Confusing, poetic, moving… La TOHU succeeds for a moment in slowing down the course of time with the presentation ofUnstable, a spectacle of rare purity signed by the French troupe Les Hommes Penchés.
In the beginning, there is nothing, or very little. Wooden planks laid in a hurry on old tires. A few nails sticking out here and there. Pieces of metal poles that sit in a corner. It feels like an abandoned garage, not on a circus track.
A man (Nicolas Fraiseau) comes down from the stands to test the strength of these rickety boards. And this is where everything becomes magical. Like a Sisyphus condemned to push his stone until the end of time, the acrobat struggles to try to make the various pieces of his Chinese pole stand on the wobbly ground. The task is arduous; the man falls often and heavily, to the delight of the children (and the fear of the parents, who tell themselves that everything will end badly.)
The ground often slips under his feet, the nails jump. You’d think the acrobat had to face a raging sea of plywood. We hear him breathe, between two knowing glances at the crowd who needs to be reassured.
It must be said, Unstable bathes in a slightly anxiety-provoking atmosphere. These repeated falls end up worrying. What is more, no music comes to lighten the atmosphere or give the whole a semblance of ease. Only a few chilling sound effects punctuate the show. For the rest, we only hear the man who is struggling and the sound of metal banging the ground with a crash. One can only be caught by the beauty, both comic and tragic, of what takes place on stage …
When the acrobat finally manages to solidify this cursed pole, the effects of gravity seem to wear off to make way for a graceful aerial ballet. Nicolas Fraiseau whirls around the metal as in weightlessness, managing to escape the ground, which undulates by some unknown magic and which seems ready to swallow anyone who sets foot there.
The finish is like this extraordinary spectacle: very simple. Straight like an i at the top of his mast, like a sailor on his lookout, the sweaty acrobat scans the horizon which finally opens in front of him. His efforts will not have been in vain. In the room, the silence is total and the emotion palpable.
It is, without a doubt, a great circus moment to which the public is invited to TOHU. Let all those who are in need of beauty in these uncertain times be informed.
At TOHU, until December 5.