Éonnagata

As unusual lives go, the Chevalier d’Éon had one: the famously hermaphrodite fencing master and spy in the service of Louis XV used his sexual ambiguity to his advantage to sail through court intrigue, diplomatic imbroglios and military contests before socially entrenched gender views and the political machine got the better of his bravache. More than his career, his androgyny is what interests Quebecois director Robert Lepage in “Éonnagata”, a show devised with the former French ballet star Sylvie Guillem and the British dancer Russell Maliphant. A clever telescoping of the Chevalier’s name and that of the Kabuki art of transvestment, or Onnagata, the show explores hybridity, performance, and invented selves in a rewarding cross-disciplinary collaboration featuring Lepage’s fine-tuned storytelling skills, Guillem’s technical perfection and Maliphant’s suspenseful choreography.

The show offers multiple surprises, the most prominent being Lepage’s own performance, which proves him to be not just a skilled actor and endlessly inventive director, but a remarkably fluent dancer as well. The 53-year old Lepage is able to hold his own with Guillem and Maliphant in scenes of kenjutusu, or Japanese sword fighting, fencing, table dancing and a kind of musical chairs-duo with Guillem. The set’s sustained sleight-of-hand (allowing actors and characters to switch identities, appear and disappear in the blink of an eye) wears the stamp of Lepage’s creative vision and scenographic language. Guillem is, as always, the focus of attention, her combined physical grace and muscular frame embodying a fascinating Chevalier fighting to continue to wear his/her military uniform before being forced permanently into women’s clothes. Her duos with Maliphant, who plays the Chevalier at the height of his career in the Russian and English courts, explore the duality of this chameleonesque figure, who spent nearly 50 years of his life as a man and roughly 30 as a woman. Yet of the three, Lepage is arguably the most interesting to watch, both mastermind and performer.

The parallel created between the Chevalier d’Éon’s ambiguous gender and Onnagata allows for some poetic reflections on dual states, and lifts the show out of mere historical fact (the latter nevertheless necessitating some clunky narrative overlay). The Kabuki references look at first out of place in a show that seems to promise medieval knights and ladies from its opening tableau but in time come to support the story’s development. By his given name, Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d'Éon de Beaumont was predestined to wear both breeches and petticoats but was revealed at his death to be a fully sexed man. In focusing on his ability to exploit, with no little machiavellian skill and ease, his apparent androgyny, Lepage and company offer a tale that is a keen study of performance where gender is only one means, albeit a powerful and volatile one, to achieving a goal.

To January 9, Wed-Sun, 5 pm, 8 pm, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, 15 avenue Montaigne, Mº Alma-Marceau, www.theatrechampselysees.fr

Photo Credit: Érik Labbé