After Camus at the Denise-Pelletier theater and Michel Marc Bouchard at the Opéra de Montréal, the French director Florent Siaud is back in the Belle Province to rub shoulders with a quilt of writings, the collective work of a dozen playwrights. French speakers from Quebec, Madagascar, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Lebanon, Benin and Haiti. Contemporary rewrite of Faust by Goethe, a triptych of three hours and fifteen minutes, the show presented at the Prospero theater by Les songes turbulents is called If you want light.
Considered by many to be the most important work of German literature, Goethe’s play, inspired by a popular tale from the 16the century, greatly contributed to what should be called the myth of Faust. From this play, the first part of which, the best known, was published in its definitive version in 1808, the playwrights of the collective brought together by Florent Siaud took the liberty of addressing very current ethical questions, starting with those of posthumanist dream and the global climate crisis.
The scene is in Paris, nowadays. Our Faust, a renowned oncologist, falls in love with one of his patients, the botanist Marguerite Weiner. Determined to save her at all costs, the doctor undertakes, against the will of the woman he loves, a procedure that will be fatal. Then, always accompanied by the elusive Mephisto, the one who grants all his wishes, even the most unconscious, Faust goes to San Francisco, in a California in flames, to postpone death again, this time thanks to artificial intelligence. . At the end of their quest, which then takes on biblical proportions, the two companions find themselves on a politically unstable southern island where the sea threatens to swallow everything.
Exaggeration of lyricism
While most of the first of the three parts is characterized by a biting humor, the show is then weighed down by repetition and an excess of lyricism. Verbose, sometimes even confused, too long by at least an hour, the performance does not manage to avoid the pitfalls of relay writing, with all the redundancies and breaks in tone that this implies. In the second part, the flights about forest fires are endless. In the last act, the most frankly operatic of the three, but perhaps also the most superfluous, we literally get bogged down in litanies.
Fortunately, to keep us alert during this great crossing, we can count on the scenic device designed by Nicolas Descoteaux (lighting), Romain Fabre (scenography), Julien Eclancher (sound) and Eric Maniengui (video): a sort of castle where projected onto vaporous tulles and translucent canvases, images that skilfully translate the rumbling threat. The corporeal dimension of the show, which benefited from the expertise of Claudia Chan Tak, offers several delights, admirable compositions.
Bringing together French and Quebec actors, the distribution presents some disparities. While the characters played by Jasmine Bouziani and Madani Tall lack definition, those of Dominique Quesnel, even when they make very brief appearances, leave a lasting impression. In the role of Faust, Francis Ducharme spares no effort, but fails to arouse a real enthusiasm for the hero. In Marguerite, quiet strength, “eternal feminine”, Sophie Cadieux is very moving.
As for Yacine Sif El Islam, who portrays a captivating Mephisto, “a dirty companion”, Faust will say, this is the great discovery of the show. Expressing a consummate deceit while carefully avoiding caricature, a tasty perfidy while making sure to always make the public a partner in the game, his performance alone is worth the trip.