LE FIGARO student

TUESDAY 23 MAY 2000 (NO 17 349)

THE MODERN WASHHOUSE The Puritans

David Black washes whiter

There is a place in Paris where this old thing called theatre is still capable of life, of peril, of sweat and violence, of magnificent indelicacy. I don't know David Noir. I don't know his age or his past, but if you are crazy enough to make a detour to the Lavoir Moderne, you will meet this enfant terrible and his strange troupe. How many of them are there, in total, facing us in their impeccable suits? We don't know anymore. We lost the press kit in the dizziness of the adventure. We just remember that the fairies "It's austere and rigorous. It comes before you go to sleep and rewards you the next day, but never what you want, it doesn't sleep, you can't eat or drink it; you can't kill it either. In other words, it's useless,
So much for the text. And again with Noir at the microphone: the low eyelids and the phrasing of a Gainsbourg to whom one would have provided the dark beauty of an improbable face. The company is called: Life is short. All the more reason to make it go off the rails where we no longer dared to expect it.

On the side of perpetual revolt, indecency, modesty when she drops her pants, Yes, the variety song is a song even sadder than the others; yes, behind the blazer there are bodies that are filled in dark cellars. Here it is. The Puritans are the most beautiful kick that could be given to the theatre version Télérama.

More than just a play, it's a phenomenal bender, a grenade pulled out of the air, a boundless audacity, a lyrical and proudly raised finger against the order of things.

It's impossible to forget these actors, all of whom are breathtaking in their hearts and bodies, throwing themselves headlong into this work of adolescence in permanent imbalance. It's impossible not to sell your soul to the devil to see Sonia Codhant, the only actress in this troupe, one day, and anywhere will do.
David Noir is a brilliant robber and his accomplices are princes for following him in this dirty story. And if you really want to know everything, know that there is no love, no fairies and even less freedom. Just the puritans that we are, stuck on stage for one last tableau.
One of them is crying.
And out of chaos comes beauty.

Nicolas Rey