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Festivals old and new take center stage this month with two remarkable shows visiting from London and New York. The annual Exit rendezvous of performing arts at the Maison des Arts de Créteil features British playwright Caryl Churchill's imaginative double bill of short comic experiments, "Blue Heart." Meanwhile, the Petit Hébertot theater kicks off "Printemps '99," a four-month schedule of works in English and French, with "Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya," adapted from the quarter century of correspondence exchanged between Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov and the American man of letters Edmund Wilson. The two halves of the absurdist and sometimes very funny "Blue Heart" are "Heart's Desire" and "Blue Kettle," which ingeniously examine the nature of time and language. The first looks at the expectations, fears and fantasies prompted in a family by the impending return of a long-absent daughter. In the second, a man cons elderly women by pretending to be the son they gave up for adoption. In both plays, language starts, stops and repeats itself, alternately heightening or, particularly in the case of "Blue Kettle," obscuring meaning: the last piece finally becomes a chaotic babble employing the words "blue" and "kettle." Three-time Obie winner Churchill has proven a skilled master of similar speech play that allows her to explore many layers of meaning at once. Presented by Out of Joint, a company created in 1993 by Max Stafford-Clark, a former artistic director of London's Royal Court Theater, this show is a too rare opportunity to check out first-rate, contemporary British theater on French shores. Also at Exit from the UK, marionettists Faulty Optic present the wacky "Tunnelvision" combining puppets, video and a decidedly nutty creative vision. In "Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya," writer Terry Quinn has adapted, in time for this year's centenary celebrations of Nabokov's birth, the correspondence of two literary giants of the 20th century. Wilson (1895-1972), considered one of America's greatest literary critics, was the first in the US to recognize the brilliance of modern masters like Marcel Proust, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein, in his landmark book "Axel's Castle." After Nabokov emigrated from France to the United States in 1940, Wilson helped to get the novelist's work published and name out in the literary circles he led, primarily as book editor for The New Republic. A long and intimate friendship, chronicled by their abundant and eloquent correspondence, grew from both writers' interest in Russian letters, but was corroding by the early 1950s when Wilson expressed his disapproval of the manuscript of "Lolita." Those tensions came to a head in 1956 when Wilson wrote a scathing attack of Nabokov's four-volume, annotated translation of Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin" in The New York Review of Books and Nabokov lashed back in an equally castigating rebuttal. Their public debate became the literary event of the year. This production, starring Nabokov's son Dmitri on the opening night, starts the festival of English-language theater that begins this month at the Petit Hébertot. Also on in April: three Beckett short plays ("Rough for Theater I," "That Time" and "Footfalls") performed by local company Dear Conjunction, and Northern Irish playwright Daragh Carville's "Dumped," about two couples that meet around a garbage bin, presented by The National Youth Theater of Great Britain. "Blue Heart," Apr 2-3, 8:30pm; "Faulty Optic," Apr 2-3, 7:30pm, Maison des Arts André Malreaux, pl Salvador Allende, Créteil, Metro Créteil Préfecture, 100F, tel: 01.45.13.19.19. "Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya," Apr 6-10; Beckett's Shorter Plays, Apr 13-24; "Dumped," Apr 27-30; Petit Hébertot, 78 bis, bd des Batignolles, 17e, Metro Rome/Villiers, 100F/70F/50F, tel: 01.44.70.06.69. Around Town Maria Irene Fornes' "Dr. Kheal" teams up with Dario Fo/Franca Rame's "The Same Old Story" in a double-bill of short plays presented by La Compagnie du Horla at the charmingly postage stamp-sized Théâtre des 3 Bornes. In the first, a slightly unhinged professor sets out to enlighten us with his personal theory of the universe by casually taking on subjects ranging from poetry to ambition, but is left speechless when it comes to beauty and love. In the second, the topic of love at least continues to befuddle men, who refuse women any roles but the familiar and convenient ones of sex object and housewife, that is until the women get their revenge, if only in their dreams... "Dr. Kheal" and "The Same Old Story," directed by Jodi Forrest, with Dana Westberg and Judith Burnet, til Apr 29, Tue-Thu, 9pm, Théâtre des 3 Bornes, 32, rue des Trois Bornes, 11e, M? Parmentier, 50F, tel: 01.43.57.68.29. Robert Cordier's Actors Group continues its season of American theater with David Mamets "Edmond" about a man's search for meaning in the big city streets. "Edmond," to Apr 30, Tue-Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 5pm; Sudden Theatre, 14 bis, rue Sainte-Isaure, 18e, Metro Jules Joffrin, 100F/80F, tel: 01.42.62.35.00. |
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