Watch Me Fall

Hard to forget Evel Knievel. His hugely mediatized, death-defying stunts and Stars and Stripes costumes made him an icon of the American Seventies. According to Wikipedia, he attempted some 75 ramp-to-ramp motorcycle jumps between 1965 and 1980 and suffered 433 broken bones. His most memorable feat, as it nearly killed him, was his jump (or crash, rather) over the Caesar's Palace fountain in Las Vegas on New Year's Eve, 1967 (he spent a month in a coma). Stunt artist, entertainer, self-promoter and freak show of sorts, Knievel is the object of a different sort of publicity in "Watch Me Fall", by Bristol duo Action Hero, the final act of the program of British theater invited by the Théâtre de la Ville for the mini-festival known as Chantiers Europe.

A tongue-in-cheek dive into Knievel's motives, ambition and personal marketing machine, the 50-minute show uses pop culture's performance codes to question a social desire to indulge voyeuristically in extreme feats. In fact, as its title-cum-command indicates, "Watch Me Fall" places the public center stage, as much a focus of Action Hero's concerns as Knievel's indestructible rogue. Equipped with disposable cameras distributed at the door and standing around a downsized, home-made model of one of Knievel's jumps, the audience is constantly encouraged to clap, cheer, photograph and show its support for the legendary daredevil's feats of derring-do.

The show electrified in the UK with its interactive premise and its ironic take on larger-than-life personas, but fell far short of that response at the performance I saw, where, true to its own cultural codes, the public of Parisian twenty-somethings engaged mildly with the actors, at best. Interestingly however, their reaction proved Action Hero's premise right: if it is human nature to derive strange pleasure from seeing other people take risks and experience pain, the audience barreled into that cliche by, at one point, pelting Gemma Paintin with the plastic golf balls her character was collecting off the floor. When mores are pushed and barriers shaken, propriety too flies out the window.

As short and as elliptical as it was, the piece was far more engaging than the public would allow however, from James Stenhouse's boyish good looks to Paintin's silently suffering stuntman's showgirl, with a smart text that sends-up braggadocio and ABC Sports Specials as easily as it jumps a child's mock-up of the Caesar's Palace fountain (fashioned from an inflatable wading pool and two jumbo bottles of Diet Coke). "Watch Me Fall" is an invitation to see humanity at its most human: reaching for the moon but gravity bound.

June 14-16, 7 pm, Théâtre de la Ville, 2 place du Châtelet, 4e, Métro Châtelet, info: www.theatredelaville-paris.com

Photo Credit: Toby Farrow

ChantiersEurope: British Drama in the Spotlight

What do Antonin Artaud, Ophelia and Harold Lloyd have in common? The answer is at ChantiersEurope, a mini-festival of European theater at the Théâtre de la Ville, showcasing British, Italian and Portugese companies. The event is the first in over 10 years in Paris to train a spotlight on contemporary theater from the UK, and a recent visit turned up some interesting surprises...

The first comes from Katie Mitchell, who won the 12th Europe "New Theatrical Realities" prize in St. Petersburg, Russia in April (see April 20 post below). Known for her meticulous research, savvy use of video technology and keen study of Stanislavsky's acting method, Mitchell presents an installation commissioned by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London that develops all three. In "Five Truths", alternatively known as "The Ophelia Project", Mitchell directs a single actress, Michelle Thierry, through five versions of the suicide of Hamlet's girlfriend, attempting in each scenario to explore a different approach to the theater act. Video runs simultaneously on 10 screens of Mitchell and Thierry's work to bring into focus Shakespeare's briefly glimpsed waif, in the styles of Jerzy Grotowski, Peter Brook, Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht and Constantin Stanislavsky. For neophytes and specialists both, the experiment proposes illuminating comparisons and contrasts of the ideas of these five giants of contemporary theater. An acerbic music hall number à la Brecht faces a mute Ophelia overcome with grief in the manner of Grotowski's exploration of performative elements of ritual, Brook's poetry stands out sharply against a mad Ophelia such as Artaud woud have envisioned her, while Stanislavkian method acting certainly appears the most familiar and "normal". Thierry's versatility and Mitchell's painstaking direction and filming lift this intellectual exercise from academicism to a fascinating moment of theater.

A more traditional piece, though only in the sense that it takes place live on a stage, comes from the Compagnie 1927 and a show half-way between silent film and contemporary animation. Its title, "The Animals and Children Took to the Streets", doesn't reflect much about the content of this story in which the children of a tenement block known as Bayou Mansions are kidnapped and force-fed drugged gum drops to keep them quiet and obedient. In fact, a simple plot description captures nothing of the color, sass and faux archness of this delightful piece created by the combined talents of animation artist Paul Barrett, actress Suzanne Andreade, soprano/pianist Lilian Henley and actress/costumer Esme Appleton. Andreade who conceived, wrote and directs the piece, plays a number of wicked ladies of the housing block on Red Herring Street with malicious airs, opposite Appleton as a wide-eyed Lilian Gish type crusading for justice and the return of her child. Barrett's animation paints a richly hued backdrop for the Bayou Mansion's residents, most of whom come to life through paper doll silhouettes, as fanciful complement to the live actors, and his multi-media compositions (of the paint and paper variety) add a graphic punch to this perfectly naughty tale of crime and corruption in the big city. Barrett's portrayal of the Bayou's caretaker, a sympathetic Harold Lloyd outcast with an Edward Scissorhands wig, adds a self-effacing counterpoint to the women's confident aplomb and deliciously exaggerated tongue-rolling. Compagnie 1927 had its first success in 2007 at the Edinburgh Festival (5 awards) and seems to find a confident ease in its artistically rich style with this latest work.

Both shows offer a tantalizing glimpse of contemporary British theater and are in no way overshadowed by the main event of ChantiersEurope: "I Am the Wind", created at the Young Vic Theatre of London under the direction of Patrice Chéreau. Tom Brooke and Jack Laskey form a compelling couple as two men, One and the Other, caught in a personal struggle between life and death. With the open sea as a dangerous metaphor for despair and fear, Chéreau finds a balance between situational context and Fosse's psychological tension by setting the characters intermittently afloat on a sideways monolith of a raft, which aptly underscores an undercurrent pulling between metaphysical weight and lightness. Fosse's rhythmic text is their life-buoy, an intermittently rising and falling dialogue on the reasons to live and an inexplicable pull to choose not to, until it knocks one of them off his feet. A spare and pure production carried by an exceptional duo: reason enough to give ChantiersEurope a look, with more shows next week.

Information: www.theatredelaville.com

Photo: Director Katie Mitchell directs Michelle Thierry in "Five Truths". Credit: Gareth Fry