After Les Serge and La Ballade de Souchon, here is Art major. A new concert theater with Thierry Hancisse, Véronique Vella, Léa Lopez (all three French) and their external acolytes Axel Auriant and Pierre-Marie Braye-Weppe. The concept is as simple as hello or goodbye: we all have within us a song that has marked our life, that has fixed a feeling like a photo that immortalizes a moment. On this principle, the three actors and the two musicians go back in time to love, friends, adventure and many other things.
The show begins with an extract from Apostrophes where a serious altercation took place between Serge Gainsbourg and Guy Béart, the first asserting that singing was only a minor art, the second defending his business. For more than an hour, Véronique Vella, Léa Lopez, Thierry Hancisse and Axel Auriant will tell stories in the form of memories (written by Simon Johannin, Gilles Leroy, Pauline Delabroy-Allard and Emmanuelle Fournier-Lorentz). From these memories, real or fictitious, will arise around twenty French songs arranged (reinvented) by Pierre-Marie Braye-Weppe who is also the composer of some original music.
The decor would resemble an overturned boat hull or, with a little imagination, an old cellar in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. It’s Léa Lopez, very blues on the keyboard, who opens the ball with a very spicy version of Blizzard from the group Fauve. The actress will never cease to seduce us on vocals, on keyboard or even on bass. As for Véronique Vella – who has a natural gift for singing – she remembers Barbara in Bobino. She was 5 years old and Barbara, it marked her, Pierre sang. Wonders funny who this Peter was?
Also read: Eugénie Bastié: “Anouilh or the theater against the revolution”
Then the actress, dry guitar slung over her shoulder, sings La Boîte en fer blanc by Juliette Noureddine, a realistic song. Behind his half-grand piano, Thierry Hancisse, between two vapings, strikes a few chords then gets up and, in the buttery lights which dim the stage, sings in his deep voice Amsterdam, by Brel. Later, he will aggressively interpret Il voyage en solitaire, by Gérard Manset. He would have a Philippe Léotard side in the poetic melancholy dilapidated.
The show designed and directed by Guillaume Barbot alternates words and music. We are seduced by Axel Auriant who, on drums, jazzes up the sticks. Both girls have a smile in their voice and the thrill of yesteryear. We leave this show with the pleasant impression of having attended a conversation session in a café interspersed with refrains which seem to have been composed for centuries, those of Mots bleus, du Sud or L’Hymne à l’amour. . The past is not from yesterday. So, little guy, the song? Major art? In any case, in the Studio, in minor mode for nostalgia.
“Major Art”, at the Studio Théâtre de la Comédie-Française (Paris 1st), until May 5. Such. : 01 44 58 15 15. www.comedie-francaise.fr
