Countryside (2000) by Martin Crimp, translated by Philippe Djian at L’Arche in 2002, is a significant piece of the harsh writing of the British author, inclined to sow doubt, between insinuations, questions left hanging or even unanswered. , approximate allusions, inaccuracies, innuendos, unsaid that the spectator would like to elucidate and try to understand.
In search of a quieter life, Doctor Richard and his wife Corinne left London and now live in the countryside. One evening, Richard comes home with a stranger whom he says is lying on the side of the road. Doubt, like a leitmotif, seeps into people’s minds.
Suspicion hovers over what Richard says who is lying, over what Corinne guesses and senses, It spreads over their friend Morris whom we will not see – who is talked about and who only expresses himself through his telephone calls – and especially on this unknown Rebecca, who turns out to be equivocal; however, it alone is the bearer of clarifications and revelations as to the personality of Richard.
Ingredients of police intrigue, suspense, tension and exploration of all the data of the possible, between realism, game and fiction, we do not know which foot to dance on, as in life, between gratifying sensation of being and abused certainties inevitably tending to self-liberation.
Written almost twenty-five years ago, the play resonates no less with the acuity of an extreme contemporaneity, between the irreversible breath of a feminine emancipatory will and the historical current of bringing to light vile patriarchal masculine actions, gone since #MeToo.
Rebecca, the young and disturbing lover of the doctor, tells with derision and black humor, the story of her unfortunate experience, a tale for children that they should certainly not listen to:
“She goes to see a doctor and she says, doctor, doctor, I’m in pain, I need medicine. But the doctor wouldn’t give it to him. He told her, go away – don’t waste my time – I don’t have any medicine. So she goes back there again and she says, doctor, doctor, I’m in really bad pain, I need some medicine. And this time the doctor went all the way to the door. He locked the door… Because he had broken all the rules – the way he saw it for her… adult rules… Because, you see, there had been a terrible misunderstanding… with the doctor who was ill himself…”
Clouded vision of what it means to live, between lies, betrayals, compromises and abuse of power, as diverse as they are: the man on his wife and on his mistress, this one on that one – a round without end of bitter dances that take shape in the improvised ball of the sequence of days.
Manon Clavel, in the role of the intruder, sparkles with a beautiful youthful and provocative spirit, working for the truth to come to light and for the naive to mourn their blindness – this desire not to see. Yannick Choirat is a lively but ambiguous, calculating and treacherous husband, a child who never grew up.
Isabelle Carré plays the wife wonderfully, between her two accomplices – all sincere and nuanced interpreters. She is the one who knows everything without knowing it herself, as close as possible to her words and listening to those of others, not fooled and projecting herself widely into the space of a harsh present.
Beautiful theater half-fig half-grape on the existential condition, torn between truth and disappointing little arrangements that reflect a malaise that we can not get rid of so easily.
Countryside by Martin Crimp, translation by Philippe Djian (L’Arche Editeur), direction by Sylvain Maurice, artistic collaboration Julia Lenze, scenography Sylvain Maurice in collaboration with Margot Clavières, lights Rodolphe Martin, costumes Olga Karpinski, sound Jean De Almeida. With Isabelle Carré, Yannick Choirat, Manon Clavel. From January 5 to 22, 2023 at 9 p.m., January 15 and 22 at 6:30 p.m., closed on Monday and January 12, at the Théâtre du Rond-Point 75008. Tel: 01 44 95 98 21 theatredurondpoint.fr
Photo credit:Christophe Raynaud de Lage.