on stage an impossible love story in the heart of the Algerian war

First image: a group buries a certain Jean-Claude Rossignol in the cemetery of Bagneux on February 25, 2020. Sober ceremony. The participants left, remains the widow, France. A figure approaches, with gray hair: “Mokhtar!” she cries, throwing herself in his arms. It will thus be, one understands it very quickly, the history of France, Jean-Claude and Mokhtar but not quite in the mode: “The husband, the wife and the lover”. This age of love, of first loves, takes place for them at a time when one cannot love without disregarding circumstances: the Algerian war. Even more if you are Arab and French.

And, this is the first quality of the play, the story of these young people is captured within the great story as a small boat would end up on a huge wave, threatened to capsize, to sink, to disappear. … We have already dealt with these impossible feelings (and terribly punished thereafter) between occupiers and occupied during the Second World War. Much more rarely when it comes to a young Blackfoot and a young Arab.

But the play does even better: it draws up, in short chapters, a picture of six interminable years (the play begins in 1956, and we physically understand that the situation was already very dark) where the intimate and politics, the awareness of some and the refusal to become aware of others, overlap to the point of precipitating the inevitable tragedy.

Tragedy whose political punctuation is symbolized by a secret-ambitious agent minister-emissary (very well embodied by Patrick Chayriguès) who has the cynicism of the big cats and who does not (skillfully) resemble any of the protagonists of the dossier – we know that “I understood you” from General de Gaulle on June 4, 1958 (triggering the enthusiasm of the white populations) to the Evian accords of March 19, 1962 (before the chaos of the return to France and the massacres, on the spot, of the harkis), there was a 180 ° turn. Undoubtedly inevitable, we understand it more or less, even if there is sometimes a little too much didacticism in these interventions, too much simplification, but Over there on the other water side First of all, even before being political precisely, a deeply human play.

And with subtlety, because lovers are always at odds. France, therefore, is the daughter of Marthe, owner of a famous oil mill, a Marthe who has just lost her husband in an attack and who develops an absolute hatred (These bicots, these crouilles) against the fellaghas (the fighters) that she obviously does not confuse with her employees (Arabs, even if they are Kabyle …) and with the sweet Aïcha (very fair Chadia Amajod) who does so well both couscous and pastries Honey. Speech known, and probably sincere, even if France, constantly in conflict with his mother, who accuses him of having a pea in the brain, answers him in front of them: “I am not your slave. Like all your workers “.

A carefree France, in a pink gingham dress, à la Bardot, but it is Sagan that she adores, Hello Sadness (later we will see her read A certain smile, the novelist’s second book), dreaming of the big city, Algiers the white and, further, Paris. Near Paris, precisely, Jean-Claude, guitarist and founder of a rock group in Montrouge, Black cows (name of a famous crossroads on the RN 20 between Montrouge and Arcueil), for whom Algeria represents sun and heat, far from the gray of Paris; and the boy goes to do his service, flower in gun, as if going on vacation, reality quickly taking charge of denying it. There were a lot of Jean-Claude at the time, plunged into a war (let’s say the word, it is no longer taboo) that they did not understand.

The itinerary of these three young people is very well reflected, in those moments of youth when intimate feelings give way or collide with political consciousness. A Mokhtar who becomes radicalized while remaining head over heels in love with France but understanding the first that this love is impossible. A France which, late in the day, will abandon this recklessness in the face of the misfortunes which befall its community. A Jean-Claude in the middle, not knowing what to do, also in love with France – as Mokhtar said to the young girl: This word that I love so much when it’s your name and that I hate more and more when it’s that of your country that brings suffering to my people. Kamel Isker (Mokhtar) and Hugo Lebreton (Jean-Claude) are very good, very fair, under the shadows of Camus for one (Return to Tipaza), of Saint-Germain-des-Prés for the other -Jean-Claude making fascinated France believe that he knows Gréco and Boris Vian (of which he sings very nicely The deserter), him, the little suburban rocker.

On the other hand, Noémie Bianco has a harder time going from carefree France to a girl drunk with revenge, entering the OAS clan with somewhat grandiloquent accents. In the role of Marthe, her mother, Isabelle Andréani worries at the beginning by her propensity to make Marthe Villalonga but very quickly she imposes her strong presence, the powerful personality of her character, succeeding in turn to be odious or moving, in a composition which she carries out remarkably to the end.

Xavier Lemaire signs a very lively, very rhythmic staging, some decorative elements and, in the background, period photos, reflection of this sweetness of life in suspense of the Pieds-Noirs, sometimes topical films. He looked for an author and found him: a Pierre-Olivier Scotto himself Pied-Noir and who obviously had, as a small child born in the year of the outbreak of the events, confused and shared memories of that time. Scotto adheres to a simple, everyday writing, sometimes with outbursts of lyricism but which are linked to certain situations.

There are moments of happiness (lovers by the sea or a lunch around couscous on Sunday), but more and more quickly overtaken by violence; and a very nice idea, when the joint exactions of the OAS and the FLN accentuate the whirlwind of massacres, to choreograph the bloody madness with all the actors. The final image, also very beautiful and which explains the title, tells us in a few seconds, to us who are less and less numerous to have known in the metropolis of the echoes of this war, this ambiguity which persists in the relations between two countries without appeasement yet succeeding in winning.

Over there on the other side of the water gives the key to it, with great emotion: reason could not make itself heard in the face of the contrary power of the feelings of both sides.

“Over there, on the other side of the water” by Pierre-Olivier Scotto, directed by Xavier Lemaire.
La Bruyère Theater, Paris
until December 18
Then on tour.