When Boehlmer saw Flavy enter, was he still expecting the return of the Usurper? Impossible to say. Whatever his expectations, he wasted no time, seeming to relish the opportunity to rough Théodore up a little, at least verbally, even if it couldn’t have escaped his notice that it was Flavy and not the Usurper in the role. Having taken the Usurper’s place, Flavy began to pay his price. Or perhaps not. Unlike Jean-François Ernu, Boehlmer excelled at the art of improvisation, and was far and away the best at it in our troupe. Boehlmer began to harangue his special guest in a far more vulgar fashion than would be expected from the mouth of a President — even an angry one. Without the means to stem the tide of insults breaking over him, Flavy suffered in silence.
In my role as camerawoman needing to capture a few images of incontestable goodwill, I thought it best to interrupt Boehlmer with a reminder of what it was I was doing there. He marched over, took me by the scruff of the neck, and dragged me offstage, voicing, as he went, his contempt for the press in general, and television in particular. I think it’s worth noting here that when things start to go wrong, the first reaction always seems to be to usher all the women offstage. Curious. Or maybe not so curious. In any event, Flavy used this interruption to return to the letter of his text, launching with great conviction into a long monologue, one of the finest and most moving in his play:
“This carpet with its rich wool and ornate design is thirsty, I say, thirsty!..I have come to seal an impossible pact…I will replace it with an impossible act…” And so on.
In response, Boehlmer gave voice to all the accusations and anger that he had swept under his own carpet since the first moments of his confinement, and, for that matter, since the first day of rehearsals, when Flavy had distributed the roles without regard for his actors’ preferences — including, of course, Boehlmer’s.
The confrontation between the two men had now reached a state of equilibrium: each character equally ready, willing, and able to respond to the other’s accusations. A moment of respite. This created, however, a problem for the plot: it wasn’t going anywhere. The actors were like two rams, horns locked, neither giving an inch. Flavy’s Soufissis seemed to have become decidedly less suicidal, while Boehlmer’s President was openly gloating over his right to banish this burdensome witness to the ways he had used his absolute power.
The scene went on, and on, seeming condemned to run aground in the sands of inactivity. The audience continued to wait — expecting, at least vaguely, the tragic end of Théodore Soufissis. When two groups of spectators rose and left the theater, however, Boehlmer realized where things were headed and changed course. He declared to Soufissis that as the promised reconciliation was not to take place: one of them must die. Flavy grabbed this verbal ball on the fly and returned to his text, announcing his refusal of any egalitarian duel and his intention of unilaterally staining the Presidential carpet with blood. Unfortunately, the pistol that was normally in the pocket of Boehlmer’s costume had disappeared, falling out when Annie Soulemenov had rushed back toward the stage. What was Flavy to do?
After a long diatribe ridiculing the pretence of someone who grandly announces their imminent suicide only to realize they’ve forgotten to procure the instrument with which to perform it, Boehlmer offered a solution to this dramaturgical problem: he moved to the large presidential desk and opened a drawer. A simple glance into the (empty) drawer sufficed for the audience to deduce that he was looking at a weapon. Flavy approached, thrust his hand into the drawer, and withdrew it with great energy while taking care to turn away from the audience. Then he thrust the phantom knife into his stomach. As hara-kiris go, it wasn’t great, but it sufficed. Bent forward, Flavy tottered toward the vast carpet. After a last gasp of pain, he collapsed onto it, expiring with his nose buried in the wool’s deep pile. Unexpectedly, this got a huge laugh — laughter, however, that somehow managed not to seem mocking. The President advanced to the edge of the stage, apparently fixing the audience with his stare — though, in actual fact, he was trying to stare down the stage manager high above, who was asking himself when he should cut the lights. Boehlmer’s look was unequivocal: you will do so only after my final line! He let loose a sardonic cackle that instantly quieted the audience’s laughter. Then he added, icily: “Never again!”
Black. Curtain. Immediate applause. Hallelujah.
You know the feeling. The nightmare is over. Land-ho. Salvation. The end of an hour of chaos for an exhausted teacher — That happened to me once when I taught preschool. It was horrible. But, at last, darkness. Though an audience often manifests relief by rushing for the exits, they treated us to round after round of warm, enthusiastic applause. We responded unreservedly, with much smiling and bowing, as if we’d just pulled off King Lear without a single misplaced iamb or unshed tear. During the third round of applause there was a noticeable intensification as Pauline joined us, a dazed smile on her face. Her black stockings were on again. And then, during the fifth round of applause, the Usurper appeared behind us. We didn’t see him. When we broke ranks, he rushed towards Pauline, gallantly presenting her with a red rose. This done, he leapt over the footlights and into the audience, thereby clearing both a visible and an invisible hurdle. The audience reacted with a final explosion of applause as the theater went dark. He disappeared into the crowd, which was already moving toward the exits.
We never saw him again.
Before concluding, and at the relatively disinterested request of Marcel Flavy, I append to my report the complete text of Alexandre Botsinas’s review, published in The Morning Republic on the Monday following our performance. After the end of the play, the critic did not elect to stay and have a drink with us, as is his custom. “That there,” said Jean-Pierre Capelier to me, “is a paralyzed critic. Look at him, all wrapped up in his coat as though someone’s been bludgeoning him — without intermission! — for the past two hours” (normally an hour and forty minutes, but we went over a bit).
“Exhausted,” I acknowledged.
“And something tells me that he isn’t going to keep that exhaustion to himself,” added Flavy with a bitter smile, which he then couldn’t manage to relax.
Botsinas surprised us, however. And, as you can judge for yourself, agreeably:
Going Out to the People, a play in three acts, written and directed by Marcel Flavy on National Stage Seven, with Pauline Bensmaïla, Annette Nois, Annie Soulemenov, Sylvestre Pascal-Bram, Jean-François Ernu, Nicolas Boehlmer. Scenery and costumes: Sylvie Plumkett. Lighting: Jean Sachs and Jean-Pierre Capelier.
A FALSE DEPARTURE FOLLOWED BY A REAL RETURN…
— unless it would be better to say, “A not-quite-false departure followed by a not-quite-real return.” Marcel Flavy has offered us a remarkable new play — a historical drama that is bold in subject and artful in execution. It should be seen by everyone who has not completely given up on modern theater.
In these days when so many are seeking to foster interest in our history among the younger generations, Marcel Flavy — talented refugee first from the Lounia Company and then from Paul Batteux’s troupe (which explains much) — offers us a splendid surprise. In three acts lasting two hours and depicting twenty-four hours of national history, we witness the reunion between the legendary “Real-President” of the preceding century, as Alcover calls him in Portraits in Vitriol, and the man who was his dearest friend during the period of his ascension and his bitterest enemy once his power became absolute. The visit to the people that gives the play its title also drives its plot: from the president’s decision to disguise himself for a wild night with his subjects to the sobering day after. Everything revolves around the encounter between the two men — as if Fidel Castro were to run into Che in a sordid back alley in Havana.
In this face-off there is some first-rate verbal jousting and an extremely original use of dramatic hesitation. It was as if the players were not supposed to say their lines until they had first forgotten them, which clearly necessitated a repressive disciplin
e wonderfully maintained and which I find especially praiseworthy in Marcel Flavy, hitherto known as a strict traditionalist. I would like to trumpet the following and be heard near and far: Marcel Flavy, continue down this ascetic path! Too often in the theater a line of dialogue is shoved forward like a reheated pizza instead of like something unique to its time and its place — a time that is none other than now, and a place that is none other than here.
The reader expecting a “but” after this fulsome praise will not be disappointed. Such freshness and innovation can easily lead to excess and a championing of the radical for its own sake. In adopting this unprecedented method, Flavy the director is condemned to betray Flavy the author — requiring as it does that his company perform a text that is different from the one with which it began. The question arises then why the published version of the play retains a text that the performances have already surpassed? This is all the more incomprehensible when one considers that the printed version debuted only two weeks ago!
Rereading Flavy’s play, certain doubts arose. I am not at all convinced, for instance, that the development of the role of the second prostitute, from page to stage, is dramatically profitable, beyond the obvious erotic return it offers. In addition, I found the noises which can be heard offstage, suggesting the bustling life of a big city, to be a fine idea, but I am not at all certain that it is audible from the second balcony or even beyond the front rows. That said, I wonder whether all those passionate moans are really the best way of communicating the notion that the Republicans are repopulating the Republic.
The roles of the President and Soufissis are taken by different players in Acts II and III, and this little waltz of performance, while barely noticeable, is a fine idea that is nicely carried off. The shock of the play’s parting gesture — an acrobatic leap over the fourth wall — is powerfully transgressive. So too is the final confrontation between the once-inseparable enemies, which also functions on a second level: as a dialogue between those two other inseparable enemies, actor and director (or actor and author). The result is a reflection of our struggle to locate the true seat of power in the theater: the street or the palace, the stage or the director, the players or the script. It’s a shame that all of this is completely invisible in the published version of the play.
I’d like to say a final word about the play’s political message, which was without doubt the finest surprise of the evening. At this moment in our history, when our Republic is finally recovering a certain prosperity after years of such darkness, we have the right as mature and respectable Republicans to a depiction of power and its obligations which is not rendered puerile by the leftist or anarchistic Romanticism for which the largely legendary figure of Théodore Soufissis has too often been the icon. Marcel Flavy has returned from those airy heights, down to earth where we, at this newspaper, welcome him with open arms.
This play is taxing, tiring. I won’t pretend otherwise. But it is these things for good reason, and I see signs in it of a new aesthetic, one that is still in its infancy. The play is not a manifesto, but it does offer a program — and one worth following. I always leave the theater with a migraine, but not always the same one. There is the bad migraine that comes from boredom, but there is also the good migraine, the migraine of open, probing, questioning theater. I hardly need to specify that it was with the latter — and, indeed, one of extraordinary intensity — with which I left the theater on this evening.
I shall conclude, as ever, with the potentially fatal detail — but, in this case, a detail that is, happily, easy to correct. It is possible from time to time to see a white face gazing through the curtain — something that is simply unacceptable on a national stage. Not to mention the rags occasionally falling from the rafters.
Alexandre Botsinas
Yes, the article pleased us all. Flavy postponed his inevitable ideological corrections of Botsinas’s remarks to a later date so as not to lessen our relief or dampen our joy. First and foremost we needed to recover a measure of calm after such a trying experience. We were in something like post-operative shock. Sylvestre Pascal-Bram told us later that when he sat down in front of his dressing room mirror to remove his makeup, he said both to and of himself, “And that bit’s real, right?” Annie Soulemenov told us that she was changing her profession, effective immediately. And the moment he sat down again in that chair of his, now so full of sinister associations, Nicolas Boehlmer burst into tears.
Such depressive and depressing occurrences hardly augur well for a troupe with an additional twenty-five performances ahead of it — not to mention the inevitable tour to follow. Oh, and — I’d almost forgotten — at least four matinee performances for schoolchildren.
When Capelier proposed that we request some security personnel, at least for the next performance, he was immediately shouted down: “No cop sets foot in this theater!” one of us said. “What are we actually risking?” asked another. And at that moment we felt a unanimous warmth — especially intense among the actors — well up for our Usurper, and we all gave voice to it. Even Boehlmer couldn’t tell his dressing-room story without a note of admiration, even something like gratitude, creeping into his voice. (It’s common for victims to develop a curious empathy, even camaraderie, with their captors.)
Eventually, our performances returned more or less to normal, though not without difficulty. It was painful not to be able to retain, not to be able to reproduce, all the wonderful touches of that one ephemeral evening. And it wouldn’t be far from the truth to say that each of us, the moment before making his or her entrance, would have welcomed the opportunity to be captured and confined — put out of commission by a gentleman thief who’d now become the subject of so many dreams and desires. (It bears noting that Pauline isn’t necessarily the most melancholy of our troupe in this regard.)
There is, however, one last question we need to address before closing the book on this case, before I conclude my report: Who was the Usurper? The answer is that we will probably never know. No one has claimed responsibility for his actions. We haven’t filed charges.
But actually, there are hundreds of questions remaining. What would have happened if Pauline hadn’t arrived to deflect matters? Would the Usurper have beaten the tyrant to a pulp? Had he done so, would this have meant that his actions amounted to a political statement? And, if so, would his message have been unambiguous enough to be attributable to a particular movement? Was his invasion not a failure, in the end, given that he ensured the President would have the last word? And why didn’t the Usurper include Act Three in his calculations? Or did he, and Pauline was the glitch in his system? And yet, who’s to say that the Usurper wasn’t just a simple spectator who’d seen our earlier performances, and who had fallen in love with Pauline — a hypothesis supported by the clearly premeditated rose? And yet, if this were the case, why hasn’t he sought her out since? Isn’t it more likely that he was an actor, that he was one of our own? Perhaps he had a grudge to settle with our company. Or maybe he wanted to test us? But if that’s the case — if you’re reading this — come see us! We’ll welcome you with open arms. Perhaps this account might even serve to convince you to come back to us. You presented us with a formidable challenge, and we rose to the occasion. Isn’t that worth something?
But if the Usurper was a man of the theater, someone wishing us ill, someone trying to damage our reputation, to lower our standing at a time when funding has become so scarce and professional discord so rampant, he should have done things very differently — it would have been so easy to simply bring the entire performance to a halt! In short, none of the obvious explanations fit. Every one of them is contradicted by one detail or another.
Jean-François Ernu, however, has advanced a subtler hypothesis: that this fake Soufissis was actually a Soufissis in real life as well — someone who had experienced exactly that sort of violated friendship — not with a President, certainly, but with, say, a cabinet minister, like the one in attendance that very evening,
and who, by the way, instead of coming backstage to congratulate us, fled the theater as soon as the show was over. Flavy has tried to find out what Her Honor thought of the performance, but his inquiries were all in vain. No comment.
And if we look farther afield? Could that evening have been the work of an agent provocateur? A specialist in such “republican” acts? Was it, in fact, a tiny libertarian coup? An almost imperceptible piece of civil disobedience? Sure, anything’s possible, of course — but, then, who was our infiltrator? Always and again: who? Wouldn’t that sort of man have wanted to reveal himself, wouldn’t he want publicity, to be put to trial, wouldn’t he want as much attention as possible for his daring deeds? Silence doesn’t fit the profile.
There is one other outlandish hypothesis. The best, in fact. I dare you to do better. What if our Usurper was none other than the President himself — like Nero slipping into the roles of the great tragedians? Yes, our President himself, so well known for his unpredictability, deciding to act out his own outing as a tyrant to his people! But, then, the Usurper was much taller than our President. And, after all, we would have recognized him. And, again, why?
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