The Reservist paints the story of an unemployed man who decides not to look for work anymore. During a visit to the employment office, a counsellor explains his theory: the neoliberal system purposely maintains unemployment, which constitutes a reserve in order to exert constant pressure on those who work. This "privileged" category must therefore be ready for anything because it is quite replaceable by one of the many people on the reserve. The protagonist then decides to become a reservist.
The text, published in 2013 by Thomas Depryck (Belgian author twice awarded the Georges Vaxelaire prize), is brought to the stage by company A. Alice Gozlan, a former student of the Studio d'Asnières, stages three actors (Julia de Reyke, Zacharie Lorent and Mélissa Irma) in a show that looks like a modern-day tale. The actors play three narrators-storytellers who seem to represent three facets of the same character, or three potentialities of the same story: the naïve girl with her raincoat and watering can, the rebellious girl dressed in black and the semi-adult boy somewhat lost in a society where he does not find his place.
This society is that of work, erected as a fundamental value. We define ourselves by our professional activity: it is enough, in a way, to express all that we are and serves as a filter to integrate us (or not) into society. "What do you do for a living?", we always ask a person we meet. The theory expressed by the employment counsellor is reminiscent of the link between unemployment and wage levels demonstrated by Phillips: the higher the unemployment rate, the lower the wages. Also, reservists (or "assisted" as others call them) must exist to put pressure on those who work: an employee frightened by the loss of his job will be much less likely to ask for a raise.
The scenography is reminiscent of a children's playground, with its artificial grass and scattered elements. It is also a show about the innocence of childhood that we do not want to lose. Like Peter Pan flying to Neverland, the protagonist chooses to become a reservist and thus escape the societal model that is proposed to him and with which he cannot identify.
If the theory of reserve arrives quite late in the show, the protagonist plunges quite quickly into delirium without even thinking about the meaning of the statement made by his interlocutor. The thought of the employment counsellor was certainly the fruit of reflection, of a process of thought. However, the character is unable to have this same reflection and this is what makes him, subsequently, an outsider. He does not see this as a sign of deliberate manipulation for the benefit of mass consumption but on the contrary as an opportunity to be seized. It should also be noted that he believes his first interlocutor with disconcerting ease while he has difficulty paying attention to the speech of the next advisor (who reminds him that he must look for work). What the staging shows us, more than an unhealthy society, is the inability of the population to think for itself. The protagonist is certainly lost but it is because he does not develop his reflection on the world around him that he can not get out of it (but does he even have the means?). Throughout the show, he remains a child oscillating between a popular entertainment to which he is addicted (Madonna concert, television, porn consumption) and an ode to laziness. We are still far from a call for resistance or boycott.
It is, on the whole, a successful show mainly by the energy and enthusiasm of the actors. The lack of interaction does not prevent them from listening rigorously and always precisely to their partners, which obviously serves the show and the story they tell. To discover until Sunday, March 4, 2018 at the Théâtre de l'Opprimé in Paris.
