To revisit Charles Perrault’s tale successfully, it was necessary to bring a new stone to the building. This is what Félix-Antoine Boutin and Sophie Cadieux manage to do in their theatrical adaptation, itself derived from the cult film by Jacques Demy, by focusing on the initiatory story of a young woman in search of freedom.
The creative team of Donkey skin has rightly granted itself all the freedom to give new relief to this tale by Perrault… with only two actors on stage. Here, no pink horse or talking flower, we have chosen to go to the essentials.
As in Jacques Demy’s film, however, the initial premise remains the same. A queen dies from an illness; she makes her husband promise to take as his wife a woman more beautiful than her. Except that in this distant kingdom, we don’t find it. The only woman more beautiful than her… is her daughter.
The king thus resolves to marry off his daughter. But the princess, terrified, is not inclined to give herself to her father.
This whole first part of Donkey skin is repeated approximately like this in a score for two, in which Éric Bernier plays the queen mother and Sophie Cadieux, the princess. The king, referred to as an old record, is represented by a… record player, which expresses his incestuous desires for his daughter (with the voice of Éric Bernier).
On stage, we focus on showing the mother-daughter bond, before introducing the king – who we will never see. The acting of the two actors is fair, but the pace is slow. There are probably a few sequences to tighten up in this first portion of the piece.
That said, the story continues in the same baroque and surrealist spirit of the tale – with the entire gallery of characters minus) with the princess’s insane requests to her father (advised here by the donkey). If he wants to marry her, he will have to make her a dress for each of her sorrows…
But each time, the king manages to design these dresses… The princess then asks him to make her a dress with the skin of the donkey, which ensures the wealth of the kingdom with its daily droppings of gold coins. The king ends up accepting, but once the donkey skin is delivered, the princess seizes it and flees her father’s kingdom. Hats off to Elen Ewing’s costumes.
It is from this moment that Perrault’s tale takes another turn with the adaptation by Félix-Antoine Boutin and Sophie Cadieux, who wanted to emphasize the princess’s passage to adulthood. .
Then begin exchanges that are both entertaining and a bit existential between the princess and her fairy godmother. It is in this second part that Sophie Cadieux and Éric Bernier express all their talent (and their madness!), even if the presence of secondary characters would perhaps have been desirable, we realize that.
The princess, who will learn from her fairy godmother to swallow her pain, will defend her independence until the end – contrary to the original story.
Exit the charming prince of the neighboring village… The princess will learn that when she wears the donkey skin, she evades the desires of others; whereas when she removes it, she consents to exposing herself to it. But in the end, does this skin that we wear – or not – make us free or make us prisoners? Is it really possible to free yourself from the gaze of others?
Discuss…
Donkey skin
Adapted and directed by Félix-Antoine Boutin and Sophie Cadieux
With Sophie Cadieux and Éric Bernier Until October 19 at the Théâtre Denise-Pelletier, then at the CNA French Theater from October 31 to November 2.