With “Le cabaretreversée”, the 38th Spring of Comedians has found its little circus happiness!

Julien Candy et Juliette Christmann explorent les interactions avec humour et poésie. Ruben Silozio

Julien Candy, de la compagnie montpelliéraine La Faux populaire – Le Mort aux dents,  régale le Printemps des comédiens, avec "Le cabaret renversé", sa dernière création en duo Juliette Christmann.

Precarious circus, misery circus, dust circus, pitiful circus…For eighteen years it has been operating up and down hills and valleys, and here too, the company La Faux populaire – Le Mort aux Toothes never stops thinking, creation after creation, about the economy under the big top. Bringing the beauty out of the little. Transform the ordinary into the spectacular. Reinvent the wheel and do it the way you want. Fish for the moon with a piece of string. A gesture as poetic as political which marks its novelty scheduled again this week at the Printemps des comedians, in Montpellier. But seen from another angle. It is not called, as one might have expected, The Circus Reversed but The Cabaret Reversed.

The difference ? It is inside, and charms us, for once, from the start: under the marquee, instead of the stands, a set of tables and bistro chairs, a central stage, a ring track and a perch from which Julien Candy welcomes the audience by strumming gypsy jazz on the guitar. Above his head, a magnificent chandelier whose pendants are empty bottles…

Inversions and reversals

We're at the cabaret, we're comfortable, and there's wine. In what way is it reversed (the cabaret, not the wine) ? The position on stage of Juliette Christmann, accomplice and companion of the director, tells us very quickly: here, the Ringmaster will be a Madame , and his authority will suffer no delay. Thus, The Cabaret Reversed will shake up the expected and multiply the examples of inversions, reversals and confusions, to bring back into play and joy the relationships of interdependence that policies which guard themselves well to work on it like to call "living-together". Which is true for man and woman, but also for the artist and the spectator, for the human and the animal, for the ordinary and the spectacular, the beautiful and the little bit, we come back to it…

But it happens on a metaphorical level that you don't need to fix to enjoy it. The sketches follow one another without dead time or superfluous words, in a rare proximity, and a shift in gaze or technique which re-enchants numbers as classic, even outdated, as the glass balancing, the throwing of knives or the learned dog. Juliette Christmann particularly impresses when, perched on a sort of seesaw, she picks among the spectators, a (supposedly) anonymous person for some acrobatic lift, while another (supposedly) spectator recites the very naughty Nights of a Young Lady by Colette Renard. We also appreciate the nuptial display of the great bird of paradise of Papua (in real life, Julien Candy multiplying his feats with a flexible saw) at the foot of the wire rope runner of his heart. And what about Albinoni’Adaggio performed on the trumpet… and the machine gun ? Nothing more, we leave you the surprise which knocked us down. This circus is really a case, yes, very crazy.

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