A text projection can be vaguely seen through a twilight veil of fog. It is a list of the elements that make up the human body. Oxygen. Carbon. Hydrogen. At the same time, a text is also pronounced, but a crackling sound makes the words unintelligible. Do not give text too much weight, does director Romeo Castellucci want to give his audience, immediately in these first minutes of his production Bérénice. Surrender to the non-standing. It’s just language.
In Béréniceplay from 1670 by Jean Racine, happens remarkably little; Even Racine itself was delighted with how little action he had managed to put it in his play. But, he wrote in his preface (paraphrased here): Speaking is also an action.
In short: Titus (just became Emperor of Rome) and Bérénice (Queen of Palestine) are in love, but because the people of Rome is not so happy with that, Titus has decided to leave Bérénice. The piece is about his attempt to make it clear to her, and her attempt to relate to that message. Racine wrote the text in rhyming verses, in which the characters express themselves as polite and controlled as possible, while emotions are stubbornly held under it by that hermetic form. In a sense, it is the language itself that turns against the loved ones in this piece. The piece derives its dramatic power from the inability to express feelings with language, to make real contact.
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Director Castellucci emphasizes this by stripping the piece of all characters, except for Bérénice. She is only on stage, played by the French star actress Isabelle Huppert. The verses of Bérénice are integrally pronounced by her, sometimes rattling, sometimes mechanical, sometimes calm, sometimes screaming – but she doesn’t get an answer. We see her dragging around with an electric stove on that large, cold -featured, foggy playing surface. Sometimes it is as if she is under water. She is extraordinary alone.
What she says also deserves attention, because Hemeltjelief, what an uncomfortable image of women we get here. Disruption, she is, says Bérénice, when Titus escapes her. Her heart is only beating for him. Without comments, Castellucci shows the female character as it is so frequently in the (theater and film) history (and in that choice the performance with the great The Brotherhood by Carolina Bianchi, which can also be seen in the Holland Festival next week), namely: the woman who only derives her right to exist from the desire of men.
Castellucci subtly makes the translation of the character into the actress who plays her. “Bérénice is not worth all those tears,” says Racine, when Titus has to cry. “Isabelle is not worth all those tears,” says Huppert. What do we look at? To Bérénice? To Isabelle Huppert? Are not both, because of our eyes, just as fictional?
Castellucci, who is also a visual artist in addition to being a director, Paart Bérénices self-smalling Clausen on visual language in which female archetypes can be recognized: the housewife, the witch, the lust object. Also with this he forces attention to look for ourselves: what do we see when we look at female bodies? Bodies that, we know that best, actually simply consist of particles of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen.
Finally, as Huppert faltering and delaying, like a machine whose battery is approaching its end, it is not so much the character, but the female image that she represents that we see sagging together. “Don’t look at me,” says Huppert when the fog is raised. Those words are not from Racine. She says it calmly, then louder, then chillingly bright. “Don’t look at me.” Bérénice Shows: also watching is an action.