Sentimental Bourreau/"Tendre Jeudi"

The collective known as “Sentimental Bourreau” is at the origin of a delightful production for the stage of “Sweet Thursday”, the short novel by John Steinbeck about a community of down-and-outs on Cannery Row in Monterey, California. Unlike many representations of American culture for the French stage, which fall into cliché out of ignorance of the realities of American society, company founder and director Mathieu Bauer had the laudable idea to travel to Monterey in search of Steinbeck’s California. If he discovered to his surprise that the shanty-towns of Monterey in the 1950s have been replaced by the million-dollar homes of the stars of Hollywood in 2007, Bauer went in search of Steinbeck’s marginals, which he found in a dilapidated neighborhood on the water’s edge in Oakland, filmed them and incorporated them into this multimedia production that is equal parts a testament to Steinbeck’s philosophy of life and a bold example of the best of the potential uses of video and live music on stage. At the center of the close-knit community formed by the bums Mack and Hazel, the prostitutes of Fauna’s whorehouse and the Latino (formerly Asian) grocery of Maria and Joseph, is the story of the marine biologist Doc and Suzy, the “stranger” to these parts. Both need someone, and both find each other, thanks to the well-meaning plotting of their fellow partners in misery. Bauer’s film is the moving backdrop to their tale, drawing in the trains, diners, ocean life and shacks familiar to Steinbeck’s community. A self-described cinephile greatly influenced by American film, Bauer frames the piece with segments from films by Preston Sturgis and Alfred Hitchcock, in particular the kiss between James Cagney and Kim Novak in “Vertigo”. Motivated by a desire, he said in a press conference, to “re-enchant the world”, he offers through his faithful adaptation of Steinbeck’s text a proposal dear to him: “to demand the right to work less in order to think more.” With “Tendre Jeudi”, the group’s first truly representational piece of theater, Sentimental Bourreau crowns 17 years of interdisciplinary collaboration, where music and video are integrated creative sources of performance and here prove themselves to be eloquent voices of expression for Steinbeck’s universal tale of the dignity of a human life and the importance of community to give that life its fullest dimension.

Photos: Christophe Raynaud de Lage/Festival d'Avignon