Metropolitan French know the French West Indies, or Antilles, for their white sand beaches and limpid waters. French West Indians know their home is anything but a paradise. The festival of “Creole” theater now ending at the Parc de La Villette offers a compelling explanation for this disparity, painting a vision of life in Guadeloupe and Martinique that is far removed from tourist brochures and clichés. Two plays, both by Guadeloupean women writers, unflinchingly take on the searing issues facing Antillean society today: unemployment, delinquency, drug abuse and crime among young men and the ravages of these combined social ills on women of all ages.
These are not well-worn topics in Antillean theater. Whether in French or in Creole, French West Indian writers and directors have concentrated their attention over the last 50 years to fighting economic and political oppression by the former colonizer, turned “homeland” (patrie) in 1946. That “Trames”, by Gerty Dambury, and “Comme deux frères” by novelist Maryse Condé, turn to these pressing and very contemporary domestic issues is significant, and testament to their importance for female agency in Antillean society.
“Trames” is the story of a mother-son relationship poisoned by the latter’s inability to hold a job and his subsequent drug use and descent into crime. Although Christian’s mother is an accomplished and well-traveled researcher, with a specialty in women’s narratives (spouse abuse, prostitution, rape, etc.), Christian cannot manage to shake off the heritage of an absent father and take responsibility for himself. Claiming frustration with what he perceives as his mother’s privileging of her work over the problems of her progeny, he robs her of her dearest possessions, then murders her when she asserts her freedom, by telling him in no uncertain terms, “You are not my final destination.” Dambury places on the lips of her heroine a terribly bold statement for an Antillean mother to say to her child, yet it is the only one this women can make if she is to liberate herself from yet another man attempting to wield power over her. In that final act of rebellion, the playwright makes an equally telling statement about Guadeloupean society, where the new turf lords are adolescent males and the latest victims their mothers and grandmothers who tirelessly worry about them, feed them, clean them up and bail them out of trouble. Directed by Dambury, the production which just closed, starring Firmine Richard, was tight, controlled and excellently acted, with a fine supporting cast: Jalil Leclaire as the lost and angry Christophe and Martine Maximin, as a kind of women’s wisdom personified and who also makes an astonishing performance as a prostitute/interviewee.
“Comme deux frères” which runs this week, adopts a similar theme but, under the direction of José Exilis, does not pack nearly the same punch. The text, published in 2007, is a small revelation nevertheless: two friends awaiting trail for murder share the secrets of their pasts in a jailhouse confession that serves as a reminder of the same social problems, here on a grander scale: school, government, religion, the police and above all the family are remiss in their duty to raise a morally grounded younger generation; worse, these institutional actors are the perverse tools of a society gone to wreck and whose victims again include women: the teenage mothers and abused lovers these young men leave in the wake of their destruction. In a powerful, penultimate scene, the friends struggle with a Faustian pact: Jeff, who has always taken the blame for Greg’s failures, will agree to plead sole guilt for the murder if Greg will sleep with him, a deal the macho Greg cannot bear to accept, in part because of his surprise at the discovery of his friend’s parallel life. Maryse Condé has always been a writer of the tough realities of life in France’s tropical paradise. In this play, she develops a provocative metaphor: because Greg has screwed Jeff over these many long years he owes his friend a **ck for getting him out of an equally **cked up situation. In her indictment of contemporary Guadeloupean society, Condé shows that this impossible situation is shared by the community at large.
Unfortunately for Condé’s message, the production by Martinique’s Compagnie Siyaj is marred by a surprisingly blatant casting error: while the text treats clearly with young delinquents, Exilis has chosen to cast his longtime collaborator, 61-year old Gilbert Laumord, as Jeff. While Laumord is a talented actor and dancer, the choice creates an insurmountable problem of representation, added to by the soulful notes Jeff plays on the harmonica and his poetically tortured dance steps. The text, in its perverse pact and the dangerously insatiable will to live of Greg, demands the irresistible energy, uncompromising anger and pulsating music of youth. Exilis has created something more akin to a meditation on crime, where a fragmented dance interrupts the friends’ musings, on a bare stage that dispenses with the cramped promiscuity of the pair’s jail cell : necessary here to convey their descent into the existential pit from which they will never escape.
Dambury’s riveting production and Exilis’ failed opportunity can be taken as immediate evidence that contemporary Antillean theater may be both closer to current realities and farther yet from creating a viable esthetic than may have been supposed.
“Comme deux frères” to Oct. 10, Tues, Wed, Fri, Sat, 8:30 pm, Thurs, 7:30 pm, Grande Halle de la Villette, Parc de la Villette (19e), Mº Porte de Pantin, info: www.villette.com or tel: 01.40.03.75.75.
Photo credits: "Trames", Emir Srklovic; "Comme deux frères", Philippe Bourgade
