1994 · Reviens à toi (encore) · Looking at you (revived) again · Motton · Vigner (EN)

REVIENS À TOI (ENCORE) - [Looking at you (revived) again] by GREGORY MOTTON was performed by MARILÙ MARINI, BRUNO RAFFAËLLI, ALICE VARENNE and PATRICK MOLARD (Cornemuse). The play opened on 4 October 1994 at the Scène Nationale d'Albi, and was notably presented at the Théâtre National de l'Odéon on the occasion of the Paris Autumn Festival 1995.

"My work has always been intimately linked with the reality of the location, with its own magic, trying to go the roundabout way, playing on the time-lag, the ‘in-between’, distance between reality and fiction, the place where poetry is at home… LOOKING AT YOU (REVIVED) AGAIN will be staged in a theatre à l'italienne. An empty, disused Italian-style theatre, with the magic of its memories whispering from every nook and cranny. Gold, velvet and sparkle. Odéon, Athénée - names that conjure up dreams. Night-time. A secret ceremony, and we are invited. Three persons playing for themselves the personages of their own history. Scattered memories from their own lives; past, present, future. Quest. Journey between reality and fiction, between life and death, between dream and reality. The world a stage. Madame James on the balcony, Abe, with outstretched arms, at the front of the stage. Where does theatre stand today? What form will it have to take to reach its audience ? "
ÉRIC VIGNER

ÉRIC VIGNER adds a bagpipe player to the three actors: PATRICK MOLARD, a fourth character of his own invention. "He is, in a way, like the flute-player in German legend. He calls things to life and makes them disappear again in darkness." (ÉV)

"In England, REVIENS A TOI (ENCORE) was staged by some friends of MOTTON's, in the smoke-filled atmosphere of a pub, but without exchanging the gold and glitter of the Odéon for the drab dinginess of a bar. Still, VIGNER has come up with a setting which upsets the tenets of traditional theatre à l’italienne. In France, MOTTON was discovered by Nicole Brette and finally put on stage thanks to the tenacity of Claude Régy, who staged his CHUTES and subsequently LA TERRIBLE VOIX DE SATAN. For ÉRIC VIGNER the oeuvre of GREGORY MOTTON is a rare and unique thing that defies identification. REVIENS A TOI (ENCORE), this enigmatic title floats around the heads of the characters who somehow represent the weaknesses of the nineteen nineties, a sort of Trinity exploded. Abe hangs about in the streets, where he meets F.P., a strange young girl who wants to found a family with him. In the distance, the Dark Woman watches from her window - Abe’s mother, whom he ridicules and whose heart is broken by the estrangement from her children carried off by the lack of interest of Abe, their father."
CAROLINE JURGENSON, Le Figaro, 2 December 1994

"The artist must delve into the limitless unknown of the human soul, fend off what is all too evident and go to the heart of things buried deep down where even the meaning is rare. He cannot know what he will find – he must withhold judgment, be illogical and obstinate." 
GREGORY MOTTON

"Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head." I think these words of Christ (Luke 9, 58) provide an indication of G. MOTTON’s piece… F.P. is repeatedly compared to a fox, and the Dark Woman says to Abe: "You would like me to be a little bird on your window-sill". The balcony, then, is the nest, all ready for the bird to fly away, which it doesn’t (hasn’t done, will never do)… Abe, Abraham, the wanderer of Genesis, will finally lay his head down (on his suitcase!!). The three players are wanderers - F.P. by virtue of her name, the Dark Woman by virtue of her kind. And the stage is the place on which their errantry is represented."
PÈRE DAVID [2] 

"Among Motton’s plays, REVIENS À TOI (ENCORE) is perhaps the one with the most biblical references. ‘Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves’, exclaims Abe. Eric Vigner’s staging steers clear of the traps of undue preoccupation with the misery of life, of the pious images of social realism, of religious allegory, presenting the message as it filters through a mix of humour and strangeness."
RenÉ Solis, Libération, 7 October 1994

© Photography : Alain Fonteray
Texts assembled by Jutta Johanna Weiss
Translation from the French by Herbert Kaiser, Jutta Johanna Weiss
© CDDB-Théâtre de Lorient

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