La Révolte, by Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, which caused a scandal in 1870, still has a current resonance at the Théâtre les Déchargeurs.
A scandalous piece?
A scandalous piece?The Revolt makes us intimate spectators of the night when Elisabeth, wife and accountant of a banker named Felix, decides to leave husband and child, because this home no longer corresponds to these aspirations. She has meticulously planned everything, calculated everything for years, in order to gain her financial independence and cut the chains of this pompous and servile bourgeois marriage. Legally submitted to Felix by oath, and psychologically via the pressure exerted by this man animated by deeply capitalist ideals, she now refuses to live in the shadows and demands to be heard.
This text, dated 1870, caused a scandal in its time. Despite the advent of the Third Republic, which provided hope for women and deployed feminist movements supported by intellectuals such as Victor Hugo, women were still considered legally incapable and lived under the authority of their father and then her husband. She no longer has the right to divorce, does not have a bank account or voting rights. Society was then not very open to demands for its emancipation. A period also marked by the success of vaudeville of light, funny and entertaining plays. In this context, this social drama, too modern, will be banned after five performances.
But what is the scope of the text today?
Assumed anachronisms
Assumed anachronismsThis Revolt is written by the pen of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, journalist, politician, writer, who gives words a realistic force, a depth of arguments and a certain lyricism. Salomé Broussky, the director, adapted this monological text, in order to energize the exchange between the characters and make them interact. As for the scenography, it takes the decision to make this episode of life current through the set and costumes. A distance is thus created between a text dated by its vocabulary, the circumstances evoked, an actor's direction putting at the center the phrasing and poetry of words, and, opposite, the present, intimate and immediate moment. Anachronisms present throughout the play, quickly swept away by the sincere acting of actors Maud Wyler and Dimitri Storoge. Instead of being overwhelmed by the text, they manage to convey their intimate thoughts to us with grace and sobriety. A strangeness emerges and this distance finally plunges the viewer into a timeless bubble and underlines the truth of what is decried, the universality of the work and anchors it in the present.
Although 147 years separate us from the first performance of La Révolte, the subject of the oppression of women still fills the headlines and endures through the social conveniences conveyed by our societies.
Practical information
Find La Révolte at the theater Les Déchargeurs From Tuesday to Saturday, until December 9, 2017, at 7:30 pm 3 rue des déchargeurs
– 75 00 Paris
01 42 36 00 50
