Luc Bondy, a European scene – L’Express

The first time I saw a staging by Luc Bondy, it was in 1989, at the Théâtre du Rond-Point. Already famous and confirmed there had The Way Solitaire , by Arthur Schnitzler, refined conversation a bitter anything on the requirements of aesthetics: misfortune can be the price of the class, the rank. Bondy at the top of his art, are directed particularly Didier Sandre, camped inflexible aristocrat whose way of smoking, cigarette tense at the end of the fingertips, signed social condition. Incarnation of despair, the inevitable misfortune, growing by crushing its victims. A long ramp was rolled along the scenery, like a destiny …

In recent years, the coldness of his acting direction, its mineral vision of the stage space and relationships between characters had dated his work. With A Spanish play , by Yasmina Reza, 2004, or Return , by Harold Pinter in 2012, at the Odeon, he raised more skepticism aback that enthusiasm. The bitterness of his vision of the human species unless prior bothered in an era that replaces the lost illusions by empathy, and ideology by antidepressants. Nevertheless, Bondy kept through its ability to generate the bark of the words the political strength of theatrical texts. His ultimate staging, Ivanov , has conquered the public.

Director eraser borders

Luc Bondy was emblematic of this generation of directors cerebral and esthétisants, anxious to cultivate in the actors a powerful game and puncher, this generation that pierced in seventy years before dominating for two decades in Europe scenes. It is the common characteristic of these demiurges emerged after May 68 they have erased the boundaries, creating Switzerland, Italy, Germany, France, Spain or Great Britain with the same ambition. Peter Brook, Patrice Chéreau, Matthias Langhoff, Stuart Seide, Nichet Jacques, Jean-Pierre Vincent, Giorgio Strehler, Lluis Pasqual and many others, with a few decades apart, built the first European theater of history, as Jacques Copeau their elders, Jean Dasté, Jean Vilar and Georges Planchon had worn decentralization.

It was quite logical in this case to find this German and French speaking Switzerland at the head of the Odeon Theatre of Europe, although his appointment by the will of Nicolas Sarkozy, at a price the eviction of Olivier Py, controversy nimba this ultimate mission.