If you remember that Robert Hell was the father of the Mohawk as a hair statement and safety-pins as a fashion accessory, then “Please Kill Me” is right up your alley. The latest show from Mathieu Bauer and Sentimental Bourreau takes its material and its name from the collection of interviews compiled by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain with everyone who was anyone in the punk music scene that started in New York in the early Seventies: Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Joey and Dee-Dee Ramone, Johnny Thunders, Blondie, Malcolm McLaren… Subtitled “The Uncensored Oral History of Punk”, the book holds no punches but shoots off more than a few, recounting overdoses, animal defenestrations, groupies, the pogo and the sweating steamy clubs where it all went down.
From that dense and not always fascinating body of anecdotes, Bauer has assembled an intelligent show that translates the style, the sound and the stunts of CBGB’s circa 1975, without ever attempting to recreate them. Actors Kate Strong and Matthias Girbig channel more than mimic the furious energy and nihilistic personas that shot to notorious fame in New York and then London, shouting, whispering and growling with the shadow of a Sid Viscious scowl or the sinuous muscularity of an Iggy pose. Of different generations and genders, they embody the scene from blast off to burn out, its major and minor players, its crossing of sexual codes. Bauer, on percussion, aided by Sylvain Cartigny on guitars and Lazare Boghossian on synthesizer do “I Wanna Be Your Dog” and “Blank Generation,” not like the Stooges and the Voidoids did but rather how adolescent memory and forty-something experience have moved them, as talented musicians in their own right and certainly far more musically sophisticated than the Sex Pistols ever were. Bauer makes use of a mostly blank set and a huge back screen to subtitle the VO text, delivered with deadpan humor by Strong, and to create context and atmosphere, using original album artwork and live and prerecorded video montages.
Long before the music business became an industry, the stories retold and alluded to, as outrageous as they were, seem strangely from a more innocent time. The show doesn’t quite keep the pace of a Ramones’ song, and an unnecessary and overlong coda weights the finish, but “Please Kill Me” gets the message of the t-shirt Hell wore proclaiming that same statement: attitude is everything, just don’t take it too seriously.
To March 22, in English and French, Mon-Sat, 7:30 pm, Sun, 3:30 pm, Théâtre de la Bastille, 76 rue de la Roquette, Mº Bastille, 13-22 euros, tel: 01.43.57.42.14.
Photo Credit: Romain Etienne
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