The Théâtre Rude Ingénierie, known for its tinkering and other handmade creations, wished to transpose its creativity, with the “means at hand”, into the abundant universe of Lewis Carroll.
Alice!the show resulting from this meeting, will take up several key elements ofAlice in Wonderland and of on the other side of the mirror : the Cheshire cat, the white and red queens, the queen and the king of hearts, Humpty Dumpty, Tweedledum and Tweedledee… Encounters which will be so many scenic occasions, spaces for invention.
It is moreover the quality of the Théâtre Rude Ingénierie, which gave rise to the ingenious construction of dreamland. The construction here is a bric-a-brac where smoke or pendulum games will follow one another, motorized insectoid creature or painting against the backdrop of the stage like a canvas — and a constant reminder, throughout the piece, of this mirror crossed by Alice.
One thinks of this mechanical piano, too, which opens the room and which, after the passage of the young Alice, will accompany the entire show with heady notes — which, along with the sustained musical accompaniment of the three members of Rude Ingénierie —, will soak the various meetings in a sumptuous atmosphere, to which the enveloping play of light will contribute.
If the stage, initially largely bare, may surprise, we have to admit that it will unfold to offer a unique and rich overall picture, with in particular this backdrop which, smeared over the course of the adventures, will encapsulate the different stages of the story and will present itself to the view in an astonishing palimpsest.
Find your shape
A downside, however, comes to start this visual and scenic success, which is due to the text and, more generally, to the game that will result from it.
The feeling, very quickly, will come to us from a link missing from this juxtaposition of paintings: Carroll’s imagination is fertile, but what did we want to insist on here? The part which belongs to the text of Emmanuelle Jimenez or to the direction of the Theater Rude Ingénierie will remain difficult to determine. Still, the key characters, iconic places and anthology phrases multiply without a strong frame, hence our impression of a series of imposed stops, like so many boxes to check.
The text, moreover, places an enormous weight on the shoulders of its main actress (Marianne Marceau), Alice finding herself, for example, narrating the transitions between each of the stops. In the first person, she will express what she lives and sees — when the hole appears and she says “I’m falling!” », However, it is difficult to follow him.
To the signs of a story that has not completely joined the theatrical form will be added some acting elements, the words of certain characters struggling to pierce the rich sound environment, in particular. The coexistence of different levels of language, too: a worked and clear phrasing for some, in phase with the deployed imagination, against a relaxed pronunciation for others, will break your tone. We can defend there a desire to feed the confusion on stage, which would be Alice’s – we can also keep the feeling of a tone that was only imperfectly found.
Carroll’s universe, of course, remains riddled with hidden meanings, innocuous remarks which, without appearing to be so, are able to speak of our own reality. The show’s brochure evoked, among other things, the abuses of power at a time when lies flourished, and the capacity of Alice’s adventures, in a distorting mirror, to flush out certain incongruities of our world.
It is clear, however, that the show freelances in this abundant universe, perhaps betting on the riches that could fall here or there, without however a clear line managing to impose itself completely. Despite a strong final image on the passage of time, the fall of the curtain leaves us, certainly with several magnificent paintings, but also with the feeling of having only partially made the journey.