Every day, a personality invites itself into the world of Élodie Suigo. Thursday October 5, 2023: actor, humorist and author, Vincent Dedienne. He is currently at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin with Eugène Labiche’s comedy in five acts, “Un Chap de Straw d’Italie”.
Vincent Dedienne is an artist, in turn actor, humorist, author, director, radio and TV man too. His professions are so many passions, but the most important remains that of words. He loves words and they do him well. He declaims them on stage, in the cinema and in real life.
Before the release on November 15 of Rudy Milstein’s film I am not a hero in which he plays alongside Géraldine Nakache and Isabelle Nanty and the revival of his only one on stage A gala evening in January 2024 with three Olympias scheduled for April 23, 24 and 25, he is on the stages of the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin with the comedy in five acts by Eugène Labiche, An Italian straw hat. It all starts with a straw hat eaten by a horse. The animal that commits this misdeed is that of Fadinard, a young Parisian rentier, whom he plays, and who is to marry Hélène, a young nurseryman. He will have to replace the hat which belongs to a young lady determined to get her property back in perfect condition to avoid her husband’s crazy jealousy.
franceinfo: This play which mixes marriage and adultery was performed for the first time at the Palais-Royal theater on August 14, 1851. It was 172 years ago and yet it seems to have been written today.
Vincent Dedienne: This is the case for works of art in general in the theater. When they cross the centuries, it’s because they have an acuteness, a modernity… But it’s even more difficult for comic pieces, for comedies. And indeed, even if the language of this one is still a bit that of yesteryear, the effectiveness of the humor, of the situations and the ferocity of what it says about the social relations between people, between people of the city and those of the countryside, the powerful, the weakest, make it very modern.
It’s true that marriage was a huge business of Vaudeville in 1850, like adultery. There is an assumed comic absurdity that makes you think of a dream.
This is exactly what director Alain Françon told us.
“To perform this play, the director told us: ‘Don’t try to be coherent, think that it’s a daytime dream and that in dreams, everything is permitted. You can go from everything to your opposite in a fraction of a second’.”
Vincent Dedienneat franceinfo
What are you dreaming of then?
What am I dreaming of? It’s also a day dream for me to play this. Because first of all, I had never even dared to dream of working with Alain Françon one day. I studied theater and I was a great spectator of all theaters, whether private theater, public theater, one-man shows, classics, contemporary ones. And Alain Françon is very high in my personal Pantheon, because he is truly a great director. He is one of the last great masters of contemporary theater today. For me, there were Chéreau and Françon. It was a dream to work with him. Seeing a great mind like him, staging a Vaudeville, is extraordinary to watch.
Adultery and marriage go well together! Which lover are you?
It’s intimate, Elodie Suigo! No, it’s okay… I’m not the best. I’m not the worst. I’m in the peloton.
Do you have the impression that the image we may have had of our ancestors or our parents with this idea of marriage “They lived happily until the end of their lives” is still valid today?
Our grandparents repaired everything they broke. We have lost the habit of repairing, people change.
Is this a pattern to follow?
When we are very much in love, we have the fantasy that it will last a lifetime. And at the same time, we must reconcile ourselves with the ephemeral and the fact that everything passes. I find that in life, the hardest thing is to accept the fact that everything stops one day and to manage to tame the ends, the end of everything, the end of life, the end of a love story, the end of a friendship story, the end of a show.
You will be starring in the film with Géraldine Nakache and Isabelle Nanty I am not a hero by Rudy Milstein, on November 15. We feel that you need cinema as well as theater.
I couldn’t do without theater, that’s for sure. I would die without theater. But maybe I could do it with cinema. I dreamed of it less when I was little.
“If a leg had to be taken away from me, I would rather have cinema taken away from me than theater.”
Vincent Dedienneat franceinfo
The theater was love at first sight at the age of seven. It was a revelation.
I didn’t really need to run away from reality or escape from my life. I had a very happy childhood, but there were buildings like that, in the heart of the city, and even sometimes in the countryside, there was one in the middle of the vineyards in Saône-et-Loire where I grew up, which were devoted entirely to lies, to fiction, to magic… I was immediately sure that this would be my life.
Are you afraid of heights?
No, I’m afraid this will all go by quickly. I already know that there are things I won’t be able to do. There are certain roles that I am too old to play. It’s not that I’m afraid of heights, but I’m afraid of the passing of time. There, “A Straw Hat from Italy” for example, it’s a little less than two hours and I’m running everywhere, I’m old enough after four lines! I took up sport, for the first time in my life, to perform this play. So in ten years, I will be less fit to play it. It goes quickly, an actor’s life goes by quickly.
To conclude, is theater intoxication?
It makes me happy, whether I’m on stage or in the room. I think it’s doing yourself a lot of good to go to the theater. When we are spectators, we take care of ourselves. It’s still a good time when we’re not alone. You have to take care of these moments.