Matt Pokora, Arnaud Ducret and Jérémy Frérot are having fun and, nicely, are giving some. We're taking it! Midi Libre – JEAN MICHEL MART
Le premier tableau est l’occasion d’une revue des effectifs : pour cette édition 2025, ils sont riches… et souriants ! Midi Libre – JEAN MICHEL MART
The Enfoirés troupe gave the first of its seven shows on Tuesday night at the Sud de France Arena in Montpellier, at the same time as the last of its rehearsals. Quite a few near-terms, a lot of asides, a lot of fun on stage and in the audience!
“The heart is in it”.We know the expression. It is essential. It underlines the enthusiasm of those to whom we address it for what they do, at the same time as it expresses the positivity of our view of them. It may not seem like much, but in these cynical and divided times, if we agree that the heart is in it, that is already huge, and if all goes well, the rest will follow. In any case, we followed: on Tuesday evening, the Sud de France Arena hosted, as Patrick Bruel would say (calling on the complicity of the public “for our bumpy start”), “both the first concert and the last rehearsal” of Enfoirés 2025, and the heart was in it. In the plural and in the particular!
Facing, even just for the time of your approach to the largest regional hall, a freezing cold already gives meaning to the direction you are taking: going there means giving to those in need, and that already warms the heart. Inside, it will boil quickly: first because the room is (almost, Tuesday) full, and full of smiles, then because the organization opens the festivities by the projection on a large curtain of a best-of of the previous editions, projection long enough to make us boil with impatience!
Seven performances of the Enfoirés show 2025 are scheduled at the Sud de France Arena by January 20. Midi Libre – JEAN MICHEL MART
When the curtain finally falls, and begins with a clever interweaving of the hits Entrer dans la lumière (by Patricia Kaas) and Love’n’tendresse (Eddy de Pretto) in a draped staging, it’s the parade. On the Kaas side: Zazie, Santa, Nolween Leroy, Sofia Essaïdi, Claire Keim, Shy’m, Joyce Jonathan, Michèle Laroque, Isabelle Nanty, Claudia Tagbo, Elodie Fontan… On the De Pretto side: Patrick Bruel, Julien Clerc, Gaëtan Roussel, Vianney, Matt Pokora, MC Solaar, Ycare, Jérémy Frérot, Arnaud Ducret, François-Xavier Demaison, Michael Youn… We forget some, they will come back.
Moreover, after the aforementioned friendly warning from Dean Patrick Bruel, here they are again in a setting (projected on large screens as a backdrop) of a Parisian street scene for a mischievous adaptation of We travel from city to city (from the Demoiselles de Rochefort). “Why do you sing like that ?” asks one, dressed in technicolor, respecting the tune. “To do like in the films of Jacques Demy” the other answers in the same tone. Conclusion: “It's going to be a bit long.” Not even! In addition, since no one has yet perfectly mastered the (small) choreography, the picture is a tasty approximation. But, guess what… yes, the heart is in it!
Solo songs at the inter-sets
He's always there for Good music(Michel Berger). The performers are now spread out over several levels of metal architecture, like building skeletons. Claudio Capéo is at the top on the piano, Vianney on bass and Arnaud Drucet on drums… even if the orchestra, discreetly installed on the stage right, keeps an eye on the musical grain. Well, from this point of view (because our ear has a point of view, you see), it's a bit sluggish that evening but we enjoy the good looks of the artists, clearly happy to be there, and we appreciate Claire Keim's elegance as she descends the steps.
200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000The first important “time out” offers us the first of those moments that we won't see on the DVD that we won't fail to buy (because, Michael Youn will remind us later, “A CD or DVD is 17 meals distributed!”) and which make the evening unique: Matt Pokora offers a solo gymnastic version, up, down, of A nos actes manqués by Fredericks Goldman Jones. The room is enjoying itself. From now on, it will be systematic: after each scene requiring a change of scenery and costumes, one or more Enfoirés will come and take the microphone and the light for a hit, one of his own or another. I'm telling you anyway by Patrick Bruel in guitar-voice. Belle by François Xavier Demaison, Ycare and Patrick Fiori. Makeba by Jain. Caroline by MC Solaar. Put on your hood by Michael Youn. Speed by Zazie. Start over me by Santa. The one who leaves by Joseph Kamel. If I had known by Claudio Capéo. The fool and the king by Ycare (on the melody of Viva la vida by Coldplay). I take you to the wind by Gaëtan Roussel. It's difficult to admit but easy to understand: these will always be the most impeccable interpretations. Based on the interaction with the audience, they will also be those where the most “choir” will have been put to work!
“More sober” stagings
Nevertheless, we came for Au pays des Enfoirés; a “great show” had promised its artistic director Anne Marcassus in the columns of Midi Libre, with “more sober” stagings. Demonstration on Animaux fragiles (Zaz): in a cloudy atmosphere, in the middle of alabaster-colored buildings, MC Solaar flies to the skies (is raised by almost invisible cables up to the flies) while his comrades Patrick Bruel, Sofia Essaïdi, Claire Keim and Vianney sing beautifully. For a new mix of songs, Italian this time (Sarà perché ti amo by Ricchi E Poveri and Ti amo by Umberto Tozzi), it’s hard to do more sober and clear than a decor and tricolor green-white-red clothes even if we didn’t understand the bathtub thing.
Zazie does the celestial elevation thing again on With time (Léo Ferré) but this time, it's the fault of the balloons (charbonneux, obviously; for the record, it's not the most hilarious song in the French repertoire) that his colleagues Claire Keim, Amel Bent and Sofia Essaïdi. The arrangements are a bit heavy but the balloons are light so Zazie takes off and the emotion too. A little further on, a song by Patrick Bruel will continue, in a round table (and vice versa), the reflection in a more… Bruélien mode: Pas eu le temps. Joseph Kamel, Jérémy Frérot and Vianney will also add their grain of salt (and their little tear: the cover is beautiful) to the existential questioning with Maintenant,a song by the latter gives rise to an intriguing tableau: superb portraits of elders are projected onto veils, while the back of the stage is occupied by a dense crowd of people hooded in black and belted in red.
Great and beautiful moments
Of course there will be more joyful tableaux. Full of glitter, sequins and gilding on It's the same song, the famous Frenchification of the Four Tops hit by Claude François. Full of hopping and onomatopoeia on Clic clic pan pan, Yanns' “earworm” song. Or lots of drums, multi-colored neon lights and choreographic confusion (but the heart was in it, believe us!) But no matter what, we prefer Hell by Stromae, sung by Claudio Capéo and Gaëtan Roussel in the middle of a very dense choir, anonymized behind the same schematic drawing of a face, which we soon discover is the entirety of the Enfoirés. Arrangements, interpretation, staging, it is masterful and overwhelming.
Nevertheless, the great moment of this In the land of the Enfoirés will undoubtedly remain the long passage devoted to the Olympic Games. We remember that last year, the Enfoirés, finally one in particular (we'll say: Michael Youn) had gently mocked the then future event, in particular its events in the Seine… Tony Estanguet appears in duplex (we need to specify that it is a false duplex ?) on a giant screen and calls out to the rascal, demanding an apology from him, a real apology. Which is noted with a tour of the pit with the Olympic flame (or almost) while on stage, the Eiffel Tower is in Olympic colors at the end of the Champs-Elysées covered with signs from the Restos du Coeur! In the process, a few comrades arrive in a canoe humming “This song is yours, you the sportsman who last year got teased by the Enfoirés” to the tune of Song for the Auvergnat (Georges Brassens). Then others for “During the Olympics in town” (When we arrive in town, Starmania). Then still others for “When we have ping-pong to share” (When we only have love, Jacques Brel). It's a festival! Well, that night, the Lebrun brothers are conspicuous by their absence, but the main thing is that they shine! And the passage ends with a thought from Michael Youn for California: “You're going to have a hard time without Tony Estanguet”.
Actually, no, the real big moment, the most beautiful, the most important follows the very well-seen sequence between Ensemble by Aliocha Schneider (with this sentence to meditate on:“What does it mean to be together if we are not together ?”) and the Enfoirés' 2025 anthem, Le monde demain (“We will build the world tomorrow. We will not always agree. But as long as we still love each other. We will build the world tomorrow. It is up to us to change the scenery, without fear we are much stronger”). The entire Enfoirés troupe is then gathered, and joined by volunteers from the Restos du cœur to sing the anthem written by Jean-Jacques Goldman. Raise the choirs, stage, room combined, to shout again and again that “today we no longer have the right, neither to be hungry, nor to be cold. Every man for himself is gone. When I think of you, I think of myself”. So, at the end of these four hours of a show still full of little clumsiness but for that more human than ever, since the error is, and that everyone will have put all their heart into it, we left ours pumped up. “We're counting on you” so that the Restos are too!
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