“The Art of Joy”, an aristocratic, revolutionary and rock'n'roll fresco at the Nîmes theater

A particularly spectacular fresco. – Christophe Raynaud de Lage

This is one of the events of the season: Ambre Kahan presents her adaptation of part of The art of joy by Goliarda Sapienza at the Nîmes theater.

There is something both exciting and frightening about spending more than five hours in a theater. The fear is doubly so when it comes to seeing the adaptation of The Art of Joy, by Goliarda Sapienza that Ambre Kahan is presenting at the Bernadette-Lafont theater in Nîmes). The novel offers such powerful images that readers (and readers, because there are some too!) already have a film in their heads.

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This Saturday evening, shortly after midnight, on the sidewalks of the Place de la Calade, the carried away audience said to themselves that it is rare to see so much theater. And not only because it lasts a long time! There is this gigantic set, this troupe, this music, these lights, these incessant staging ideas, this abundant language, these beautiful paintings like those seen at the Uffizi and the exceptional performance of Noémie Gantier, on stage from start to finish… Ambre Kahan embraces the Italian fresco while retaining all its breadth, its complexity, its sensuality, to travel through the first thirty years of the 20th century in Sicily, with the freedom of Modesta, a freedwoman who became a rebellious princess.

Modesta doesn't give a damn about morality

In a first part with a frenetic pace, a queer narrator makes the story gallop. With intelligence, without any gratuity, the director mixes the revolutionary aristocracy of a Visconti with offbeat humor and baroque rock'n'roll. Modesta loves men, she loves women, she loves love, she loves sex. She loves life, she loves the present that she lives with an “art of joy”which is not that of happiness. She also awakens to the ideas of her time in a restless Sicily. With relish, she doesn't care about morality, about all the catechisms, she assumes her destiny and her desires.

After an Italian picnic, the second part plunges the audience into a darker, more melancholic atmosphere. The period of great hopes gives way to painful hours. The First World War, the Spanish flu, and then the former socialist turned fascist Mussolini plunge Italy and Sicily into political violence and disillusionment. But only the living are right and in the heart of this world where death is at the end of the gun, Modeste remains alive, a fighter, free, powerful, luminous, standing despite the shadows and the mourning. And she will be again, let's hope, in the rest of this monumental adaptation. Because in 5 hours and 30 minutes, Ambre Kahan only tells a very small part of The Art of Joy… And we want more!

The troupe is on stage again this Sunday, December 15 at 3 p.m., at the Bernadette-Lafont theater, place de la Calade, in Nîmes. From €10 to €40. 04 66 36 65 10.