Séverine Chavrier at the TNC: imposing form over content

French director Séverine Chavrier, whom we met four years ago with And the new ones where I forgot (the adaptation ofThe lime kiln Thomas Bernhard's play), has returned to the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya. And it has done so with a very free adaptation of one of William Faulkner's most celebrated but also most complex works, Absalom, Absalom! Faulkner narrates the rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen, a poor Mississippi boy in the early 19th century who achieves wealth and becomes a slave-owning tyrant in his quest for social recognition.

As a resultAnd the new ones where I forgot, I wrote"Chavrier's proposal radically embraces the tendency in certain contemporary theater to prioritize form over content and to feed—we might even say enrich, depending on the interpretation—the stage production with high-tech visual resources, altering both the spectator's and the performers' experiences, who are often reduced to mere puppets." This statement is perfectly applicable to Chavrier's new production, both in terms of the staging and the reaction of a large part of the audience. As happened then, several spectators left during the first or second intermission of a performance lasting more than five hours, which nevertheless received enthusiastic applause from those who remained in the stalls of the Sala Gran.

If Faulkner's novel proves demanding for a seasoned reader—to the point that many editions include a guide to the characters and a floor plan of the mansion—the French director's adaptation takes the easy way out, offering a kind of scattered puzzle to spectators, whether familiar with the original or not.

What remains is the technological display and the impressive physical work of the performers. The live performance is hidden. Everything is projected onto a large screen that conceals the rooms of the mansion where the action takes place. The soundtrack strikes with a range of textures (Armel Malonga) and often drowns out the performers' voices, despite being amplified. Certainly, there are powerful, highly expressive images. There is marvelous technical work. There are moments of considerable drama. There are dance scenes with brutal energy. In the end, the denunciation of racism, the perversions of war, and a series of powerful audiovisual stimuli are clear.