It turns out that “You don’t need language to understand it” about a performance piece is just as true as that other cliché I once doubted, “He done drank himself to death”. I learned the refulgent truth of the latter just recently, when my friend Udo cashed out, and that of the former, when I saw Michèle Anne de Mey & Jaco van Dormael’s Cold Blood at La Scala Paris.
To acquire truth, both clichés require real-time application of a thorough mastery of storyline, stage mechanics, scenario and direction by cast and management. The thing itself must be of a piece from start to finish.
For his part, Udo had a snoot full from the moment when nobody could any longer knock the bottle out from between his lips right up to the moment he groaned, slipped his fleshless hand under the sweat-soaked pillow, scrabbled for the greasy flask that held sweet liquor’s most fatal drop, gulped with bobbing Adam’s apple and promptly shuffled off the mortal coil: He done drank himself to death”.
The cast and direction of Cold Blood get it as right as Udo. Each and every body and every thing and every gesture of the performance enables each cast member to seamlessly shine in synchrony with all the rest. As with Udo, it’s impossible to tell where idea-special effects-, originators; light-, set-, machine-designers and directors, performers, technicians and stage hands begin or end their collective exercises. It’s all of a single piece, a seamless execution of intent, right up to denouement, which surpasses Udo’s in that all players walk away with an appetite.
“You don’t need language to understand it”: Seamless means wordlessly effective as well as “of a piece”. Thomas Gunzig’s text rings like one of those storied tolling bells from Cold Blood’s complex ballet of Lego & Hollywood. Players, performers, dolly guys, hands, managers, cameras, projectors, boom microphones, special effects, multi-mini-sets, hand-work and cinematography show the seven ways to die as effectively as a prayer book might lay out the seven deadly sins. You don’t need words to understand Cold Blood any more than you need them to understand whether your dance partner fits your arms or not.
Succeeding on every level, including the French language, hypnosis, understanding of mid-20th century esthetics and special effects, irony, literary theory & practice, dancing, acting and knowing what really counts in life, Cold Blood is the second in a performance triptych directed by Anne de Mey & Jaco van Dormael at La Scala Paris, following on Kiss & Cry and to be followed by Amor. All three pieces have had previous international success.
In featuring performances skillfully inventive enough to be unclassifiable and unclassifiable enough to go beyond entertainment and entertaining enough to really enchant an audience, La Scala Paris, which opened last year, is shaping up as one good place to see contemporary performance at its best. You can also eat dinner there. Hope it’s a trend.
Cold Blood, directed Michèle Anne De Mey, Jaco Van Dormael and developed with Grégory Grosjean, Thomas Gunzig, Julien Lambert, Sylvie Olivé, Nicolas Olivier and the participation of Thomas Beni, Gladys Brookfield-Hampson, Boris Cekevda, Gabriella Iacono, Aurélie Leporcq, Bruno Olivier and Stefano Serra. Performance 12/1/2019, La Scala Paris, 13 boulevard de Strasbourg.
Production : Astragales asbl
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