Adapted from the eponymous book and directed by Catherine De Léan, the play created at Quat’Sous features four of the numerous testimonies collected by Nobel-winning writer and literary journalist Svetlana Alexievitch. This is Catherine De Léan’s first production.
The actress was attracted by the truth of these testimonies of ordinary people, collected in their kitchens, because they seem to abolish the boundaries between fact and fiction. “The more I listen to these stories, the more I tell myself that there is no other Story than this one. What people experience is everything that exists. The other Story, the one with a big axe, is an invented story, a fiction,” she wrote about the work written by Alexievitch.
The text is the strong point of this production which clearly exposes one thing: the fall of the USSR, then the dissolution of the Communism Party after perestroika and its flirtation with capitalism, represents more than the dismantling of a political regime. The end of the Soviet dream is the end of an ideal, that of the good man at the heart of an earthly paradise. “In Soviet schools, we were taught that man is fundamentally good. How magnificent it is! To this day, my mother believes that it is horrible circumstances that make us horrible. But the man is good. However, that is not true! All his life, man is tossed between good and evil. The master’s ax is biding its time…”, rightly says one of the protagonists.
PHOTO FRÉDÉRIQUE MÉNARD-AUBIN, PROVIDED BY LE QUAT’SOUS
Vitali Makarov in The End of the Red Man
Hide these actors…
Grouped into four monologues pronounced one after the other by each of the four performers, the production of The End of the Red Man left us hungry. It suffers from questionable directing choices. And uneven direction of actors.
PHOTO FRÉDÉRIQUE MÉNARD-AUBIN, PROVIDED BY LE QUAT’SOUS
Micha Raouentfeld delivers the last monologue.
Why isolate the performers in a restricted stage space, then abandon them on stage after their score? (Dominique Quesnel, who opens the ball, remains lying in the middle of the set for three quarters of the performance…) Why have them play seated, with their backs, in the dark, hidden behind scaffolding or screens? Why the use of the microphone which filters the truth of the testimony, as Vitali Makarov does to say such powerful and impactful words?
There has been a trend in theater for some time. That of hiding the actors! They are made to play in the dark, in the corners of a stage or with their backs to the audience. However, we go to the theater to see actors, to feel their proximity, their breath, their charisma. Fortunately, that’s what happens at…the end of The End of the Red Man, when the strong presence of Micha Raouentfeld is felt in the room. The performer delivers the last monologue while finally looking at the audience… But it’s too little, too late.
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The End of the Red Man
With Laurence Dauphinais, Vitali Makarov, Dominique Quesnel and Micha Raouentfeld,
At ThreepennyUntil March 23