berlin berlin, the name of the historic German capital repeated. East Berlin and West Berlin. The two places as a stage of departure and arrival, in the middle of the Cold War. Berlin, setting and heart of the new play by Patrick Haudecoeur and Gérald Sibleyras, accomplices already in Silence it turns (great theatrical success in 2016), directed by José Paul at the Fontaine Theater in Paris.
Berlin, therefore, the 80s. A couple – Ludwig (Patrick Haudecoeur) and Emma (Anne Charrier) – want to flee to the West. He spots an apartment with a secret passage that leads to the other side of the Wall. Emma gets hired there as a nurse’s aide to take care of the senile landlady. But as soon as she arrives, nothing goes as planned: the son, Werner (Maxime d’Aboville) – who has fallen instantly in love with her – turns out to be an agent of the Stasi, the East German secret police, and the apartment is gradually turns into a nest of spies.
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The piece opens with a video with 3D effects sketching the surroundings of the Berlin Wall. The spectator is almost there: he walks along the facade of the wall and enters an apartment. The screen disappears. The lights come on in a pretty interior designed by Edouard Laug, and worthy of the last century: brown velvet sofa, sideboard, kitsch wallpaper on which a sickle and a hammer are distinctly drawn. A Stasi propaganda poster is nailed to the wall. Without too much subtlety, the tone is given.
The characters are in absolute danger and urgency punctuates the play. Bursts of voices reveal their anxiety, as do their movements: they run, trample, cross the stage up and down, giving the show a real dynamism. AT each time they are on the verge of getting out of it, a misunderstanding, a misunderstanding or an unexpected event takes them away from their goal. The show goes from surprise to surprise, causing different consequences on each of the characters.
Anne Charrier – petulant – plays the tough guy, full of resources: she easily goes from fugitive to femme fatale using her charms to save her skin. AT the opposite, his stage companion, Patrick Haudecoeur is a sheepish coward. Weakness, tremors, the actor uses his whole body to win the smiles of the spectators, attracting a certain sympathy to his character.
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Smooth, both in tone and hair, Maxime d’Aboville caricatures his character to perfection, gaga for the great leaders of the USSR. At the slightest glitch, he grabs his phone and deports without scruple to Siberia, to the repeated laughter of the public. Remarkable, when we discover that a few hours earlier, the same actor was playing the much darker play by Jean-Paul Sartre, Behind closed doors, at the Theater de l’Atelier. A marathon that forces him to slip into two very different roles in no time.
AT Like a vaudeville, comedy constantly uses the comedy of repetition, perhaps too much? Count on the troupe to put the famous Russian song in your head Kalinka sung countless times. This is the owner’s “lullaby”, a joke that adds to the many shots on which Patrick Haudecoeur and Gérald Sibleyras play. If the original subject is particularly dark – the situation in Berlin in the 80s – the humor of the two accomplices softens it. “How good is it to laugh like that!”, breathes a spectator at the end of the performance. A delirious and resolutely joyful play, to be seen at the Théâtre Fontaine.
“Berlin Berlin” by Patrick Haudecoeur and Gérald Sibleyras
Fountain Theater
10 Rue Pierre Fontaine, 75009 Paris
01 48 74 74 40
Tuesday to Friday at 9 p.m.
Saturday at 4:30 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Sunday at 4 p.m.