Saw this yesterday, and liked it. It's like a three course meal of Phaedra myths that gives you indigestion, but which nonetheless satiated a hunger.
In a way, it's like one of those deals, where you got suckered into eating too much because if you buy the main meal, you get appetisers and desert for free.
Some spoilers follow. . .
The main meal is Sarah Kane's "Phaedra's Love," which is undoubtedly a sly comedy, in the guise of a terrible tragedy. For me, the dealing with Kane was surefooted, with bass notes indolently beating a time, like a metronome, as adults behave like spoiled teenagers, and teenagers behave like spoiled teenagers, and everyone kills everybody. The chiming notes sound, for the most part, like a monotonous and unvaried version of John Barry's theme from "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," to which Isabelle Huppert's lustful, needy and immature Phaedra makes slow dull love, in words and deeds, to Andrzej Chyra's degenerate Hippolytus. Chyra looks like Tim Minchin at his most degraded and debauched, and Huppert sounds like a dimwitted Kathy Burke comedy character, and I found myself both highly amused, as well as sad about love's limitations, as intended.
The starters were a smorgasbord of hor d'oeuvres that made no sense together, but which you were forced to have one of each anyway:
First, there was a spiderwoman dancer, Rosalba Torres Guerrero, dressed like a Las Vegas showgirl, but moving like a praying mantis, or sometimes like a shaggy dog trying to shake fleas out of her hair. She had that Japanese horror movie way of inflecting ordinary movements with ticks, suddenly crawling on her hands and knees, more insect than human. I think she was a metaphor for the creepiness of love, beneath an attractive surface, but you could tell me anything and I'd believe you. A mesmerising dancer though;
Second, there was some plaintive arab wailing, which seemed to be intended to summon up the dawn of civilisation, and to a degree summoned up the dawn of civilisation, and to another degree, made me feel like I was in a Turkish restaurant. This felt appropriate since the whole experience was analogous to a meal;
Third, there was Isabelle Huppert giving us the birth of civilisation through period pains;
Fourth, there was Isabelle Huppert giving us the birth of civilisation, as Aphrodite, telling us that all our urbane pleasure-pursuing society came from her "chatte." Before this play, I didn't know the French version of the c-word, so I learned something, and I'm gratified it still begins with "c," so it will be easy to remember, and even if you forget, you can still say "c-word" in France;
Fifth, there was Isabelle Huppert as Phaedra, crying out in love pangs inflicted by the depths of hell.
How all of the above fit together, I'll never know, but I'm glad I had a nibble of each. It didn't stop at a nibble.
The desert, for me, was delicious, a comedy sketch about an arrogant Professor, Elizabeth Costello, derived from a work by J. M. Coetzee, with a topping of some of the best naturalistic acting ever. Huppert plays Costello, a woman who has the audacity of telling us how and what Gods think and feel, with one hundred percent confidence, interviewed by a fawning Mark Shenton type, played once again by Andrzej Chyra. I love skits about academics who claim to know things they can't possibly know, and I love skits about interviewers who really only care about impressing the interviewee, but can't, and are left sweating and beaming in embarrassment. So I found myself laughing out loud at all this. Of course, the sketch takes a twist when it links to Phaedra, and at that point Huppert performs some of the most wonderful acting I've seen all year.
Overall, I am suffering severe indigestion, as I can't make head or tail of the work as a whole, but oh the ingerdients. The Spiderwoman, the Sarah Kane, the Arab singing, but most of all, the acting:
Isabelle Huppert is a marvel: her comedy acting, her histrionic acting, her naturalistic acting. If she wasn't 63, having performed in a billion movies, dating back as far back as Bertrand Blier's "Les Valseuses" in the seventies, you'd think she'd orchestrated the most magnificent audition piece. She really is superb.
In his dual roles as Hippolytus and the Interviewer, I also fell in love with Andrzej Chyra, who can be as effortlessly cruel, as he can be effortfully embarrassing.
Overall, this is "art" theatre of a kind you can only enjoy if you have a taste for it. I found I definitely did.
4 stars
