A master class. This is the impression Vincent Dedienne leaves at the end of his new one man show A gala evening, on display in Paris, at the Bouffes du Nord theater, from December 22, 2021, until January 29, 2022. If all the performances are sold out or almost, a few places are free here and there, spectators giving up coming due to Covid-19, the comedian said in a message on Instagram.
In the meantime, and as long as the show continues despite the threat of new health restrictions, it would be a shame to miss out on an evening with Vincent Dedienne at the Bouffes du Nord theater, a place that is both intimate, imposing and timeless. Perfect to welcome the healthy madness of this virtuoso. A gala evening is his second show after the unclassifiable and brilliant If something happens …, launched in the fall of 2014 before enjoying a successful career and receiving the Molière for humor in 2017. Along with this first very autobiographical one man show, Vincent Dedienne distinguished himself as an ineffable columnist (Canal +, TMC with Day-to-day, France Inter, RTL), but also as an actor in the theater (The Game of Love and Chance) and in the cinema. Obviously, with the notoriety and the capital of sympathy acquired over the years, a new show by the comedian with the smirk could only arouse curiosity and expectation.
(Photo: Jean-Louis Fernandez for the Bouffes du Nord)
It is an understatement to say that expectations are met in this show that he co-signed with Juliette Chaigneau, Mélanie Le Moine (they were already co-authors of the first solo on stage) and Anaïs Harté. In the presentation text of A gala evening, the comedian announces the color: “After going around my navel in my previous show, I decided to go around yours a bit …” Vincent Dedienne is not content to turn around: he thrusts a sharp and poisonous feather into it, sitting or twirling around a piano which is used for everything except music … It goes through a gallery of hilarious characters, among which the old man who runs the funerals of stars, the uncultivated and infected editor-in-chief of a news channel, the idle bourgeois reactionary, the odious choreographer, the travel agent who receives a client named Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès – one of the times strong points of the show … But besides, are there only “weak” times? Apart from perhaps one or two sensations of length, the Gala evening shines brightly. Among the craziest moments, we do not forget the hallucinating “songwriter” that the Monty Python would not have denied … Nor this crazy singer in love with himself who contorts, perched on the piano. ..
For some portraits, one might fear something “already heard”. But Dedienne is far too inspired for that. His incisive and virtuoso writing flows like an uninterrupted outpouring. The formulas hit the mark, the words are cruel, the paintings are hilarious, absurd and sometimes chilling. Those obsessed with political correctness will be at their expense: at the turn of certain sketches, ineffable bursts of black humor, very dark, including two or three allusions to various facts that have shaken France. But in the heat of hilarity, it passes.
Between the games of massacre slip fleeting moments of humanity, considerations on life, brief musical interludes, crazy dances like so many exorcisms to purify the soul. A gala evening, it is an evocation of our society in distorted mirror and a summons of the passing time, this time which, before breaking up the bodies, cools reckless hearts. “What makes you no longer jump rocks at 50?”, asks Vincent Dedienne in a moment of introspection. We think then of the official poster of the show which shows the comedian at the top of an old diving board, contemplating the void. Ghosts hover in the heights of the theater, those of carefree childhood, those of missing relatives, those of a character from the show who died between two sketches, as if to remind us that we can laugh, the wheel will turn mercilessly. The comedian evokes the enemies of the shadows, sorrow and bitterness grouped together under the name “chagreur”. He imagines his own death and we still laugh. But at the end of a beautiful final, it is with emotion that he traps us one last time. While the stage has been stripped before our eyes of all props and artifices, Vincent Dedienne dances one last time, in a moment of grace, over all the available space of the stage, his face absent and serious.