When he wrote Platonov, Chekhov was only twenty-two years old. Five years later, he turned back to his first hero, and revived him under the name of Ivanov and invented a new destiny for him. The first time that Eric Lacascade directed a play by this Russian author, it was Ivanov he chose. Only now, many years later, after staging The Seagull and The Three Sisters, after time and maturity have done their work, does he devote himself to Platonov. The rendezvous had been delayed, but was inevitable, a meeting born out of necessity. Lacascade, whose choices spring from desire and intuition, has grown and matured at the same pace as the Chekhovian heroes. Accompanied by his actors, his troupe and his family, he tempered the ideas in each play, one after the other, listened to their torment, felt their wounds and followed closely their trajectories. They never left his sight; he watched them love, suffer and grow old. He knows these plays intimately because he knows where they come from and where they have been. He became their intimate friend, almost their brother. Such collusion gives Lacascade the assurance and confidence of someone who, after so many conversations and discussions, knows who he is dealing with. For him there\' s an obvious need to retrace the path back to the origins of the characters and to become re-acquainted with the genesis of the plays. There is an undeniable coherence and fairness in this leap into the past, this laying bare of roots. Platonov is the work of a young writer. It is disorganised and unclear, littered with extreme sentiments, interwoven with radical acts, kneaded with contradictions and incoherence: all signs of an adolescence that is raking through absolute ideas and excessive gestures, rejecting nuance and any form of reason. Platonov, the man who gives his name to this play, has his whole life mapped out in front of him. He throws himself into it with the ardour of someone who refuses nothing. He is bulimic, insatiable, loving, giving. He is detestable, selfish, inconstant, a liar and fickle. He is paradox itself, ambivalence. He is a being in the making. He is not a man who has halted or stagnated in any one identity. He wants everything, too much and will die because of that, murdered by a woman betrayed. It is because the director knows the future of this man that he is able to be indulgent with him, like an elder, in a warm, almost tender way. Lacascade re-reads Platonov like a soothsayer and restores it to us, enriched by a certain distance that allows him flexibility and a certain casualness. On stage, the audience will see men and women in the process of construction and evolving, caught in the motion of their lives, in movement, dynamism. They are changing beings, they are mobile and their energy is fed by desire, whose principle of functioning only responds to pleasure. The stage area is huge, vast, ambitious, stretching across the full width of the Cour d\'Honneur of the Pope\' s Palace. It measures up to its enormity. The stage floor is sober, bare and beckons to the actors\' bodies, demanding of them unobstructed movements, flowing lines, big leaps. It is meant to be filled, surrounded like a siege. The director goes beyond the edges and exceeds the limits. He is so familiar with the souls of the characters, that he can aim wide and give an overview. We are before a landscape filled with Chekhovian portraits. They come and go in front of us, wander here and there, stand still, set off again, they walk, they run. The Platonov which Éric Lacascade has dreamed up is a performance that gives speech a free tongue and desire free rein, which allows emotions to flourish. Lacascade offers Chekhov beginnings, he gives a wild young man, a sumptuous clean page where he may write down, with total freedom his ardour and talent.
Distribution
adaptation and stage direction: Éric Lacascade
dramaturgy :Vladimir Petkov
artistic collaboration : Eimuntas Nekrosius
special contribution to dramatic concept: Pascal Collin
stage design :Philippe Marioge
costumes: Laurence Bruley
make-up :Suzanne Pisteur
lighting :Philippe Berthomé
music: Alain D'Haeyer
sound :Nicolas Girault
assistant director: David Bobée
cast : Jérôme Bidaux, Jean Boissery, Arnaud Chéron, Arnaud Churin,
Murielle Colvez, Alain D'Haeyer, Christophe Grégoire, Stéphane Jais,
Éric Lacascade, Marc Lador, Christelle Legroux, Daria Lippi Brusco,
Millaray Lobos, Serge Turpin
Production
Production :CDN de Normandie-Comédie de Caen
Coproduction : Festival d'Avignon, Les Gémeaux-Scène nationale de Sceaux, Théâtre d'Evreux-Scène nationale d'Evreux-Louviers
En collaboration avec : Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione/Modena et Santarcangelo dei Teatri
Avec le soutien :du Conseil régional de Basse-Normandie, du Conseil général du Calvados, de la Ville de Caen, du Conseil régional d'Ile-de-France
Texte publié par : l'avant-scène théâtre (n°1115, juillet 2002)