high winds. A piano fell on someone’s head (planned).

Prepared piano.

And then, a whole sequence retelling Tristan and Isolde. Brief full nudity, extended partial nudity (a soprano singing and disrobing while showering in her tears). Lots of German singing, with French translations projected on the side.

Not nearly as well constructed, or even structured, as Le Moine Noir. Still, a very talented cast.

Preceded by dinner with Étienne, Claude, Maurice, et Françoise.

2022-07-08

Hansel, Gretel, et les Autres

Production for kids. Interesting take on the original story, with a focus on the adults. What’s happening back in the village while Hansel and Gretel have disappeared. Not the unrealistic nobody cares, or generic “they were sad”. A detailed cast of police inspector, school teacher, school principal, librarian, etc.

Interesting back story for why the 2 kids went into the woods. Food suddenly stopped growing, everything lost its taste. Science responded by making nutritional pills, 3 a day sufficient. Kids leave because Gretel, age 8, is not happy with what she sees of adult world. Hansel, age 6, follows out of habit/loyalty, but not all that eager to leave. They find gingerbread house and are delighted with real food. Evil witch is nothing of the sort, but is some kind of imagined fantasy. She needs people to believe in her to remain present, adults all forgetting. They all prepare a feast for the villagers, who finally come search the forest and follow first the white pebbles and finally the smell of the food to find H&G.

Most interesting was form factor. 3 actors, wooden shadow puppets, hand/glove puppets (fingers are legs and arms, gloved back of hand decorated with face. Small TV screens show crudely animated version of same characters, allow interactions. News flash from live actors in studio. Also odd head and hands puppet, protruding through backdrop.

Venu = chapelle des pénitents blancs. Inside

2022-07-08

Le Moine Noir

Great review with good photos at https://www.francetvinfo.fr/festival-avignon/ouverture-du-festival-davignon-2022-un-moine-noir-2-000-personnes-une-ministre-et-le-mistral_5244790.html

Enormously talented cast of actors, dancers, and musicians. We met one of the stars (the father) in a sheet music store earlier in the week.

Quite a high concept piece, but with a clear structure. I was able to stay with it the whole time, working to make sense of the theater, not just the words.

Definitely a “knock your socks off” kind of spectacle, worthy of pride of place at a big international theater festival.

Highly recommend to others.

2022-07-08

Avignon: C’est parti !

posters

starting gun

Vole Eddie Vole

2022-07-08

Avignon: Aux Environs

The festival doesn’t begin until July 7, so for the few days before that we spent some time in the areas surrounding Avignon. Monday I went on commercial a tour of a couple of Châteuneuf du Pape wineries and the ruins of the château itself. Ruth arrived late Monday night, and after a travel recovery day for her we rented a car. Wednesday morning and mid-day we spent biking in Camargue regional park before meeting up with friends in Arles in the afternoon. Thursday we went on a canoeing trip down the Gardon river from Collias to Pont du Gard.

Châteauneuf du Pape

My tour left in the afternoon from the Office du Tourisme. The guide from À la Francaise navigated the difficulty of 3 clients taking their own car and then loaded the other 4 of us into a minivan and headed out to wine country. We were 6 Americains and one young man from Hong Kong. I was the only French speaker among the bunch, so mostly the guides spoke English, with occasional side conversations with me. Our first stop was Château Fortia, a smaller winery with an interesting family history. Baron Le Roy, the grandfather of the current owner, was one of the creators of the AOP system (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée) which lets winemakers qualify to label their wines as coming from a particular region if they follow certain quality assurance or tradition adherence measures. We got a tour and then a tasting led by the current winemaker, who appeared to be in his late 60s.

Second stop was Bouachon winery. More extended and showy tasting, entertaining sommelier.

Final stop ruins of Châteauneuf du Pape. Destroyed in WWII when a British bomber in distress emptied its bomb bay to be more nimble in evading a German fighter plane. Bombs accidentally landed on the Château. Sadness.

Funny story: le reliquat

Camargue

Rented a car, drove to Sainte Marie-de-la-mer. Once there, rented bikes (reserved the previous day) and rode along the dike in Camargue. The bikes had electrical assist, so the 22km ride was easy on the legs. Harder was the sandy paths in parts, which required some walking and engendered one spill.

It was hot. Hot, hot, hot. But the biking generated a breeze, and we were right by the sea so got more breeze. Saw less wildlife than hoped for: a number of seabirds and one stand of flamingos. Plenty of tourists on horses. No wild white horses, no bulls. Ah well. Had a picnic lunch (which we packed) at a lighthouse, then turned around.

Arles

Drove to Arles, parked the car just outside the music store that Ruth is renting a keyboard from. Ruth is participating next week in a few workshops organized by the « Les Suds, à Arles festival ». Walked to Place dur Forum and met Nora and family there. Had a drink, talked in French a lot.

Pont du Gard

Thursday morning drove out to Collias in the department of Gard. Rented a canoe from Kayak Vert, put in at their offices in Collias. Shallow but somewhat fast river Gardon (called Gardon or Gard depending how big it at that point). Lots of wind, tricky to keep canoe straight. Sunny but not too hot. Lots of other canoers. Here we saw a white horse walk across the river at some point, with a donkey following it 30 yards behind. Paddled under the bridge — ancient Roman construction, big and in impressive. Saw lots of tourists walking across it, but contented ourselves with floating under it. Continued on for another while to the take out point. All told 8km of canoeing, maybe 3 hours. Company staff collected lots of boats and lots of patrons in a bus + 3 vans.

Drove to Uzès nearby. Supposed to be a quaint village with interesting center. Ate a yummy lunch at a café, but didn’t have much energy to walk around afterwards. Drove home in the afternoon in order return car and get ready for Thursday night performance.

2022-07-082022-07-08

Avignon: L’Arrivée

I’m in Avignon! I left Boston Friday, July 1 and flew overnight to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. Logan airport was pretty packed with lots of travelers headed out on vacation. CDG was the same way, but with a partial labor strike on top of it – welcome to France ! About 10% of the CDG flights were canceled, but the only impact it had on me was that the normal RER train from the airport to the TGV station at Gare du Lyon was out of service and I had to take a bus. This turned out to be a positive, as I had an extended conversation in French with the woman sitting next to me, who was returning to her native France from San Diego. She gave me some suggestions of what to see around Avignon, and also pointed out a more efficient route to Gare du Nord from the endpoint of the adhoc shuttle bus, Stade du France / Saint Denis. I made it to the TGV for Avignon with only 10 minutes to spare, so she may have saved me a lot of headache.

I spent the rest of Saturday and much of Sunday just walking around the city and getting oriented. Sunday I woke up around 4am (jetlag) and was out walking by 6am. It was well past sunrise and bright as could be, yet the city was completely deserted. Every few minutes I’d pass a single tourist like me, but otherwise it was empty. Eerie to see these vast spaces intended for hundreds to be empty but in full sunlight. Here’s some photos from that morning.

The Palais du Pape stands atop a rocky cliff at the northern tip of Avignon, overlooking the Rhone river. Tucked in alongside it is an understated park, named Rochier des Domes. It has paths, lawns, ponds, fountains, swans, goldfish, sculptures, and a symbolic small vineyard. But my favorite installation is a human sundial about 30 feet across. A stone marker gives instructions on where to stand based on the day of the year. Your shadow then falls upon a perimeter stone marker that reveals the current solar time. A second stone marker gives a long explanation of the difference between solar time and “legal time”. The whole contraption is named a « cadran solaire analemmatique », and is credited to one G. Bonnet, who designed this installation in 1930. Some other sculptor constructed it. The concept dates back to the Greeks and Romans, and there are apparently hundreds of such things in and around France, but I don’t recall seeing one before.

In addition seeing all the big things that every tourist will see, I noted some small details that made me happy during my first couple days. Here’s a few of those to round out this first of many Avignon posts.

2022-07-012022-07-07

Vole Eddie, vole !

The current issue of L’avant-scène théâtre (dated 15 April 2022 — they are still catching up from Covid disruptions) features the play Vole Eddie, vole ! by Léonard Prain. Rather than put it on the pile to be read in due course, I uncharacteristically picked it up as bedtime reading the night it arrived, and finished it in a single gulp. Prain has picked an unusual subject for a French play: the story of British ski jumper Michael Edwards, aka “Eddie the Eagle”. Eddie competed in the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary and made history despite finishing last, as he was the first British athlete ever to qualify for the Olympic ski-jumping events. His efforts to qualify for the Olympics by completing a 70m jump in a formal competition attracted a cult following worldwide, and he became a star of the 1988 Olympics despite his guaranteed losing status (top jumpers reach 120m).

The story is well documented (on Wikipedia and elsewhere): Eddie came to skiing late, did not have the typical body type for skiers, and wore thick corrective lenses. As a teenager he tried out unsuccessfully for the British national downhill ski team, so switched to ski jumping where there was no British competition. Eddie self-funded a quixotic campaign to reach the Olympics (self-funded, as the British national sports organization ignored him). He spent years living in his car and eating meager rations to save all his money for travel and skiing fees. According to the play, at least, his parents had little to offer him, and his father was dead set against Eddie’s folly.

Given the events recounted are relatively recent, I found myself asking “Does the play add anything to the tale ?” I’m not looking for novel details or scandalous revelations, but rather some insight or human exploration of Eddie’s character and odd journey. Alas, I find myself answering “No”. The dialog is smooth and the language descriptive. The play is designed to be performed by just three actors: one plays Eddie, one plays all the other male parts, and one plays all the other female parts. We see Eddie’s mother and father, his teachers and school coaches, his school peers (both dismissive and competitive), and eventually journalists, sports-casters, and race officials. The character of Eddie is presented as forever a child, with a good natured humor and more than a touch of buffoonery. He is never angry, though he does argue with his parents about his choice to ski rather than follow his father into the family plastering business. In all, not a lot dramatic or thought-provoking.

But it was a pleasant exposure of a fun story, a bit of an amuse bouche as it were. Speaking of which, I’m off shortly to travel to Avignon for the annual theater festival there. I hope I will have lots of blog posts for that!

Updated (2022-07-07): Check out this photo from Avignon:

La distribution à Avignon: Léonard Prain, moi, Sophie Accard, et Benjamin Lhommas

That’s me with the cast of Vole, Eddie, Vole ! I randomly came upon the three of them on this opening afternoon of Festival Avignon. They are here performing the show as part of the Festival OFF. We chatted a bit and I said I’d come see the show. I’ll update my review if I manage to make it to a performance.