Rage against the machine: James Thierrée at BAM Next Wave

James Thierrée in Tabac Rouge
(photo: Jack Vartoogian)

James Thierrée with Valérie Doucet
(photo: Jack Vartoogian)

What technical glitch kept a big, well-behaved audience standing for 45 minutes in the lobby of BAM Gilman for last night's performance of Tabac Rouge before ticket-takers finally opened the doors?

Here's my guess: James Thierrée's set. Specifically, the massive, mobile wall--old, discolored mirror panels on one side; dark, formidable lattice of pipes on the other.

This cleverly adaptable sculpture maintains such a crucial, active, nearly living presence throughout the 90-minute piece that you might argue for its status as lead dancer and star. And it has all the makings of a diva that you wouldn't want to cross, with capacity to maim its human co-stars--Thierrée and several members of his Compagnie du Hanneton--in any number of ways as they touch it, move it or scramble over it.

Did its lifting mechanism seize up? Or did it bop someone in the head? Mash a foot? Slice a hand?

Certainly, this structure sets the work's dystopian mood right off. The curtain rises on the wall, pipes-side forward, confronting the audience from the edge of a murky, smoke-filled stage. Viewers barely make out a few dancers crossing the back of the stage or clinging to frameworks that rise or descend. Now and then, a glow will flash from deep within the haze, like distant lightning. Fluorescent bulbs fire, here and there, but you quickly sense that any meaningful illumination (of the literal or metaphoric kind) will be hard-won.

Matina Kokolaki and other cast members in Tabac Rouge
(photo: Jack Vartoogian)

Thierrée, a performer of exquisite physical skill, hails from a storied lineage: child of circus innovators Victoria Chaplin and Jean-Baptiste Thierrée; grandson of Charlie Chaplin; great-grandson of Eugene O’Neill. His previous confections have drawn from the worlds of mime, dance, physical theater and circus, but he considers this steampunk fantasy, Tabac Rouge, to be more in the realm of dance or dance-theater.

Whether bodies are swirling in smooth, circular patterns, hurling themselves with desperate, revolutionary fervor or twisting into showy contortions, the dancey-ness of Tabac Rouge seems pitched to fill space and time and the hunger for entertainment. The second-night audience--perhaps overeager after such a long wait to claim their seats--seemed to crave little things to chuckle at; their choices left me deeply uncertain.

Elements of dance, mime and circus seem stuffed into a container that, in itself, has no clearly thought-out identity. In place of a developed story, there appears to be a situation--Thierrée portraying, maybe, hallucinating, an ash-coated despot whose court includes a military man, a woman who might be a daughter and another who might be a lover, presumably survivors of an unspecified disaster. Things look not only grimy but grim despite dancing and clowning. The balance of power keeps shifting, sort of the way Thierrée's angular balances shift--continually, weirdly, improbably--when he dances.

It's material for a drama--in this rendering, only material. The piece lives, instead, in its central visual element, making Tabac Rouge most convincing and satisfying as art installation. I consider the wall's final, dazzling moments to be my reward for enduring that wait in the lobby.

With performances by Thierrée, Mehdi Baki, Valérie Doucet, Magnus Jakobsson, Namkyung Kim, Matina Kokolaki, Thi Mai Nguyen, Ioulia Plotnikova and Soa Ratsifandrihana

Direction, set design, and choreography: James Thierrée
Costumes: Victoria Thierrée
Sound design: Thomas Delot
Lighting: Bastien Courthieu

Tabac Rouge runs through Sunday, October 4.  For schedule and ticket information, click here.

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

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A visit with "Raoul"

James Thiérrée performing Raoul 

at the Barbican, London

James Thiérrée's audience at Brooklyn's BAM Harvey Theater gathers before a stage that resembles an old sailing ship run aground, once proud sails collapsed upon themselves. In a sense, this first impression is true. Thiérrée's Raoul--a solo work from the brilliant leader and star of the renowned Compagnie du Hanneton--introduces a man who lives a shipwrecked life, castaway in a world of his own. Over the next 80 minutes, we're drawn into the fortified hut Raoul has built for himself. We become privy to its magic and its vulnerabilities.

Having first witnessed Thiérrée and his troupe in their 2005 BAM debut (Bright Abyss), I count myself among his fervent New York fans. I eagerly anticipated a work promising a focus on Thiérrée. Rest assured, for this year's Next Wave Festival, the man has packed his show with nearly everything he knows how to do. Given his multifaceted authority--as director, actor, dancer, mime, clown, acrobat, trapeze artist, magician and musician--that's quite a lot.

With gentle, stately music, houselights start to dim. A sunset glow drifts behind one "sail" and flows across another. Soon, fabric whips away, revealing a dark, looming structure of metal pipes draped in what could be a giant, dense and very dusty cobweb. A bearded, bedraggled fellow also appears--our Raoul. Or is it?

As Thiérrée storms the structure, crying hoarsely and mounting and dangling from it with his feet treading open air, some of the heavy poles begin to give way, dropping to the ground with a frightening jolt. You cringe and want to say, "James, are you sure?"

Raoul's trouble is that there's at least one other "Raoul" lurking, invading what he once believed to be a well-constructed reality. Thiérrée's skill at misdirecting our attention helps this annoying, not easily contained "double" seem to appear, like a magician's shiny coin, where we least expect him.

The hut, itself, is a kind of Raoul, harboring outdated but dearly loved things such as a gleaming Victrola and scratchy records. The two beings--man and armored home--are closely attuned to each other. They communicate. Now and then, Raoul grumbles something at the hut. When he rattles his shoulders and arms, it responds with a noisy metallic quivering of its own. It can also shift parts of its structure at will. Even the air answers to Raoul's movements with gusts of musical sounds. But the air, too, has a stubborn will, and the loner finds himself batting away these chords as if they were big, invisible flies.

The disheveled, often frenzied Raoul is, without question, a diagnosable refugee from the abyss. We are left to guess the source of his damage and his reason for isolating himself. He attempts to hold himself together as best he can, but his body wages war on itself. Other "Raouls"--not all of them of the human species--continually fire his nerve endings and seep through his pores. For instance, and for no detectable reason, Thiérrée channels a high-spirited horse with such exacting, exhausting and finally convincing physical detail that he thoroughly deserves that feedbag he straps on near the passage's conclusion.

Over time, certain external Others attempt to engage Raoul, and these creatures are absolutely beguiling, thanks to designs and fabrications by Thiérrée's mother and mentor, Victoria Thiérrée. (She is the daughter of Charlie Chaplin, sister of Geraldine Chaplin, and wife of Jean Baptiste Thiérrée with whom she founded traveling New Circus troupes that included their kids, James and Aurélia.) Since I expect you to try to see Raoul, I will not spoil surprises by describing Mme. Thiérrée's handiwork. I will say, however, that her contributions perfectly resonate with the whimsy, beauty and melancholy entwined in her son's artistry.

Raoul's dark underpinning is inextricable from its humor. If you go, you might notice some audience members chuckling at certain things that you do not find funny, and vice versa. Or you might feel sensitive to the grief floating beneath the playful illusions. Thiérrée connects with each of us and reconnects us with something vulnerable within ourselves.

Remaining shows November 9, 10, 12, 13 at 7:30pm and November 14 at 3pm

BAM Next Wave Festival

BAM Harvey Theater

651 Fulton Street, Brooklyn (directions)