Théâtre : SE RECONNAÎTRONT-ILS ?

After his dazzling Électre des bas-fonds, Simon Abkarian returns to Amiens. By imagining the reunion of Helen and Menelaus after the fall of Troy, he magnifies tragedy and illuminates the human grandeur of myth.

In a dazzling lyricism that does justice to women and dignity to love, Simon Abkarian creates works that remain in the memory and celebrate theater with boldness. After Électre des bas-fonds, presented in Amiens in 2022 - a dazzling success! -simon Abkarian returns to Hélène. Chosen from a host of Greek suitors, Menelaus married Helen, daughter of Zeus and Leda, Queen of Sparta. Taking advantage of Menelaus? absence, the Trojan prince Paris, protected by Aphrodite, then kidnapped the most beautiful woman in the world.

Beyond the apples of discord that play into the hands of the gods, beyond the stereotypes that freeze characters, Simon Abkarian suspends time and stages the confrontation between Helen and Menelaus after the long, bloody Trojan War. The author, director and actor restores "grandeur and breadth to these mythical characters whose ancient and human aspirations are not foreign to our own". Far from the imagery that makes Menelaus a possessive boor and Helen a treacherous whore, he reinvents the reunion between two devastated souls who no longer recognize each other after the fall of Troy. "They teeter on the brink of death, and therefore of rebirth"...

SIMON ABKARIAN

After growing up in Lebanon, he joined an Armenian theater company in California. In Paris, after several years with the Théâtre du Soleil, he won the Molière for Best Actor in 2001 for Une bête sur la Lune. La Comédie has staged three of his plays, Le dernier jour du jeûne (2013), L?envol des cigognes (2017) and Electre des bas-fonds (2022), which won three Molières. In the cinema, he will soon be playing Charles de Gaulle.

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY SIMON ABKARIAN
WITH: SIMON ABKARIAN, MARIE-SOPHIE FERDANE, RUSAN FILIZTEK (MUSICIAN)

Production: Compagnie des 5 roues