Athens by night

Synopsis

"It is a performance composed of Shakespeare's two plays set in Ancient Greek Athens - Timon of Athens and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Athens in particular is an ambivalent setting, potentially secretive and extravagant, between palaces and forest, ancient stone and nature, reality and dreams, life and theatre. Although quite different, the two plays are about escaping from a coded world.

It's about the attraction to mysteries in the night, surprises, the unexpected, where dreams come from, the differences between people, and allowing yourself to use everyday reality to build new worlds in mental space. Starting from the paradox that theatre is both completely useless and essential, the show is a poetic and aesthetic journey in which people in the audience can question the social environment they are part of as individuals."

Charles Chemin

 Chronicles:

"Charles Chemin proves to be a connoisseur of the audience this time and delivers the ingredients of the enchantment recipe, perfectly suited. The invasion of the hall with the magically lit balloons from inside is a moment of grace and the audience enters the game in which they are invited. The important role in this segment of the show belongs to the group of characters-actors, and here we recognize the directorial approach that spoke of "the paradox that the theater is both completely useless and essential". Even the inclusion of spectators in the play on stage has its programmatic purpose and is well controlled by the professionalism of the actors…”

Marius Dobrin, SpectActor nr. 2/2018

"The "Marin Sorescu" National Theatre of Craiova presented a large-scale coupé performance, which brought together the "Athenian" plays Timon of Athens and A Midsummer Night's Dream. The first shows cynicism taken to the extreme, the second, eroticism without limits. Director Charles Chemin is a disciple of Robert Wilson and does no more than reproduce his solutions. Adrian Damian's lavish set design uses the same backdrop eclairs as Wilson's master. The moon in The Dream impresses, but in a single night, it can't go through all the phases, as on stage, that happens in a "moon". Timon was performed in George Volceanov's scholarly but italicized new translation. In The Dream, Horia Gârbea's excellent recent version was preferred to Topârceanu's agreeable but rather banal translation."

Adrian Mihalache, SpectActor nr. 2/2018

"Charles Chemin, a French director, works in Craiova in 2014, as an assistant to the famous Robert Wilson, at the Rhinoceros show by Eugen Ionescu. The environment mediates, among other things, the knowledge of a Romanian theater institution and its artistic potential. Which does not remain without consequences. On the contrary, it prompts him to come back in a little while with a project of his own. Two of Shakespeare's plays, Timon of Athens and A Midsummer Night's Dream, together form a common scenario for a show entitled Athenian Nights. On the keyboard of the dialectic between hate-love and theater-reality, a coherent narrative and ideational artistic approach is developed. The factual account ensures its organicity and transparency. Even though one is a tragedy and the other a comedy, and their stylistic treatment differs, they are delivered as a single "story". Their autonomy is not compromised, however, since what brings them closer together is that process of sharpening moral values into the negative, noted by many Shakespearean exegetes. In the case of Timon, for example, the lucidity crisis is total. With a minimum of gesticulation, but deeply designed inside, Claudiu Bleonţ manages a meaningful creation, of a mobility that does not refuse effusions, invested with a vibrant fund of humanity. Sorin Leoveanu, on the other hand, an equally solid presence in the role of the Senator, opts for a serious, intensely nuanced, subtly ironic performance, with a succession of masks attentive to the subtext. Both actors brilliantly prove their class."

Dana Pocea, Luceafărul de amnoun, no. 7/2018