Eventually, though, a passenger boards the train who seems ready to give the subway agitator a taste of his own medicine. The award-winning playwright and novelist Peter Handke’s play takes us on a ride through an underground of unmet expectations and summary judgments, and confronts us with costs of the grievances that we harbor.
http://www.handkedrama3.scriptmania.com/catalog_2.html
This appears to be a Handke play that plays better than it reads, judging by reviews of performances I have read. will put in the links to the reviews if not the reviews themselves at:
http://blogs.lexpress.fr/theatre/2015/09/18/souterrain-blues-yann-collette-porte-parole-de-peter-handke-a-voir-a-voir-a-voir/
http://www.handkedrama3.scriptmania.com/catalog_2.html
Sorting out UNTERTAGBLUES
Some somewhat preliminary comments, which will be reduced to its essential for my summary piece on Handke/s theater for TDR.
Rumor of a new Handke play - about a Wild Man verbally abusing passengers in the subway - reaching me in 2002 elicited a host of fantasies of what this new work might be. One hunch I
I had was that this new work, with its attack mode, might hark back to Handke/s first great success in the theater, Public Insult. Another notion of mine associated the new work to an number of sections in that mother lode Handke created for himself [and for me] with Walk About the Villages: =You are in the wrong country dear fellow. You/re in a country that is as small as it is mean: that is as full of prisoners who/ve been forgotten in their cells, and even fuller of forgetful jailkeeps who are even fatter in their offices after every infamy., with voices that sound as if death-rattle amplifiers had been built into their throats, with the arm and leg movements of poisoned grappling hooks, with eyes where killer wasps slip out with every glance.= [p. 77, Ariadne Press edition] Or the section where the =construction workers= sing their rough blues: =Stepped out of my hole into freedom and had a beer at the cellar bar/ I wasn/t quite here yet and not up to par.= [p. 44-50]
Fantasizing on, I wondered whether Subday Blues, as which the pun and its allusion to the Dylan song might be recreated in English, would explore the polarity between rage and ecstasy that is characteristic of certain Handke characters, and which we can also find among his public salvoes, and do so, here, possibly, in some balanced fashion, the Wild Man/s aggressiveness allegedly being set off in the play by a Wild Woman.
I even gave thought to the idea that a mystical resolution of the conflict might occur in the form of =love bursting through= - perhaps along the lines of those objects of endearment - the comb, the mirror the lock of hair the sight of whose sudden appearance prevent Keuschnig from committing suicide in A Moment of True Feeling, or the grand resolution of love-life-book at the end of the Sierra del Gredos novel, as compared to a love death.
At any event, I expected to be astonished in some fashion, as I have been for nearly forty years now by a great string of performances, not once hugely disappointed, by the work, which I always accepted and judged, as Handke asks, within his own changing terms.
The concepts were frequently magnificent and magnificently delivered; occasionally, as in the case of They Are Dying Out it was an odd kind of portmanteau whose cobbled parts are more interesting than the whole; at times he seemed too tentative; at others perhaps too much the virtuoso; occasionally grandiosity broke through; he lacked an editor his equal; didn/t do rewrites; at moments could be accused of laziness as in his recent journal of the Milosevics trial in DeHaag; in other words, so far, the upside was about 85 %; more than I could say about just about any contemporary in that field whose work I had followed these many years, and what a falling off there has been.
Although my projective fantasy was not entirely off the mark, I must admit that I failed to heed Handke/s invariable, kinesthetically re-enforced, often dissociating, sometimes mesmerizing, didactic intentions, which become especially evident when he works in the theater. Or how much of a =pro= he is in so many respects and has been from quite early on.
First of all: Physically, Subday Blues, Handke/s first play since the great political-conceptual and so unfortunate Canoe came a cropper in the wild, Danubeward-flowing rivers of the deepest darkest Serbia in 1999, is a text of twenty interlocking monologues of about ten thousand spoken words, a pro/s 90 minute film it ought to be but I think it/s closer to 180 excessive ones.
In the first nineteen scenes, a Wild Man indeed verbally abuses a variety of fungible subway passengers at fungible stations as the coach he rides circles the globe [A Station Drama is the piece/s subtitle, and not of those of The Cross] Tirso de Molina, Schottenring, Hudi Log Zorending Sesama Sandvort, Rockaway Beach, etc, etc. The 2oth and final monologue, the Wild Woman/s solitary appearance, directs her attacks, as he already has started to do himself, back at him, which reminded me of Sophy/s comment in Villages:
=What you say is not permitted. Go away from here. Forever.=
And the way the WW/s eyes blazes =snake-like flashes of lighting= at =the delinquent= as she puts him into his place might indicate that the miserable WM needs little but a pretty woman to take charge of him to dispel this attack of the agues, [spellbound, overwhelmed by feminine beauty, a frequent Handkean incident since babyhood], a pretty dominatrix, because genuine blues feelings are not much in evidence in the near endless enumeration, but also sharply focused, sections that elicit the WM/s nausea-prone dissatisfactions. Handke does not so much suffer from a philosophical condition but a medical one, his thresholds are too pervious to irritation, and the excess that penetrates the lack of filters in his nervous system. However, the polarity of outward attack and attack against the self might indicate the fulcrum of aggression on which the switch of ambivalence rests here, although the grounds for the excessive underlying aggression and irritation remain obscure; that is, unless you find yourself agreeing that the various and endless eliciting phenomena chief among them the ugliness of the world - justify the Wild Man/s perorations; the WM finding himself at the mercy of =beauty= certainly being one reason for his dissatisfaction with the world, that he finds so much of it and its contemporaneous phenomena noxious.
Therefore, as an example of a totalizing expression of disgust with the world - Handke/s now ancient =turning inside out with nausea=- UB strikes me as both a general and specific editorial house-cleaning, perhaps final exorcism [but por que now?] of irritation with various specific and general matters that the attentive reader may have noticed grating Handke/s nausea-prone eyes and ears over these many years. Those who are new to Handke may be surprised at what makes a surrogate aspect of himself so grumpy, those who are more familiar will be reacquainted with a host of old prejudices and editorial opinions of his.
The attack begins - also in the sense of the first chord that a pianist strikes, and so much like the drum roll openings that have become characteristic of the speeches that Handke has been writing for his characters since Walk About the Villages [and which method he also takes recourse to, when he does not seem to know how to proceed, in his novels]:
[Scene 1] =And you again. And again I must be in your presence. Hallelujah. Miserere. Low tide and never a flood. You damned inevitable ones. If only you were real criminals. No such luck: without being especially criminal you are yet the creeps of creeps. Relieve me of your creepiness. Make me avoid you. At least once, for one moment. Heavenly such a moment would be, heavenly. Scarcely out of my house, I must be with you once again. Scarcely have I stepped out of my garden door, am I forced to move in your company.= The Gestus of the speech it haunts the translator of Walk About the Villages meanwhile- is that of the mother lode. =Out of my sight, out of my hearing and my nose. I am trembling? Yes, I am trembling. I am trembling because of you? Yes, I am trembling because of you. Am I trembling because of my respect of you? How nice it would be if that were the case. If I could tremble in front of you if you were royalty, farmers or workers. But nothing of you reminds me of worker, of farmer or a king. I am trembling and shivering in front of you. It/s shaking me, and it is not because of the subway ride. I am shuddering because of you. But this horror is not, as once upon a time, because I am awed, but because of my disgust. I am standing here and can do no other but be nauseated, de profundis, by you.=
Scene 2: =Christ man, how can you stand yourself? Why don/t you jump out of your skin, out and away to the star of the unborn? Away with you into your hollow tree trunk, into your darkroom, into your crater on the moon, into your acid bath=
In Scene 3 the reader is told: =Hey you there, what kind of reading is that that makes your lips grow thin, even thinner ones than you had previously= What a sight! An authentic reader. And you etc etc. Hey you, keep your distance from books=
Scene 4: =I understand you. You have every reason in the world to be sad. Your situation is hopeless. Your future? A cloud as black as that emitted by an inkfish.=
Scene 5: =Nightmare creatures! At one time, you miserable ones at least were in form. There was even the particular beauty of those who were beyond hope, and not only on black and white photographs. Ah, their clear features=
CONTINUED AT:
http://www.handkedrama3.scriptmania.com/catalog_2.html
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/ef26c06a-775e-11e2-b95a-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2LHOQ6wL1
--
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/ef26c06a-775e-11e2-b95a-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2LHOQ6wL1
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Souterrainblues/La Femme gauchère – Théâtre du Rond-Point, Paris
The return of Peter Handke’s works to the Paris stage after many years out of favour yields mixed results
As an antidote to Valentine’s Day, Paris’s Théâtre du Rond-Point last week introduced two new productions that are all about solitude. La Femme gauchère andSouterrainblues, both directed by Christophe Perton, make for a bleak double bill of works by Peter Handke, who has lived in France for two decades but hasn’t exactly been feted on the country’s main stages. Handke’s controversial pro-Serbia and pro-Milosevic stance led to the cancellation of one of his plays at the Comédie-Française in 2006 and years of suspicion of his work. The Rond-Point marks a cautious return to grace for the Austrian author, who turned 70 last year.
And the two works Perton has chosen span very different periods in his career. La Femme gauchère (The Left-Handed Woman), published in 1976, was one of Handke’s early successes and was later made into a film. The 2002 playSouterrainblues, on the other hand, is performed here for the first time in a French translation. The constraints of staging both on the same stage in one evening, albeit as separate shows, mean Perton had to design adaptable sets. It works up to a point, with black, claustrophobic walls and benches on either side of the stage that double as folding subway seats. But the apartment of La Femme gauchère, with its black rubber covering and empty space, comes to seem strangely impersonal.
IN THEATRE & DANCE
Souterrainblues is essentially a monologue. Its main character is simply called l’homme sauvage (the savage), and we follow him as he veers between misanthropy and hate speech through a long, reckless subway journey. Much of it is spent singling out invisible fellow passengers, often for insult; in stinging descriptions he derides them for anything from their looks to their apparent happiness. The production struggles to find the right approach, however, with bombastic doomsday lighting at regular intervals and no clear overall vision for the play.
Yann Collette is dedicated in the lead role, but his rather flat, occasionally inflated delivery doesn’t do this difficult play any favours over an hour and a half. A woman (Sophie Semin) joins him at the very end to give him a taste of his own medicine, but again, the encounter never rings true.
La Femme gauchère may be based on a novel, but it made for better theatre. Handke’s main character has been hailed as a figure for the feminist age, who chooses divorce and lonelinesss over her marriage. This is no edifying story, however, and what Perton’s production highlights is the silence that comes to define Marianne, who asks her husband to leave for no apparent reason and barricades herself in her solitude even as everyone around her warns her about the dangers of being alone.
In Judith Henry, Perton has found an ideal interpreter. With her quiet, frail beauty and powerful presence, she is riveting in the role. Her glistening eyes as she endures abuse from others or gazes into the mirror hint at an inner life that is out of reach for the rest of the characters. When everyone leaves her flat near the end of the play after an awkward reunion, she says to herself: “You’ve never betrayed yourself, and no one will humiliate you any more.” Despite some very slow scenes, it is an enigmatic ode to independence.
Et dans l’Off: Souterrain blues de Peter Handke. à voir, à voir, à voir!
le 8 juillet 2014 17H32 | par
laurence liban
laurence liban
(Photo Gala Collette)
L’humanité. Il n’est question que de cela sur les planches avignonnaises. Après The Humans, d’Alexandre Singh, je viens juste de voir, au jardin de la Vierge, dans le cadre des Sujets à vif, Un Jour nous serons humains de
David Léon. Pour lui, humains, nous ne le sommes pas. Ou plus. Ou pas
encore. Ce matin, c’est l’Autrichien Peter Handke qui nous jetait à la
figure l’image de ce que nous sommes devenus, dans un texte intituléSouterrain blues et
une nouvelle mise en scène épurée de Xavier Bazin. En scène, il y a
Yann Collette, sa douceur et sa présence poétique. Il nous fait faire un
bout de chemin dans la colère de Handke vis à vis d’une humanité dont
il voudrait se passer.
Par
la démesure de son ressentiment, de sa colère et de ses accusations
contre ses semblables, Peter Handke est un peu le jeune frère de Thomas
Bernhard. Mais là où l’un ressasse et fait monter son ressassement comme
une chantilly cosmique, l’autre, Handke, gravit la montagne de son ire
en plantant un à un ses pitons dans la roche, pour finalement s’y
retrouver seul. Seul avec la beauté que lui masquait la médocrité des
hommes. Seul et bête, sans même un Petit prince pour lui demander de
dessiner un mouton.
Yann Collette, dans la belle scénographie de Xavier Bazin (Photo Gala Collette)
Tout
cela est fort drôle. Mais si. On rit énormément des horreurs
handkesques. C’est d’ailleurs à Yann Collette que l’on doit tout le
plaisir du spectacle. Doux comme l’agneau, vigoureux comme l’arbre et
souriant de ce sourire dont on ne sait pas toujours s’il carresse ou
mord, ce comédien subtil distille sans sourciller les accusations de
l’auteur. D’abord, demande celui-ci, qu’elle disparaisse, cette humanité
sale, bête et méchante, qu’elle aille se cacher « dans les angles
morts », qu’elle « se fasse nulle et non avenue », afin de ne plus lui
gacher la vie. Et ceux qui lisent à haute voix dans les théâtre aussi?
Eux, d’abord, qu’ils « tripotent leurs télécommandes ou les médailles de
leurs ancêtres » plutôt que les poèmes! Et les saints? Qu’ils cessent
de regarder le ciel d’où ne vient que des bombes. Et le Pape? Qu’il
aille pieds nus avec les pauvres! Et les femmes? Et les rires? Et la
joie?
Handke
ne se fait si mauvais, si destructeur de tout et de son contraire, que
parce qu’il pleure après la joie. Sa colère est celle d’un désespéré,
pas celle d’un haineux. Et quand, au bout du bout, il se retrouve seul
sur son île déserte, dans un monde dépeuplé, il ne trouve pas son
compte. Ô solitude…
C’est
alors que le Petit Prince arrive. Enfin, une fille en rouge, talons,
boucles d’oreilles (Véronique Sacri, hypertonique), une fille qui se
moque de lui, « calcifié », « cadavérisé » par une beauté qui n’a plus
de sens dès lors qu’on ne peut plus la partager.
Comme
on verse des torrents de larmes pour vider son chagrin, Handke a vidé
sa bile. Dès lors, il demande l’amour comme on demande à boire. Et prend
sa place, endolori, parmi les hommes, ses semblables imparfaits.
=====================
Souterrain Blues: Yann Collette, porte-parole de Peter Handke. A voir! A voir! A voir!
Yann Collette, dans la belle scénographie de Xavier Bazin
Souterrain blues… Le titre n’annonce rien d’amusant. Pourtant, on sourira beaucoup dans ce texte de Peter Handke, mis en scène par Xavier Bazin et interprété par Yann Collette.
Avec sa douceur, sa présence poétique, ce comédien hors normes nous fait faire un bout de chemin dans la colère de Handke vis à vis d’une humanité dont il voudrait se passer.
Par la démesure de son ressentiment, de sa colère et de ses accusations contre ses semblables, Peter Handke est un peu le jeune frère de Thomas Bernhard. Mais là où l’un ressasse et fait monter son ressassement comme une chantilly cosmique, l’autre, Handke, gravit la montagne de son ire en plantant un à un ses pitons dans la roche, pour finalement s’y retrouver seul. Seul avec la beauté que lui masquait la médiocrité des hommes. Seul et bête, sans même un Petit prince pour lui demander de dessiner un mouton.
Poussée à bout par son auteur, la misanthropie handkesque joint à l’humour un zeste de cocasserie. Celle du donneur de leçon qui se retrouve Gros Jean comme devant et supplie qu’on lui rende ce qu’il a tout fait pour écarter de sa vue. Doux comme l’agneau, vigoureux comme l’arbre et souriant de ce sourire dont on ne sait pas toujours s’il caresse ou mord, Yann Collette distille sans sourciller les accusations de l’auteur. D’abord, demande celui-ci, qu’elle disparaisse, cette humanité sale, bête et méchante, qu’elle aille se cacher « dans les angles morts », qu’elle « se fasse nulle et non avenue », afin de ne plus lui gâcher la vie. Et ceux qui lisent à haute voix dans les théâtre aussi? Eux, d’abord, qu’ils « tripotent leurs télécommandes ou les médailles de leurs ancêtres » plutôt que les poèmes! Et les saints? Qu’ils cessent de regarder le ciel d’où ne vient que des bombes. Et le Pape? Qu’il aille pieds nus avec les pauvres! Et les femmes? Et les rires? Et la joie?
Handke ne se fait si mauvais, si destructeur de tout et de son contraire, que parce qu’il pleure après la joie. Sa colère est celle d’un désespéré, pas celle d’un haineux. Et quand, au bout du bout, il se retrouve seul sur son île déserte, dans un monde dépeuplé, il ne trouve pas son compte. Ô solitude…
C’est alors que le Petit Prince arrive. Enfin, une fille en rouge, talons, boucles d’oreilles, une fille qui se moque de lui, « calcifié », « cadavérisé » par une beauté qui n’a plus de sens dès lors qu’on ne peut plus la partager.
Comme on verse des torrents de larmes pour vider son chagrin, Handke a vidé sa bile. Dès lors, il demande l’amour comme on demande à boire. Et prend sa place, endolori, parmi les hommes, ses semblables imparfaits.
Studio Hébertot, Paris (XVIIè). Jusqu’au 29 novembre.
http://blogs.lexpress.fr/theatre/2015/09/18/souterrain-blues-yann-collette-porte-parole-de-peter-handke-a-voir-a-voir-a-voir/
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