Two men in a boat with a death wish
French director Patrice Chéreau is thrilling audiences at the Avignon festival with his production in English of the play by Norwegian author Jon Fosse I am the wind.
Issued on: Modified:
Patrice Chéreau is a towering figure among French directors, an éminence grise of the avant-garde who forsook theatre for many years to work in opera and film.
Forever radical, he is staging a play here at Avignon that breaks all the rules of conventional drama – and he’s doing it in English. I am the Wind is a work by Norwegian author Jon Fosse, the most performed playwright in Europe outside the UK.
Chéreau, deeply committed to Fosse’s work, first produced this play at the Young Vic in London. The performance caused some critics to change their minds about Fosse (one of whom apologized for insisting that Jon be spelled ‘Yawn’).
I am the Wind is a kind of Waiting for Godot at sea. It begins wordlessly. A man cradles the half-naked body of his shivering companion as if he were a child, then dresses him in warm clothing.
So begins a strange study in depression and human love. The shivering man is an accomplished sailor who takes his friend, who can’t hold a tiller, on a suicidal voyage on the open sea.
Interview
The two English actors in the play, Tom Brooke and Jack Lasky, look like they could still be teenagers but give a hypnotic, intense performance of a difficult text. Richard Peduzzi, who has worked with Chéreau for forty years, designed a set with water in the middle and a raft that rises and falls like a boat at sea. The actors often struggle to keep their balance.
Chéreau has shocked the French by insisting that British actors possess superior discipline and training. He says to anyone who wants to listen – and there are 7000 actors in Avignon at the moment – that they “do it better.”
They learn their lines quicker, he told me, and “leave their personal lives at the theatre door.” He also praises the English language and says he didn’t even think of having I am the Wind translated into French.
Interview
He can’t explain why but feels he has greater artistic license when directing actors in foreign languages, such as German, Italian and English, than in French.
Chéreau once said it’s okay to be hated but here at Avignon, he is anything but. I am the Wind is a hit.
Daily newsletterReceive essential international news every morning
Subscribe