Although it may not seem like it to the majority of those thronging the streets of Edinburgh during August, there is a festival outside of the Fringe. The Edinburgh International Festival takes itself a little more seriously than its younger, gurning sibling, which can result in productions of quite ridiculous levels of self-reverential pomposity and pretension. Had you asked me a couple of days ago whether a four hour long play in French by a theatre commune, (on a set that had to be specially created in a warehouse because no theatre’s stage was deep enough) would fit this rather irritating bill, I’d probably have agreed. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Castaways of the Fol Espoir (Sunrises) is exactly such a play, produced and devised by the Théâtre du Soleil. This company are a vaguely anarcho-socialist group who all reside and work in the same disused munitions factory, and all draw the same wage (from director to coffee-boy). They rehearse for months on end, producing shows of unparalleled length and complexity. However, their skill lies in making the complexity rewarding, the length inconsequential, and the near familial nature of the cast their strongest suit.
The Castaways is a play about many things, including commando nuns, Chilean border disputes, and bloodthirsty Cossacks. These elements are all bound up in a narrative relating the experiences of a film crew working in the expansive attic of a restaurant (the eponymous Fol Espoir), attempting to adapt Jules Verne’s posthumously published novel Les naufragés du ‘Jonathan’ in the year 1914. The group are committed socialists one and all, and the silent film which they play out (with much appropriate silent-era mugging) before the audience has all the ideological subtlety of a Soviet broadcast (a genre scathingly described by Christopher Isherwood as typically involving “the usual triangle between a girl with thick legs, a boy, and a tractor.”). However, this is socialism before the souring of the dream, and you could almost believe, as a result of the passion of their performance, that the view of the world which they espouse is a truly positive and beautiful one.
However it is the very souring of the dream that is the point of the play. As the crew attempt to build their socialist vision in the attic, the events of 1914 play out in the outside world. As the world edges closer to war, the film becomes increasingly bleak and pessimistic. Events from the world outside seem to alter the film, and in one scene, the film seems to predict the events that played out in that year, including the assassination of Jean Jaures. This final death provides the crew with the crazed and fanatic energy to finish their film. The message that it ultimately conveys is that of enlightened pessimism. Dreams fail, and will always fail. The world tends to spoil them. However, the true aim of the visionary is not to build a utopia, but to show future fellow-travellers the pitfalls, so that they may avoid them. If this all sounds rather too weighty and bleak, it is only because I have not yet mentioned the fantastic physical comedy that seems to overflow the boundaries of the set. From actors that can barely keep their hands off one another (whether in hilariously passionate embraces or knockabout punch-ups), to a seagull on a stick and a small man in a kilt dancing like an idiot, the cast portray their characters with gusto and energy that often gets lost in such large productions.
I can say, categorically, that Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir (Aurores) is the greatest production I have ever seen. I would urge anyone who has even the slightest interest to try and catch a performance, or if it has finished its run, to see whatever the Théâtre du Soleil does next. They are true theatrical visionaries.
FIVE STARS
