Peeping Tom at the Lyon Biennale. Review

At the 20th Biennale de la danse, among two dozen world and French premieres, a sensation was created by a new work by Frank Chartier and the famous Belgian company Peeping Tom, known to Russian audiences from the DansInversion and Territory festivals (for more details, see “Kommersant” on September 24, 2019 and October 7, 2021). The performance “S 62° 58′, W 60° 39’” turned out to be more dramatic than dance, which, according to Tatiana Kuznetsova, only emphasized the role of plastic arts in this phantasmagoric tragicomedy.

This is, of course, the most “talkative” story ever seen and told by Peeping Tom, as the Kommersant correspondent was assured by Frank Chartier himself, who founded this company together with Gabriela Carrizo 23 years ago. All this time, the duo of co-authors uninterruptedly composed their amazing performances, managing to avoid repetitions, failures and creative crises from which even the most eminent authors suffer. Preserving the happily found uniqueness of the style, combining the hyperrealism of scenography with the phantasmagoric nature of the plots, and the generally available techniques of physical theater with the author’s ingenuity and plasticity of the actors, Chartier and Carrizo time after time come up with surprisingly different performances, striking with the inexhaustibility of their imagination.

However, it seems that a brilliant result is not as easy for the directors as it seems. In any case, in his “S 62° 58′, W 60° 39’” 56-year-old Frank Chartier wanted to lament the pangs of creativity, composing together with the actors a hilarious and dramatic story about the production of the show and presenting a full of self-irony, but surprisingly sincere, funny and a touching declaration of love for the theater, profession, actors and, finally, life – with all its stress and social troubles. Peeping Tom dares to go through some of them in a politically incorrect way, about which viewers are warned in advance: some scenes, they say, may offend their feelings.

The flow of the performance is truly unpredictable. The beginning looks like a parody disaster movie: a pleasure yacht is squeezed by the Antarctic ice; on the cold-gray semicircle of the backdrop horizon there is a harsh icy rock; The radio mast is broken, the radio is filled with infant laughter and crying. The wind is howling, people in icy parks are trying to cut an inflatable boat out of the ice, an unnoticed boy of about eight in white shorts and a T-shirt suddenly jumps from the side into the wormwood, a diver takes out a lifeless body… Here the edge of the “horizon” rises, allowing an actress with a suitcase and a Pomeranian to pass through. under the arm; addressing the last rows of the hall, she begins to weave some nonsense in her defense. Sadly, correctly, but adamantly, the voice of an invisible director puts her in her place, and the rehearsal for the storm resumes. The yacht is rocking desperately, people are hitting the deck and bulkheads, and now all the rehearsal participants are begging the director to come up with something “calmer.” To which he meekly reports that he can’t think of anything else – he has no ideas.

The unimaginative “rehearsal” meanders whimsically, repeating scenes, varying episodes and giving drum solos to each character. Gutta-percha Chey catches fish from an ice hole, creating an incredible mess with his body; the exalted Lauren demands to protect “wildlife” and release the fish, and upon learning that it is plastic, she raises her tone to tragic horror, indignant at the very fact that she is participating in a criminally unecological project. The rehearsal “kitchen” provides a variety of dishes: different options for kisses, deaths, relationships, musical and plastic numbers, director’s tricks and acting techniques. Some details are revealed: it turns out that they are not staging a catastrophe, but a psychological drama with symbolic overtones; the child is the director himself, who “drowned” in creativity and replaced the real one with this artificial life. Now artists criticize him for his cruel perfectionism, calling him “Castellucci,” but they themselves no longer fully distinguish reality from fiction.

All six of them play wonderfully, dissolving themselves in the proposed circumstances in a completely Stanislavsky way. Only, unlike the Russian school, the artists of Peeping Tom have amazing control over their bodies, capable of becoming either plasticine, now wooden, now flabby, now muscular, bodies pleading, screaming, fading, strong-willed. The final 12-minute monologue of a naked Romeu, suffering from a split personality, becomes a hymn to this acting culture. His “everyday” hypostasis shrinks, shrinks, is ashamed of his nakedness, whines that he wants to play Chekhov and dreams of a full-fledged family life. The actor’s alter ego, interrupting and overwhelming the human voice, growls and rumbles like Lear in a storm, spreads his arms like wings, throws up his muscular legs and revels in his power over the audience. And when, at the end of the gigantic monologue, the naked actor calls for him to leave the hall, a dozen hypnotized spectators rush out of their seats. Director Chartier, who by the last third of the performance has completely disappeared into the actors, does not interfere with their triumph – he does not even bow. After all, he has already done the most important thing: he turned the trash of his creative torment into a poem about the theater.