No actor steps casually on the golden tiles of the beautiful Théâtre de l’Epée de bois (Paris 12my). And even less so is Simon Abkarian, whose black silhouette and eyes masked by the drooping brim of a fedora appear in a door at the back of the room. Old stone walls, evening light and a dreamy fog take over the decoration of an abandoned bar where only two musicians (bouzoukist Grigoris Vasilas and guitarist Kostas Tsekouras) are sitting. It feels like we’re in Café Müller Pina Bausch’s version, except that the dance (because there will be dance and rebetiko) takes place behind the scenes of an ancient war.
During this performance of Menelaus rebetiko rhapsody, The man who greets slowly, with varnished shoes on his feet, is the Greek Menelaus, whom his wife Helen left for Trojan Paris. “I’m suffocating. Why did you leave? », laments Simon Abkarian, in an elegiac voice. The hero inhales and exhales. A thread of air to thwart the suffocation in which the violence of heartbreak submerges him. He needs torrents of words to tame the flow of feelings that shake him back and forth.
Rage, humiliation, amazement, need, lack, jealousy and that insatiable desire that survives absence: everything deserves to be said, in the rawest terms. (“Cursed of Sparta”) to the noblest (“my wife my sister my friend”), through the murderous self-portrait. The more Menelaus insults Helen, the more he flagellates himself: “I am the weak, the weak, the indecisive, the meek, the powerless, the kind, the easily influenced, the slave of the flesh. »
A broad and lyrical word.
Carried by sublime music, these words emerge between the wooden tables and chairs. Abkarian grabbed it with the enthusiasm of a swimmer searching for a lifebuoy. This text that sticks to your skin inverts perspectives. The historical context is swept away by today’s world. Politics leaves the battlefield to rush towards the intimate. Menelaus is taken from the pages of tragedy to appear alone in the light. After working the figures of electra (shallow electra) and Helene (Helene after the fall), the author focuses this time on the male psyche. The war wreaks havoc inside a man who pursues his moods as if he were following enemy soldiers. No sword at the end of his arm, just broad, lyrical words that we forgive for their excesses (there are) and their overly systematic shifts between praise and invective.
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