Director Florent Siaud’s project was ambitious: to revisit the myth of Faust in the company of a dozen French-speaking playwrights. The harmonious and often poetic text that is thus born is not enough to make the piece If you want light a total success.
Florend Siaud has gathered around this promising project authors from Quebec (including Rébecca Déraspe), but also from France, Belgium, Haiti, Madagascar and Lebanon. Together, they imagined an epic in which love, but especially death, prowls.
Here, Faust is a cynical (or depressive, opinions differ) Parisian oncologist who falls madly in love with one of his patients, the luminous botanist Marguerite Weiner. Unable to save her from the inevitable, he wanders off with a mysterious and disturbing comrade named Mephisto. Their steps will lead them first to Silicon Valley, then to an isolated island threatened by rising waters.
Divided into three parts, the play recounts the slow descent into hell of Faust, who clings to the memory of Margot like a buoy. He will go so far as to accept a substitute for his beloved, recreated by artificial intelligence from his voice recordings that he has kept. A mirage that resembles torture or cure? It’s up to everyone to decide.
The first part, more intimate, turns out to be the most touching, against the backdrop of an essential question: how far are we ready to go so that those we love survive? The second segment, with post-humanist resonances, also raises several interesting philosophical questions about our ability to conceive of the finitude of loved ones.
The third part, as Faust attempts to save islanders threatened by the tide against their will, however, stretches unduly. The three-fifteen hour show (this includes two intermissions) could undoubtedly have been tightened up.
We must all the same salute this multiplicity of voices docking in unison so that a coherent saga is born, where poetry often comes to dawn.
In the role of Marguerite, Sophie Cadieux offers the most poignant performance. When death comes to pick her up, she appears to be ablaze and totally abandoned. Death seems to swell it with a sap that proves that death is not just disappearance. It is above all a transformation and, for some, a deliverance.
For his part, Yacine Sif El Islam takes on the role of the suave and captivating Mephisto with great confidence. On several occasions, the French actor shattered the fourth wall to share knowing glances with the public, who also fell in love. As for Dominique Quesnel, she is true to herself: with a perfectly balanced earthiness, in her smallest appearances as in the biggest.
Francis Ducharme is less convincing in the role of Faust, as if his intensity as an actor struggled to contain himself in the tight clothes of this rather rigid oncologist. He only half convinces, with his gestures that seem to be remote-controlled. It’s only when madness (or death) touches him that he seems totally in place. His final monologue, more danced than acted, is also of great beauty.
All is not black in this rereading of Goethe’s classic. On the contrary. The scenography is magnificent. The themes covered remain very relevant and the cracks in the shells are numerous enough to bring out at times the light that inhabits the characters. However, the spectator’s heart does not beat hard enough or often enough…
If you want light
Staging and artistic direction by Florent Siaud. With Francis Ducharme, Sophie Cadieux, Yacine Sif El Islam and three other performers.
At the Prospero TheaterUntil March 12