The Isabelle Huppert vehicle is a curious subgenre of French theater. At this point, its ingredients have grown predictable: They include a high-profile male director, like Robert Wilson or Ivo van Hove; a prestigious playhouse; and a central role that casts Huppert as a woman teetering on the edge of reason.
Huppert, 70, has adhered to this formula in a diverse set of plays in recent years, from Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” to Tennessee Williams’s “The Glass Menagerie,” and, in New York, Florian Zeller’s “The Mother.” She was the focal point in all of these, but this season’s entry, a “Bérénice” directed by Romeo Castellucci at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, goes much further.
The production does away with any pretense that it is about more than its star. Castellucci and Huppert have equal billing in all publicity material, down to the ticket stubs, and Huppert’s name is literally embroidered into the curtains that frame the stage. Some of the sentences that adorn them are barely legible because of the fabric’s creases, but one of them, a quote from a playbill interview with Castellucci, describes Huppert as “the synecdoche of theater.”
Under the circumstances, don’t expect to actually hear much of “Bérénice,” a 1670 tragedy by Jean Racine that is widely considered one of the greatest plays in French. For starters, most of the characters have fallen by the wayside. Huppert is the only performer who speaks, delivering Racine’s alexandrine verse to an empty stage — or, in one scene, to a washing machine.
Racine’s play offers a classic choice between love and duty: Titus, who is about to become the emperor of Rome, lives with Bérénice, the queen of Judaea. Custom dictates that a foreigner cannot become empress, however, and Titus renounces their love, leaving Bérénice shattered.
Here, a silent, model-like Titus, played by Cheikh Kébé, hardly crosses paths with Bérénice. (Imagine being cast as Huppert’s love interest and only looking her in the eyes during the curtain calls.) Kébé only materializes for a few wordless scenes, along with Giovanni Manzo as Antiochus, a close friend of Titus’s who is also in love with Bérénice.
Together, they mime the crowning of Titus with golden laurels, pose and kneel in prayer, and slowly raise their fists to the empty stage. They are later joined by a group of 12 men, who carry Titus on a cross and strip naked in a series of sluggish tableaux.
This staging choice isn’t a surprise from Castellucci, an experimental Italian director who has amassed a cult following in Europe. While he is best known for his opera stagings, his theater works trade in big, striking images, and are shot through with symbolism and frequently devoid of text.
Castellucci attempts to apply this craft to “Bérénice,” which unfolds behind a scrim, like a slightly hazy set of memories. An electronic soundscape plays up the unreality of the action. Incongruous props are sometimes wheeled in, including a sphinx-like statue, a radiator Huppert hangs onto for several minutes, and the aforementioned washing machine, which appears to be a stand-in for Titus.
If the goal was to allow Huppert to explore emotional extremes in a vacuum, it works. One minute, she is a stately queen, one hand raised to her forehead in exalted despair, stalking around the stage in sumptuous dresses designed by Iris van Herpen. The next, she unleashes a truly unhinged energy, with lines amplified and distorted to the point where they become incomprehensible.
Huppert has done all of this before, and better, in stage and screen productions that harnessed her abilities for the benefit of a story. Here, she and Castellucci crush “Bérénice” under the weight of her presence.
Only one scene, at the very end, suddenly brings her out of her comfort zone in a way that made the audience sit straight. As she recites Bérénice’s final monologues, Huppert starts stammering. Stumbling on words, struggling to get them out, she seems newly vulnerable — to the point that when she stops and sits in silence, looking left and right as it waiting for a cue, you wonder if something has gone wrong.
Then Huppert stands up, starts walking away and turns back to address the audience. “Don’t look at me,” she screams, over and over, before hiding behind her couture sleeve.
The moment has nothing to do with Racine, yet it was tailored to Huppert’s strange, overpowering stage persona. In recent years, it has started to feel like a caricature of itself, disconnected from other actors when she interacts with them. At this point in her career, she is the show. Perhaps next time, in lieu of “Bérénice,” a director can simply give us “Isabelle.”
Bérénice
Through March 28 at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris; theatredelaville-paris.com.
