2023-08-12 14:24:52
“The Scourge” saw its first performance last Thursday to launch fifteen exceptional dates until the end of August.
Early play by Shakespeare who was 19 when he published it in 1623, measure for measure is played in the Domaine national du Palais-Royal, in Paris, until August 27. Wandering between the columns of Buren, and the more classic ones of the majestic enclosure, brushing past the costumed actors in the middle of the Renaissance setting, is more of an experience than a spectacle. A brutal, modern play, performed by actors transported to a majestic open-air setting, on the Jardin du Français side.
Buren’s maze
In Vienna contaminated by the plague, the young minister Angelo takes power following the defection of Duke Vincentio. Model of rigor and virtue, he closes theaters and houses: prostitutes, pimps and touts suffer the blows of the law. Illegitimate couples are sentenced to death or exile. But when Angelo meets the chaste Isabelle, a young petitioner to him to save his brother condemned to death, his desire makes him abuse his power to deceive her.
The Premiere of Scourge, Measure for Measure involved 150 spectators grouped in clusters to follow the action exploded in the four corners of the Place du Palais. The action is there, the action is there, the action is there, it is everywhere. Here a prostitute mocks the new power, there a maraud is imprisoned for fornication, elsewhere a priest intrigues to get him out of there, while the frail sister of the condemned man is seduced by the master of Vienna… A scene closes, that another is already in progress elsewhere, you have to join it in the maze of Buren, take a snippet of it here and another there, the actors and actresses brush once morest you in their magnificent costumes, or are there, by your side… And we gather the snippets, heard here and there, to build a story, as perceived along the streets. The resolution will take place around an improvised floor, like an Agora, where measure for measure will take on its full meaning.
Drys Penthier and Justine Marçais in “The Scourge, Measure for Measure” following William Shakespeare, directed by Léonard Matton, Domaine national du Palais Royal, Paris (2023). (OLIVIA BONAMOUR)
The short text
The presentation of magnificent wolves to hide the face at the entrance to the show is a nice goodie updated to the taste of the Renaissance, the era of the play, while flute and drummed baroque music punctuates the action in the courtyard. The Emersion company, with eighteen actors and actresses on the set, composes the exploded tableau of a play that lends itself to movement and wandering. The text runs from courtyard to courtyard, the spectator catches up with it, perceiving that to the right, to the left, something is happening, he follows a group, in search of the latest news, and then no, there, behind, that the mackerel to his mackerel?
After Helsingør – château d’Hamlet, at Vincennes in 2019 and 2021, Léonard Matton tackles another Shakespeare that some have called “unclassifiable”. The proposal of the translator, adapter and director matches the originality of the subject of the author of the seventeenth century. He signs a satirical tragicomedy of his time that we can take up on our own, as is always the case with great authors. The staging by Léonard Matton gives it the ideal setting of the Palais-Royal updated by Buren, at the crossroads of the classic and the innovation that define modernity. Splendid.
Marjorie Dubus in “The Scourge, Measure for Measure” following William Shakespeare, directed by Léonard Matton, Domaine national du Palais Royal, Paris (2023). (MATTHEW CAMILLE COLIN)
The Scourge, Measure for Measure
According to William Shakespeare
Directed by: Leonard Matton
With: Roch-Antoine Albaladejo, Thalie Amossé, Jean-Baptiste Barbier-Arribe, Dominique Bastien, Maxime Chartier, ‘Zazie Delem, Camille Delpech, Marjorie Dubus, Thomas Gendronneau, Jean-Loup Horwitz, Laurent Labruyère, David Legras, Justine Marçais, Mathias Marty, Drys Penthier, Jacques Poix-Terrier, Jérôme Ragon, and Floriane Delahousse. Carla Girod & Maëlys Simbozel (alternating)
August 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26 and 27, 2023, 8 p.m.
National domain of the Palais-Royal
Place Colette, Paris Ier
Reservation : Le Secret
1691851138
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