Bérénice, my sister, from what wounded love you died at the edges where you were left… The paraphrase (of Phaedra, in this case) reaches out to us, alas. At the edge, that’s where we were left, as were most of the spectators, on the evening of the creation, on February 23 in Montpellier, of this Berenice which was shaping up to be the theatrical event of the moment, with its chic and shocking combination: Isabelle Huppert in the title role, and the great Italian director Romeo Castellucci at the helm. The show, after Montpellier, will be held for three weeks at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, before embarking on a vast European tour which will take it from Milan to Antwerp.
The addition of talents is never a guarantee of success. It was clear, at the end of the premiere, that the graft had not taken place, between the limpid beauty of the sublime Racinian lament, the plastic and captivating universe of Romeo Castellucci, and what Isabelle Huppert can bring in terms of acting Like three chemical elements which would remain radically heterogeneous, without managing to create their own material, a living theatrical organism.
We suspected, of course, that the Italian director would not place Racine’s tragedy in a neoclassical perspective, consisting of embodying the characters of a play, including in contemporary attire. For him, the great texts, whether Dante, Aeschylus or Shakespeare, give rise to strong and disturbing visions, never illustrative, where the plastic power prevails over the textual score, and where the Actors are rather performers.
“Majestic sadness”
But the choice he made leaves one wondering. As if he had wanted to cross half the ford in the direction of Isabelle Huppert – who otherwise would not have had much to do here – Romeo Castellucci decided to keep a good part of the text of Racine’s tragedy: namely the only textual score of Bérénice. Exit the other characters, in particular Titus and Antiochus, who will only appear in silent and fairly abstruse scenes.
This bias gives a Berenice totally hermetic, to which it is very difficult to understand anything or to become attached. Isabelle Huppert, as if torn from the night, advances alone on the stage plunged in darkness, and directly attacks the heroine’s first monologue, in scene 4 of act I, before continuing with the others. Why is she there? What’s happening to him ? Why does she say these words? Mystery, for those who do not know the story of the Queen of Judea, abandoned by Titus, on the eve of her wedding, in the name of reasons of State (which sometimes has good reason to endorse the disenchantment and weariness of ‘a man).
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