Frank Wedekind’s Lulu is a ravishing beauty who drives men mad. They just can’t help themselves from obsessing over their mistress, dancer, muse, high-class call girl and destitute prostitute. If she is certainly a temptress, Lulu was first a horribly mistreated young girl, at the hands of her father to begin with, creating ambiguous sympathies for audiences.
Symbol of feminist freedom, sexual liberation or the second sex’s victimization? The larger than life character – performance artist of her own life, in a world that wants her for its own pleasure and which she is often more than willing to oblige - has been recuperated in the 20th century by all three perspectives on women. Director Stéphan Braunschweig chooses to see her rather more as men’s prey than their dominatrix, in “Lulu: une tragédie-monstre”. Like most treatments of Wedekind’s anti-heroine, the production revisits two of his works, "Erdgeist" (Earth Spirit, 1895), and "Die Büsche der Pandora" (Pandora’s Box, 1904), which were recreated after the writer’s death as the opera “Lulu” in 1937.
In the lead role, the diminutive, gravelly voiced Chloé Réjon is a woman-child who may fail to always grasp the strength of her power over the male sex, yet is just as capable of using it for the darkest of intentions. The progressively sordid scenes of her life whirl by like a merry-go-round on a rotating set of interlocking rooms, hinting that the past is never far behind and that the future can never hold anything new. If Lulu walks literally in circles, the contemporary costumes (and much is to be made of Réjon’s numerous wardrobe changes, from a painter’s Pierrot to a Lido butterfly and a rock and roll vamp) beg interpretations for women’s unshakeable objectification some 150 years later.
Carnal love was nevertheless Wedekind’s overwhelming concern. The young German who had previously dabbled with careers in advertising and the circus made his European tour, not to visit monuments, but to rid himself of the values of his bourgeois milieu. Paris’ brothels proved helpful to his goals; “Lulu” was born. Wedekind may have celebrated eroticism as a counterbalance to and escape from the stultifying social and moral codes of his day, the erotic power that Lulu conjures leads inevitably to her demise. Male fantasy and women’s reality intersect, leaving no clear-cut conclusions and lending the work its own power to fascinate.
From frying pans to Ferraris, everything sells better with a pretty woman in the photo. We don’t need Wedekind to tell us that but it is interesting to remember, through a 19th century lens, that the far from innocuous relations between beauty, sex and economics have always been with us and are unlikely to soon fade.
Continuing the initiative begun last season by the Théâtre national de la Colline to provide English subtitles and program notes for one or more performances of selected shows, the performances of “Lulu” on Dec. 4 and 14 will be similarly subtitled for English-speaking audiences. Note that the early times for all shows reflect the performance length (4 hours).
To Dec. 23, Tues, Wed, Fri, Sat, 7:30 pm, Sun, 3:30 pm, Théâtre national de la Colline, 15 rue Malte-Brun, 20e, M° Gambetta, 13-27 euros, tel : 01.44.62.52.52.
Photo Credit: Elisabeth Carecchio
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