The new bourgeois madness of Michel Fau

Michel Fau is back. And he’s in great shape. At the Michodière theater, he directed and embodied with his accomplice Catherine Frot the star couple of a play by André Roussin from 1951 “When the child appears”. Behind its outskirts of boulevardière farce, this biting comedy is a rant against a certain bourgeoisie of the upmarket neighborhoods, their worn-out principles and their hypocrisy. With his taste for the offbeat, the actor-director has no equal in bringing it up to date, by instilling a good dose of excess and madness.

The argument is anything but correct. Charles Jacquet, married to Olympe Jacquet, father of two children, Annie and Georges, of marrying age, is a prominent politician, a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. Under-Secretary of State for the Family, he has just voted to close brothels and above all to increase the penalties for the “offence” of abortion. But when his family is faced with an epidemic of unwanted pregnancies, he is ready to renounce all his principles to preserve his reputation and his career…

As soon as the curtain rises, you are immersed in a deceptively cozy closed universe, between cul-de-sac walls of acid blue. Even the famous sofa, totem of the boulevard hurts the eyes. Michel Fau greedily portrays this curly and cynical “Senatorial Tartuffe”, whose heart of ice thaws a little at the end, epilogue obliges. Catherine Frot offers us an anthology performance in the role of the reactionary and naive bourgeois who loses her footing. His existential shipwreck takes on an almost poetic dimension.

Wicked fun

The husband constantly humiliates his wife, who humiliates her maid. The Fau-Frot duo have a great time, competing in wicked drollery. Eagerly stalking the legacy of the cardiac grandfather (truculent Maxime Lombard), the children are not left out. Quentin Dolmaire (the brilliant computer scientist from the “UFO(s)” series) is explosive as the son of an immature family, completely in the West. After a hesitant first scene, Agathe Bonitzer brilliantly takes on her role of minx, future countess… Everyone, each one, delivers horrors. The public, falsely outraged, laughs, a laugh tinged with yellow… the ferocious boulevard becomes cathartic.

Michel Fau likes to affirm that he hates the bourgeois spirit and he proves it with this lively and wild vaudeville. No doubt he could have shortened the piece a little, to erase the more vintage sides and speed up the action. But overall we have a great time enjoying this cowardly comedy, transcended by the infernal couple Michel Fau and Catherine Frot.