The heat of the blast it is true long extinct

It is there, the factory. Yet we guess its shadow on the stage, behind the great canopy of remembrance. A phantom of plant, which has laid off workers in waves, before disappearing. "fabbrica" is a beautiful text Ascanio Celestini, generous and whimsical author in the tradition vaguely anar of Dario Fo. Charles Tordjman, which had already mounted "Daewoo" of François Bon, continues to examine our world in crisis. It is not the only one. Laurent Pelly, who will put on stage these days "Mille Francs reward" by Victor Hugo in Toulouse, Francis Rambert, who proposes "A (micro) economic world, dance history" in Gennevilliers, passing by the Comédie-Française, which revived "The business is business" of Octave Mirbeau, money, finance, industry, the company... became the recurring decor of our theatre stages.

Demigods characters

"fabbrica" tells the epic of a steel plant on three generations, until its closure and its relocation at the dawn of the 1960s (already...). In the footsteps of bloated troupe: two players only, Serge Maggiani and Agnès Sourdillon, and a Quartet of singers, led by Giovanna Marini begins, deliver us the amazing text of Celistini, which has the form of a monologue, "epistolary".

A man who every day of his life wrote a letter to his mother, failed once his duty: the day of his hiring to the Fabbrica, March 16, 1949. Years later, he sends finally this letter, which summarizes the drama of a life - the Siena - and death - that of the labour world. Could fear the pamphlet or documentary narrative indigestible, but with a skill and elegance unparalleled, Celestini trimbale us in a sinister and wonderful world mixing social fable, story and history to live. The characters are of demigods, Almighty pattern to the labour Aristocrat, passing by Assunta, fatal Madonna French secret...

Charles Tordjmann is one of our strongest and the most demanding directors. His staging, sober, is a great evidence. The "Narrator" is twofold. Aptly, Serge Maggiani and Agnès Sourdillon to return the ball, alternately serious and funny. They are princes-workers, hero of tragedy above all. The Quartet is Greek chorus - except that it is Italian!

Dark and values

In the compositions of Marini, there are all the verve and the spirit of the militant songs of the peninsula, with a supplement of desperate souls - as a crack, glitches in the harmonies. The choir summarizes episodes just contés in painful songs. It's beautiful, disturbing, never mélo.

The ominous decor of Vincent Tordjman reinforces the deadly side of drama. The sloped canopy creates a sensation of suffocation. She is also creator of magic: stretches the forms of the décor, makes dance reflections of light. The plant, which can be seen at the beginning, soon dissolved in ether charged clouds and stars. Then, there is more than a magma of tortured material - molten foundry, industrial mausoleum.

If the show does not quite convince, it is probably because his party taken too austere, dark, and values. It is more fascinated that moved, were not pulses not enough. There is a fire in the text of Celestini, laughter, a stream of drunkenness and sweat, who suffer here be filtered systematically. The heat of the blast, it is true, long extinct... Tordjmann does not seek to entertainment or enchant us, but to make us think and change.