After a disappointing first show on Saturday afternoon, my friend Adrienne and I walked a few blocks through town to the Memminger Auditorium for Compagnie XY’s Le Grand C. It was an auspicious Spoleto debut for the French troupe Compagnie XY — don’t be surprised to see a much-deserved return a few seasons from now.
Billed as “physical theater”, Le Grand C features 17 acrobats engaging in one mesmerizing stunt after another, all strung together with understated choreography, subtle lighting, and simple costumes that keep the focus on the sheer skill, strength, and beauty of the performers.
Le Grand C‘s relatively slow, measured pace is established early on, as one acrobat after another interacts with a round, heavy piece of wood about three feet in length. With the wings of the Memminger entirely exposed, the performers walked onto the dimly lit stage, performed a subtle and in some cases pretty easy stunt, and then surrendered the silent space to another. When not active on stage, the performers typically just stood in the dark on one side or the other.
There was no music at all for that extended opening sequence, which set the tone for the rest of the piece. Sometimes the performers would simply walk through the space, defining the edges of the large mat on which they worked, deftly avoiding each other even as they made occasional eye contact.
Several dozen times in the 80-minute show, the acrobats scaled each other so that one would be standing on another’s shoulders. Typically, a third person would be up there too, sometimes standing on the head of the second — or doing a handstand — or being thrown into the air, doing a couple of flips, and landing on the shoulders of the top member of another two-person tower.
My mind kept trying to find some sort of metaphorical meaning in this layered interdependence and in the sudden, risky flights, but I’m glad to report I found no meaning beyond the purely human and physical majesty.
A few times, there were towers that extended four performers high, including an inexplicably moving moment near the end of the show when the man on the bottom kept singing some sort of French folk song for as long as he could as his fellow performers climbed atop him. He gasped, shuddered, and quit singing as the fourth one clambered just past his shoulders.
For the most part, a few of the larger men formed the bases of these human towers, with the women on top, but there were delightful and unexpected variations that made even the repetitious movements feel fresh. In one great moment, an older, somewhat slighter acrobat (Abdeliazide Senhadji) supported a tower with three others rising from his shoulders.
Most of these stunts unfolded slowly — perhaps out of concern for simple safety — but the pace was all the more effective because of the juxtaposition with more kinetic moments, like the launching of performers high into the air so that they could land in a hammock of arms well across the stage. In one beautiful moment, two female acrobats even embraced in mid-air before being caught together by a group of their companions.
Toward the end, the towers began to assemble themselves with the acrobats lying down and then being lifted up one person at a time by the rest of the troupe.
And then everyone would walk around a bit — with only the occasional flirtatious look, snicker, or physical provocation. They’d gather themselves, and then do something else I’ve never seen human bodies do.
I could have watched Le Grand C all day and deep into the night.
There are shows of Le Grand C on 5/27, 5/29, 5/30, 5/31, and 6/1. They appear to be mostly sold out, though there are some seats remaining front right and front left. Trust me, those are excellent seats, especially if you can get in the front row, despite how iffy they might appear on the seating chart.
In my largely negative review of Compagnie Käfig at the TD Arena, I noted the very misleading seating chart and other basic production issues.
Well, as much as I enjoyed Le Grand C, I have to note some odd problems with that production as well.
I’m pretty well acquainted with the Memminger Auditorium — a spectacular and versatile black box venue. I’ve had some amazing experiences with front row seats there for Spoleto shows, including Laurie Anderson’s Homeland in 2008, Gallim Dance’s I Can See Myself in Your Pupil in 2010, and Kneehigh Theatre’s The Red Shoes in 2011.
I missed the date when tickets went on sale for this year’s festival, but I figured even buying a week late I might have a shot at front row tickets for Le Grand C. But the clickable seating chart for the Memminger wasn’t working when I tried to select specific seats, and the automatic selection of the two best seats was putting me in a row about halfway back. Now, those would have been perfectly fine, but I just like sitting close.
So I called the ticket office and was told that no front row seats were available — but second row center was up for grabs. Lovely.
They were great seats, for sure, but there were about 10 empty front row seats for Saturday’s show. Three people from somewhere else were seated by a festival employee or volunteer in empty seats in the front row of the left orchestra. But that left multiple other empties, including two right in front of us, which were taken after the show began by two (quite tall) ushers.
But that still left about eight empty seats in the front row at what appeared to be a sold out show. There was one handicapped guest in the front row, so maybe other seats were held for that purpose. Or maybe that row was simply blocked out for special guests or festival supporters. Curiously, the seating chart for the remaining shows this coming week simply shows no seats in front row spots where I know there are in fact seats.
Why?
I’m really not sure, but if you end up with ushers sitting front row center — in my opinion, the best seats in the Memminger — there is a flaw somewhere in the system.
And that wasn’t the only weird issue.
Fortunately, the two toddlers just in front and to the right of us were amazingly well-behaved, but there was one really chatty kid behind us and off to the left. Since the show had extended passages without music, we could hear that toddler talking off and on for the entire show.
At what point do the ushers, festival employees, or venue managers — or somebody — go up to an audience member and simply say that they can’t stay if their child can’t be quiet? In this case, the noise didn’t just interfere with other guests’ ability to enjoy the performance, but could potentially have raised concerns about the safety of the acrobats.
So, my experience was a bit of a puzzle this year. Did I just have bad luck in my negative experiences regarding Spoleto’s normally stellar production values? Or has the festival adopted some flawed systems for ticket sales and venue management?