At the Comédie de Genève until October 15, we rush to discover “The Chorus of Lovers”, a tremendous theatrical duo directed by Tiago Rodriguez: the story of two married couples, played by Alma Palacios and David Jesselson.
A table, two chairs, a tea kettle, and a floor covered with sawdust as if it had snowed. Here is the frame. He is sober. The main thing is somewhere else. Not seen, but felt: love and the passage of time.
In the group is a theatrical couple: actress and dancer Alma Palacios and actor David Jesselson. You may have seen them in “Bovary”, another Thiago Rodriguez production. The complicity of these two gives all hope to the “Choir of Lovers”. These two love each other and will love each other until their last breath.
Long trip
Despite the circumstances, like the respiratory accident that sent them to the hospital, she’s on the pool table and he’s fighting in the waiting room. The word chorus should be taken in all its senses. Who pulsates between these two, who sings of love and existence. With a tagline that would appear more than once on the show: “We have time.”
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Thiago Rodrigues, current director of the Avignon Festival, began writing this piece in 2006. One of his first performances in Portuguese was in 2014. Here it is rewritten in French with another chapter. Instead of class, Thiago Rodriguez prefers to talk about the song, like the Odyssey songs of Ulysses.
This story progresses in time and at the rhythm of the long track. It takes a Greek warrior twenty years to find his lover. These two people tell the story of an entire life and even what they will survive.
Crossed with memories
“A Chorus of Lovers” revolves around a couple as they reach their final days, those peaceful days when they say goodbye to each other and their grandchildren. In the body, here are the memories. “A Chorus of Lovers” begins with shock, as we struggle to sing the story of our shared lives with one voice. On stage, action is sometimes a balancing act.
The piece is actually a vocal piece delivered in pairs, almost in unison, requiring side steps to break up the risks of monotony and adhere as much as possible to the reality of the couple: We may d well, we too have disagreements. The accident that befell them is also an opportunity to look back at the past. Regarding matters marked by heterogeneous memories: from the first lie to the parents to the discovery of the other’s body, including the movie “Scarface” that they could not watch until the end. “The Chorus of Lovers” is a story, a tremendous story from which we emerge satisfied and happy, after only one hour.
Thierry Sartoretti / SC
“The Chorus of Lovers” by Thiago Rodriguez, at the Théâtre des Comédies de Genève until October 15, 2023.
