The new director of Usine C marks her appointment with a strong, exuberant, vitriolic show. An imposing three-hour production that the music (the play’s program provides the list of its very varied and evocative choices) envelops like a narrative framework. With her both scathing and penetrating gaze, Virginie Despentes’ social fresco provides strong dramatic material.
Vernon Subutex 1 follows the fall of an ex-record store, whose world collapsed after the bankruptcy of his store. David Boutin gives a sensitive, felt presence to this character, malleable by dint of having lost his bearings, who will be tossed from one temporary host to another.
The form of the choral novel
The faithful transposition of Angela Konrad marries a little the form of the choral novel, which returned successively in the head of the various characters, who poured out their justifications and grievances, their vulnerabilities and contradictions.
On stage, this often monological and direct form, where they seem to address us, seems to highlight isolation, social dislocation. Other scenes, of formidable efficiency, make heard in recorded voices the interior thoughts, without indulgence, of the protagonists.
From this emerges the image of an atomized world, torn apart on the ideological and socio-economic levels, a collision of various frustrations, which is not exempt from extreme, even shocking points of view. A ruthless society divided between beings in a state of survival who regret the buried world of their youth and those who shamelessly profit from the current materialistic era.
Note the video projections by Alexandre Desjardins, thanks to which the show transports us to multiple places, from luxurious apartments to shabby accommodations.
Carried by a versatile cast, this caustic score gives rise to several memorable compositions, some bordering on caricature, the performers thoroughly embracing, with joyful audacity, these characters who have something excessive about them. Sorts of monsters in a world in loss of humanity.
Anne-Marie Cadieux delivers a burlesque number of high caliber as a frenetic lover of Vernon — the bed is not without reason the central element of the scene — not to mention a confusing composition which we reserve the surprise for you. Dominique Quesnel is full of confidence as a specialist in media smearing, symbol of an era where everything is permitted, and, at the other end of the spectrum, is endearing as a traveller. Paul Ahmarani inhabits his frustrated and intolerant screenwriter with hilarious energy. Violette Chauveau stands out in particular as a former porn star. The downgraded violent husband portrayed by Philippe Cousineau inspires both aversion and pity.
In short, almost all of them should be named, the highly theatrical figures of this human microcosm as colorful as it can be disturbing at times.