“En Attendant Bojangles,” currently enjoying a brief run at Al Bustan Hotel, is based on Olivier Bourdeaut’s best-selling French novel of the same title.
Like the novel, the play recounts the story of an atypical family, told from the perspective of a couple’s son. Accompanied by Nina Simone’s well-known tune “Mr. Bojangles,” Georges, the father, and his wife (variously called Elsa, Georgette or Louise) have decided to live a joyful and blissful life filled with love for one another.
Routine is banned from their household. (They walk their pet bird on a leash, for instance.)
Their home lives rotate around the marvelous stories they tell but, ultimately, they become ensnared in reality as tragedy starts affecting their lives.
The play’s director Victoire Berger-Perrin adapted Bourdeaut’s novel for the stage. The day before the play’s Beirut opening, its director and cast members - Didier Brice (Georges), Julie Delarme (his wife) and Victor Boulenger (their son) - sat with The Daily Star to discuss the play and its adaptation.
Published in France in 2016, Bourdeaut’s novel was a critical and commercial success, with 600,000 copies sold, prompting an adaptation for radio and a graphic novel.
Berger-Perrin and Delarme were among those who were delighted by the novel. “I read the book when it came out,” Delarme recalled, “and I loved it so much I wrote a letter to the author. It is not something I do usually. And he answered! A year and a half later, I am lucky to be playing this text and character, which I love.”
“I also stumbled onto the book early on in January 2016,” Berger-Perrin said. “A few months later, I clearly saw that it had to be brought to theater. I’ve been lucky enough to discover it early, so I reached out to the author and the publishing house and ended up obtaining the rights not even a year after its publication.
“So only a year and a half after the story was on the stage! We were able to ride on the wave of the book’s success.”
“En Attendant Bojangles” was staged only two years after the book’s publication.
It has been successful in Europe, boasting a full house at France’s Avignon Festival OFF in 2017.
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Bourdeaut’s distinctive narrative style is what makes “En Attendant Bojangles” such a unique novel, and Berger-Perrin sought to preserve it. “I’ve decided to keep a lot of narration, words and sentences as they were written by the author,” she said. “It’s a book with a lot of vocabulary but at the same time there’s a naive and childish tone, as everything is told through the child’s perspective.
“In parallel, I’ve intertwined dialogue between the parents and their son. So in my adaptation I’ve played with those two aspects. Staying in the original text but adding live features, as we are in a performance.”
While the novel is told from the son’s perspective, the play also draws on Georges’ point of view.
Another challenge in adapting “Bojangles” to the stage was to integrate the novel’s several scene changes. “I had to play with the multiple spaces and times,” the director said. “Action starts in a Parisian flat, then goes to Spain and in a hospital. So we needed a smooth scenography, easy to follow for the audience to identify the different spaces and easy to manipulate for the [actors]. To mark those different atmospheres, lighting was key.”
Another important decision was to restrict the onstage cast to only three characters, representing the secondary characters in different ways.
The cast expressed excitement about staging “Bojangles” outside Europe and looked forward to the Lebanese audience’s reception.
“We think the audience will be charmed by the originality and fancifulness of the story and the stage production,” Delarme said.
“Mental illness is dealt with as it starts affecting one of the characters but joy and love remain at the center of the story.”
Persona Productions’ “En Attendant Bojangles” will be staged (in French only) at Hotel Al Bustan’s Emile Boustani Auditorium through Sunday June 2. Tickets are available via Antoine Bookshops. For further information: 03-22-68-18.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
