Moi-même je me suis déçu

“I can’t believe it, that’s all we talk about! In 1950, when the Chaîne Nationale invited itself to Paul Léautaud’s home for a series of “radio talks”, nobody anticipated the myth to come. It is that the writer is rare in the media, his monumental Journal is not yet known by the public. Without any method and with misanthropy, Léautaud the thunderous, the bohemian, Léautaud the memorialist of his century, the self-taught with encyclopedic knowledge, gives himself up to an unreasonable outgrowth of free, violent, funny words, without equivalent in the history of the radio. Who else than Romain Daroles, the most bibliophile of the new wave actors, to give the line to Robert Cantarella and give life to these nine hours (!) of broadcasting end to end? A monumental revival, from every point of view.

“These interviews are a madness in the sense of unreasonable outgrowth of words and ideas. Free and violent, funny and cruel, shameless, it seems that no censorship comes to prevent the confessions and opinions of Paul Léautaud. It is a history of literature, poetry and theater that he verbalizes, and Robert Mallet follows him as best he can, tries to catch up with him, stays the course, lets himself be invaded, overrun. This landscape of words is unique and jubilant. Robert Cantarella

Saturday October 21, 2023 at Bonlieu scène nationale, Annecy

Un prince de Hombourg

The text of The Prince of Homburg is an echo chamber of the time of its performance.

As in every era of social and political transformation, this unstable text, seismograph of a youth who guesses but cannot act, who guesses but must obey, is a merciless resonator of a world to come, still unformed, still possible. This world, which is a power, is seen by a sleepwalker, by a weak and strong guide, by a prince.

In 1810 Kleist does not solve a situation, no reassuring solution at the end of the performance of his hybrid drama, he opens a fiction like a Pandora’s box from which escape the forces and desires of a generation saturated with watchwords, and failed tomorrows. In 2022, Kleist’s text makes the wanderings, cowardice, exploits and insubordinations of the young Prince ring with our times in a disturbing way. The Prince lives in the interstices, he is the conductor of indecisions, jolts and fables. He wanders, daydreams, attacks the enemy, swells up, cries, begs, goes straight in his boots and removes the blindfold at the moment of execution. He is out of the hoop of the forms that his rank imposes on him, he is subjected to his affects, he is life itself, indecisive, fragile, of an unsuspected power. It is the power of what a body can do, and this scares the regulations of all kinds. A machine with slow explosions, as if starred in different directions, chaotic. The registers of theater vary, move, do not align in a genre that holds the string of a univocal meaning, ensuring a destination. The half-sleep or half-awakening of the young prince, which is mocked by the awake, is a slope that will make all certainties slip. Symbolist drama, heroic scene, then burlesque, Cornelian conflict, melodramatic suspense, and blurring of theatrical landmarks in all directions: life itself. This art of mixing, of the non-alignment of intentions, which Kleist imagined to be the nationalistic conviction of his play, will be read, with accuracy in the end, because it will not be performed until long after his death.

On tour, Théâtre Benno Besson Malraux

Scène nationale Le Manège

Saint-Gervais Theater

Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne

Distribution

director Robert Cantarella dramaturgy and writing Stéphane Bouquet choreography Mathilde Monnier assistant director Anouk Werro set design Sylvie Kleiber lights Philippe Gladieux music Alexandre Meyer costumes Constance de Corbière stage manager Soleiman Chauchat with Nicolas Maury (The Prince of Homburg), Charlotte Clamens (Princess Electress), Christian Geffroy Schittler (Elector Frederik Guillaume), Jean-Louis Coulloc’h (Count of Hohenzollern), Martin Reinartz (Kottwitz) & Béatrice Amsler Denogent (Nathalie).