Theater critics could be masochistic creatures. On Saturday, the Spanish provocateur Angélica Liddell opened the Avignon Pageant in France, one in all Europe’s most prestigious theater occasions, with a no-holds-barred diatribe in opposition to them. She quoted, and taunted, a number of writers who had been within the viewers.
The response from the rows of journalists in attendance, and the almost 2,000 attendees? A standing ovation.
Weird and grating because it was, Liddell’s “Dämon: El Funeral de Bergman” (“Demons: Bergman’s Funeral”) introduced a stage of electrical energy to the Avignon Pageant, which runs by means of July 21, that few have matched lately. Its most prized venue, the open-air Cour d’Honneur of Avignon’s Palais des Papes, or papal palace, tends to foil even probably the most skilled artists. Not so Liddell and her visceral monologues.
She spent lengthy stretches of “Dämon: El Funeral de Bergman” alone on the huge, blood-red stage. Pacing forwards and backwards, she vociferated as if she had been possessed. At common intervals, she took her cue from the extreme, misanthropic writings of the Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, one in all her idols. “I’m Ingmar Bergman,” she declared at one level, earlier than returning to her favourite themes: loss of life, guilt, intercourse and excrement.
But the primary vocal photographs Liddell fired had been directed at critics, in a bit known as “Humiliations suffered.” Together with her again turned to the viewers, she started studying excerpts from unfavorable critiques of her work, beginning with an article by Armelle Héliot, the previous chief theater critic of the French newspaper Le Figaro. “The place are you, Armelle?,” Liddell yelled, earlier than shifting on to the following title.
As these round me realized what was taking place, mouths fell open. Many people thought again frantically on our previous critiques, questioning if we had been subsequent.
It was an incendiary breach of the unstated contract between artists and critics, with one author particularly the goal of an unjustifiable litany of insults. “I despise and hate you,” Liddell stated, asking reviewers to “face your individual vileness.”
To be truthful, Liddell appears to despise most of humanity, so we had been in good firm. But it was an odd alternative of goal, as a result of French critics have been amongst her largest advocates since her Avignon debut, in 2010.
Actually, Liddell embodies the rebellious, experimental facet of the occasion, the place she constructed her cult following in Europe. “Dämon” marks her eighth manufacturing on the competition. From noodles thrown on the viewers in 2013’s “Ping Pang Qiu” to bare girls masturbating with useless octopuses in 2016’s “¿Qué Haré Yo con Esta Espada?,” she is a component and parcel of Avignon folklore.
Her Cour d’Honneur debut solely cements that standing, and he or she makes intelligent use of this one-of-a-kind venue. The stage is almost empty, besides for a bathroom, a urinal and a bidet positioned in opposition to the Gothic wall of the palace, as soon as dwelling to popes.
A mystic, non secular streak has at all times run by means of Liddell’s work, and right here the primary performer to seem is costumed like a pope. Casually, together with his arms held behind his again, he strolls across the stage, pausing to look at the bathroom.
Then, earlier than Liddell even utters a phrase, she stakes her declare to the Cour d’Honneur in idiosyncratic vogue. Her bottom to us, she pulls her costume up over a basin stuffed with water, and proceeds to clean her genitals in plain sight. Subsequent, she throws the water in opposition to the towering medieval wall behind her.
The remainder of the solid solely makes an look after Liddell’s marathon-like monologue. The most important tableau is a meditation of kinds on the indignities of getting old, involving, as typically with Liddell, vital nudity. A dozen seniors sit in wheelchairs whereas vignettes occur round them — an older man singing bare, youthful girls stripping off to sit down in varied laps, Liddell briefly arousing the faux-pope.
“Dämon” in the end builds up, because the title suggests, to a theatrical reimagination of Bergman’s burial. The filmmaker wrote a script for his personal funeral, and Liddell faithfully recreates the straightforward wooden coffin and musical accompaniment that he wished: Bach. (The feminine mourners in black lingerie and the boys who pull down their pants are presumably a Liddell contact.)
After the ceremony was accomplished, Liddell stayed alone onstage with the coffin. “Loneliness is nigh,” she stated, addressing Bergman. “Will you settle for me as your final spouse? As a result of I can’t reside like this.” Hastily, she appeared quieter, referring to her troubled relationship along with her mother and father and her sense of guilt over as soon as wishing them hurt.
She directed some remaining jabs at critics, however a vulnerability had crept in. “Mates and enemies, our days are numbered. Theater is time, and time kills,” Liddell stated, earlier than pausing.
At that second, on opening evening, raindrops began falling over Avignon. Liddell appeared as much as the sky and a few viewers members began clapping — nonetheless bewitched by her, regardless of all of it.
“It’s good to get a great kicking typically,” a fellow critic instructed me after the standing ovation receded. Liddell might hate normie reviewers, however the extremes she pushes us to contemplate are by no means boring. As she places it on the finish of the present, in white letters projected over the venerable backdrop: “Be careful, bastard, and see you on the subsequent play.”
Dämon: El Funeral de Bergman
By means of July 5 at Avignon Pageant; festival-avignon.com.
