Smash, screams and fury to cry the Redhead. The Redhead is the prodigal son, the brother, the lover, the friend, who commits suicide without notice or even apparent reason. As the United States entered the Vietnam war again in 1964, this affluent and apparently uneventful family found themselves in the image of their country projected into their own violence. In New York, only a virgin grave remains, memories and the ghost of the son admired by all, who arises at times in the neurotic dreams of one of his relatives, between Brooklyn and Times Square. It follows for all those who have known and loved a long descent into hell ... "I only want one thing: to be able all my life to take risks and never want to stop in way "wrote Koltès to his mother on March 26, 1968.

Léa Sananes, 22-year-old director undertakes to revisit the turbulent dramatist Messin in one of his early works. Successful bet. “If this work had a movement, it would be that of exhaustion. All of us, witnesses to this endless story, are touching eternity, ”explains this young director who had previously successfully produced the adaptation of Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening. Bernard-Marie Koltès, who has made numerous initiation trips to the United States, wrote Sallinger in 1977.

It is openly inspired by the work of the icon of American literature JD Salinger (with a single L), author among others of the Catcher-Hearts. The result is a harsh, rough, uncompromising piece, where the actors shudder and vibrate to the most unsuspected areas of their interior. Here everything is only absence, spectrum, premonitions, frustration, regrets, sorrow…

The paintings follow one another in the painful incantation of the loved one who preferred to fade from the face of the earth rather than go to war. A piece of captivating intensity served by a young troupe of actors possessed by the author's text, who died prematurely as a result of AIDS in 1989.

Avenging Riffs

And then there is the telluric force of the text. Masterful litanies in the form of nagging obsessions that accompany the original soundtrack and inspired by Mark Alberts, avenging riffs, rocky rock of the American Great West, nocturnal stridences.

Arn'o's scenography and lights, with a great deal of voice-over, projected texts and videos, are sharp, raw, aesthetic and terribly effective. The characters parade and take turns with great energy the scene and the range of words. The emotion is at its peak for the greatest confusion or the delight of the public.

The actors of the Collective Rocking-Chair become like their author incandescent meteors, starting with the Redhead (Thom Lefevre), the exterminating angel who recites blindly passages from the bible between two assumed profanities. Mâ (Claire Devere), the courageous, lost and offbeat mother, who tells stories with morality in a great burst of sardonic laughter. Al (Mark Alberts), the alcoholic father, former soldier of the American army, heroic veteran in spite of him, who loves Mâ and does not hate himself. Anna (Juliette Raynal) the crazy sister who calls for the surgery to end her nasty dementia. Leslie (Gabriel Tamalet), the inconsolable brother, who cannot help committing to Vietnam as if to better challenge the ghost of the Redhead. Carole (Marie Sanson), the redhead's wife, who wants to drool her family, while whining on her tombstone.

June (Mégane Martinel), Carole's good friend, who, failing to hold the candle, firmly holds her electric torch in her hand and accompanies her on her nocturnal funeral trips. And finally Henry (Baudouin Sama), Leslie's friend, who hates to shake hands, castigates American imperialism and goes to nightclubs every night, because the girls under the strobes and the colored neon lights have it there. smooth, orange skin.

Dramatic performance

Koltès died at 41 years of his existential and artistic intransigence as others perish from a slow cirrhosis supposed to inspire them, cursed poets and writers united in the same morbid prophecy of creation. With Sallinger, the Théâtre des Déchargeurs once again demonstrates that it knows how to take risks, on the borders of known dramaturgical territories, always at the service of the public and the authors. We come out, minced, heckled, happy to have participated in this great moment of dramatic performance. The Redhead? He is the one who every Monday until December 18 comes to haunt our memory. A collective therapy between life and death, necessary and saving, which varies to the sound of punk-rock intonations against the background of Beat Generation and paranormal intoxication.

David Raynal

Pratical information

Unloaders Theater

Sallinger by Bernard-Marie Koltès
Every Monday at 19 p.m. until December 18
Full price: 26 euros on site
Reduced fares (only on the Internet) from 10 to 22 euros

Collective Rocking-Chair

• Direction: Léa Sananes
• Comedian (s): Mark Alberts, Claire Devere, Thom Lefevre, Mégane Martinel, Juliette Raynal, Baudouin Sama, Marie Sanson, Gabriel Tamalet.
• Music: Mark Alberts
• Sets and lights: Arn'o
• Assistant director: Shérone Rey
• Costumes: Mégane Martinel
• Vicky Messica Room

3, rue des Unloaders
Ground floor Court
75001 Paris

To know more : http://www.lesdechargeurs.fr