Denis Lavant is ageless; a recognizable silhouette among all, of the dented type. The actor only enters after the first scene, accompanied by his wife or rather Madame, “bobonne” or even Judith, it depends. Madame is interpreted by the great Maria Machado who knows the piece inside out since she created it in 1970 with its author, Roland Dubillard.
At the time, she did not play Madame but the young girl. But let’s come back to Denis Lavant whose entry on the set is a great moment of “Dubillardesque” theatre. He wears a panama-like black hat that looks like it came straight out of an old accessories store, an improbable jacket in several washed-out colors, a tired black frock and a pair of boots that would have taken very dusty roads. In her hand, a half-open gray suitcase with a stretcher around it. Coming out of this suitcase, red threads. We will understand why at the end of this completely crazy, convulsive piece.
What is it about ? What does it cause? A young couple, played by Nèle Lavant – this dancer and actress is the daughter of Denis and is making her first appearance on stage here – and Samuel Mercer, receives an older couple (Maria Machado and Denis Lavant, therefore) by the sea in their villa Le Crabe. The owner hosts try to accommodate their arriving guests but they arrive with all their hatred and discord. Where it is also a question of their dog that we will never see.
These two, these two legged metastases are physically and psychologically voracious. They attack the owners, whom they will kill before slaughtering each other. Revealing the ending doesn’t matter. The important thing, with Dubillard, is not the story but the words to tell it. The play is, according to the author, a “comic nightmare”. We can not say it better. On the right of the stage, a bed that would have come straight out of a dormitory. On the left, a kind of metal construction, asymmetrical scaffolding, a spider’s web in which the young couple is trapped. They look like survivors of a shipwreck. Sort of what they are. So they eat crabs. Unless it’s the crabs that gnaw them, which would “tend, with their claws, their legs, to go up”, to climb along their esophagus. The crab, like the tide and the anguish, descends and rises relentlessly. And the tub starts leaking. It will also eventually overflow. Go figure it all out!
All of them, the two actresses and the two actors, excel in this violently comic existential chaos. Denis Lavant who holds the reins of the case has nothing of the veneer of the classic comedian. He is out of the ordinary in this room where one thing always hides another: Didn’t Madame swallow the dog who himself swallowed a bomb? Les Crabes is an explosive show that dynamites beings and language. This year we celebrate the centenary of the birth of Dubillard. Could one dream of a more remarkable homage than these Crabs in a shaken-up staging by Frank Hoffmann?
PS: To see to complete the picture: I am not mine, a cover that deserves the detour, directed by Maria Machado and Charlotte Escamez. With Samuel Mercer and Denis Lavant, of course.
Les Crabes, at the Théâtre du Chêne Noir, until July 29. I am not mine, at the Théâtre du Chêne Noir, until July 29. www.chenenoir.fr
