Lou Reed & Robet Wilson's "POEtry"
by Molly Grogan

Scrooges and Sugarplum Fairies aside, what better way to escape holiday commercialism than to steal away to the theater? Now through the New Year, superstars of stage and screen converge on Paris for a blockbuster month of drama, and not a single Tiny Tim in sight.
The season’s hottest selling tickets are for shows that depict the family as anything but a loving clan gathered cozily around the trimmed tree. Elsinor is as much a prison as ever for a melancholy prince sent reeling by his father’s sudden death and mother’s precipitous re-marriage in Peter Brook’s vibrant new production of “Hamlet.”
Yet the Bouffes du Nord is hardly a cold cell, thanks to the warm, oriental hues of the minimalist set and the engaging, infinitely gifted Adrian Lester: his maddingly lucid, humble, comic and cartwheeling Hamlet proves him to be one of Britain’s great Shakespearean actors. Musician Toshi Tsuchitori sets the mood for the intrigues of the Danish court, portrayed by an excellent international cast that includes Natasha Parry as a fading Gertrude and Bruce Meyers as both the buffoonish Polonius and the salty-tongued gravedigger. Wrapping up the 29th Festival d’Automne, this “Hamlet” is a must for any season.
Ambitious royalty is no match however for the kind of diseased and oppressive kinship that Edgar Allan Poe imagined (as in the incestuous Usher siblings) and lived (during a doomed marriage to his 13-year-old cousin). The world of the grotesque and morbid that haunted the father of modern horror is the basis for “POEtry,” yet this rock opera guarantees thoroughly satisfying, and not simply disturbing, viewing.
The same team that brought the fantastically fun “Time Rocker” in 1997 has reunited for this production: Lou Reed (original music and lyrics), Robert Wilson (direction and sets), and the rich young talent of Hamburg’s Thalia Theater, who assume the challenge of enacting, in German and English, some of the most gruesome, hair-raising tales ever written, like “Hop-Frog,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Imp of the Perverse.” Atypical seasonal fare, “Poetry” makes a particularly potent antidote to an overdose of holiday cheer.
And then there’s the murderous Medea, who rubs out her sons to foil the cheating Jason’s plans of siring a powerful dynasty. Ah, family! Euripide’s enigmatic tale of a coolly calculating monster or an all too human, wronged woman was the centerpiece of the 2000 Festival d’Avignon. Jacques Lassalle’s “Médée” that graced the Cour d’Honneur last summer, magnificently led by the incomparable Isabelle Huppert, kicks off Odéon’s programming in the new year.
Death and the individual’s struggle with it are of course universal themes of our human experience and so transcend seasons. They return again in Margaret Edson’s 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Wit,” which Jeanne Moreau, in her directing début, stages in December as “Un trait de l'esprit.” The story behind “Wit,” the first play from a primary school teacher in Atlanta, Georgia, is almost as impressive as the play itself, though Edson’s keen intelligence informs every line of this story about a woman, or rather a world-renowned scholar of the Sacred Sonnets of the 17th century English poet John Donne, facing her imminent death from ovarian cancer. Sociétaire honoraire of the Comédie Française, Ludmila Mikaël brings a hard edge to the dying Vivian’s confrontation with the life she put aside in the pursuit to understand Donne’s metaphysical verse.
“Hamlet,” to Jan 12, Tue-Fri 8 pm, Sat 3 pm & 8 pm, Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, 37 bis bd de la Chapelle, 10e, M° La Chapelle, 90-120F, tel: 01 46 07 34 50
“POEtry,” Dec12-22, “Médée” Jan 5 to Feb 10, Tue-Sat, 8pm, Sun 3pm, Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe, 1 pl Paul Claudel, 6e, M° Odéon, 50-250F, tel: 01 44 41 36 36
“Un trait de l’esprit,” to Dec 23 (no show Dec 1-3), Tue-Sat 8:30pm, Sun 3pm, Théâtre National de Chaillot, 1 pl du Trocadéro, 16e, M° Trocadero, 80-160F (all seats 50F Thu), tel: 01 53 65 30 00

Theater Choice

ETriptyk
Equestrian theater Zingaro charts new territory in its latest creation. Bartabas combines the modern compositions of Igor Stranvinsky (“Le Sacre du printemps” and “La symphonie des Psaumes”) and Pierre Boulez (“Dialogue de l’ombre double”) with a new stable of horses and riders and even attempts horse-less theater in the central panel of this “Triptyk” of pagan, philosophical and sacred festivals. Kalaripayatt (a martial art form practiced in southern Indian) dancers lend a Zingaresque ethnic element.“Triptyk,” Tue, Wed, Fri & Sat 8:30pm, Sun 5:30pm, Théâtre Equestre Zingaro, 176 av Jean Jaurès, Aubervilliers, M° Fort d’Aubervilliers, 220F/140F, tel: 08 92 68 18 91

Trois Versions de la Vie
With a series of award-winning plays to her credit already, the 41-year old Yasmina Reza is on her way to becoming France’s greatest contemporary playwright. A new show adopts three different optics to examine an evening of discussion between two astrophysicists and their spouses, with Reza in the role of Inès. Tue-Fri, 9pm, Sat, 6pm & 9pm, Sun, 3:30pm, Théâtre Antoine, 14 bd de Strasbourg, 10e, M° Strasbourg Saint-Denis, 80-290F, tel: 01 42 08 77 71/76 58

La Dame aux Camélias
Isabelle Adjani stars as the beautiful, tuberculous Margaret Gautier in a show she had custom-made to mark her return to the stage after a 17-year absence. René de Ceccatty's adaptation of Dumas fils' text is directed by Alfredo Arias. To Jan 31, Tue-Sat, 8:30pm, Sat-Sun, 4pm, Théâtre Marigny-Robert Hossein, Carré Marigny, 8e, M° Champs-Elysées-Clemenceau, 70-350F, tel: 01 53 96 70 00

Crave
British playwright Sarah Kane’s brutal world has been the object of a number of productions in French recently. Now Glasshouse theater presents her last and most mature play, a four-part narrative of love, loss and desire, in English for the first time in France. Jan 10-20, Wed-Sat 7pm, La Bohême at Théâtre les Déchargeurs, 3 rue des Déchargeurs, 1er, M° Châtelet/Les Halles, 80F/60F, tel: 01 42 36 00 02