The former President of the Republic is, in spite of himself, the star of the show which adapts the book dedicated to him by Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme.
By Baudouin Eschapasse
© Agnès GAUDIN / MAXPPP / PHOTOPQR/THE MOUNTAIN/MAXPPP
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QWhen he arrives on stage, drunk with victory, frumpy in his asymmetrical suit, one sleeve of which seems shorter than the other… the audience is startled. Is it really François Hollande on the stage of the free theatre*? The spectators widen their eyes. Some pinch themselves. No, it’s not really the former President of the Republic. Only the actor Scali Delpeyrat who imitates him to perfection. But it is indeed his words that are spoken on the set.
Adaptation of the book-interview by Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme, A president shouldn’t say that… published in 2016, by Stock editions, the show, on display since February 10, offers a staggering mise en abyme. We see the former head of state accessing the Elysée then agreeing to give two journalists his confidences on many political subjects until his mandate turns into vaudeville at the time of his separation from Valérie Trierweiler, his girlfriend then.
perfect illusion
“Any resemblance to reality may not be coincidental…”, warns a message projected into the hangers at the start of the piece. The viewer, mockingly, knows very well what to expect. And he even comes for that. If at any time, the name of the president is pronounced, the public easily identifies who it is. In addition to the title of the show, which takes up that of the work of the duo Davet-Lhomme, Scali Delpeyrat remarkably portrays his model. Borrowing the intonations of politics, the actor embodies a very credible François Hollande, in turn boastful during his election then struck with gravity at the time of the attacks of 2015.
Co-written with François Pérache, former member of Lionel Jospin’s cabinet who became a television screenwriter (we owe him several episodes ofA French town), this show produced by Jean-Marc Dumontet, whose closeness to Emmanuel Macron we know, could have been a simple settling of accounts with the former president. He is not. If one laughs there a lot, it could not be confined to a simple performance of imitation in Nicolas Canteloup, himself “foal” of the same Dumontet.
READ ALSO“A president should not say that”: autopsy of a compromiseAddressing subjects as diverse as the terrorist threat, the way in which a head of state consents to the targeted elimination of enemies of the nation, the sensitive issue of the independence of justice, the place of sport in our society , via the status of star footballers, but also the difficulty for a ruler to reform the country, the text plunges the public into the heart of the exercise of power, slightly opening up the backstage of the Élysée.
“The idea was not to ridicule the former president, but to show how he had to face a series of crises”, specifies Thibault de Montalembert who slips, with Lison Daniel, into the costume of one of the two interviewers of the Head of State. Seasoned investigator confronted with an editor-in-chief (played by Hélène Babu) whose procrastination exasperates him, the character portrayed by the actor who has become popular thanks to the series Ten percent, summarizes the two authors of the book. While Lison Daniel interprets a fictional figure, a female reporter tormented by ambition and eager to make herself known through a “coup”.
READ ALSOThibault de Montalembert: from Hugh Grant to “Ten percent” If the show rings true, it is not only because it respects the words of the former president to the letter. It is also because it restores the difference in approach to the profession by two generations of journalists. But also and above all because it underlines the ambivalence of the project of the two editors: to bring, week after week (61 appointments were organized over nearly four years, editor’s note), the elected official to evoke his intimacy under the guise of talk about how he sees his role.
comedy of power
The whole point of the play consists precisely in observing the game of cat and mouse in which these three characters engage, all experienced in political communication. It reveals how the interviewee, thinking he is smarter than his interlocutors, ends up letting his guard down and dropping the mask, if not out of fatuity, at least out of overconfidence. The exercise will have the devastating consequences that we know. This book will have participated, as much as his marital crisis and the division of the left, in his decision to give up running for the 2017 elections.
*“A president shouldn’t say that…”, with Thibault de Montalembet, Lison Daniel, Scali Delpeyrat and Hélène Babu, directed by Charles Templon. Free Theatre: 4, boulevard de Strasbourg, Paris 10euntil March 16, from Wednesday to Saturday at 9 p.m.