These days, Big French Musi­cals seem to have prob­lems find­ing their audi­ence. Late­ly, the big pro­duc­tions play­ing in huge venues such as Palais des Con­grès or Palais des Sports didn’t have the same suc­cess as their pre­de­ces­sors while small­er musi­cals in small­er places (well, in real the­atres, not con­cert halls) such as Créa­tures or Chance have enjoyed a real suc­cess. Is it the end of an era ? Will we be able to attend a musi­cal with­out being sur­round­ed by pop-corn eat­ing scream­ing teenage girls ? Time will tell. But I couldn’t miss the oppor­tu­ni­ty to attend Don Juan, the lat­est French sen­sa­tion. You nev­er know, maybe this is our last chance to enjoy this kind of experience.

Félix Gray, who had a cou­ple of hits in the 1980’s with titles such as “To all the girls we loved before”or “E vado via”, has writ­ten and com­posed a musi­cal based on Don Juan, the leg­endary wom­an­iz­er. Some peo­ple have trou­ble with such an unfaith­ful char­ac­ter. As for me, if I had such a wife, I would prob­a­bly be cheat­ing on her. Why stay at home when you can have so much fun in bars. Espe­cial­ly in bars where gor­geous (male and female) fla­men­co dancers hang out every night.
But for once, I won’t talk about how I enjoyed the dancers (they are usu­al­ly the only thing that keeps me awake in this kind of show). But oh my ! I real­ly hope some day Euro­pean laws will allow polygamy (or at least bigamy) because, hon­est­ly, I wouldn’t be able to choose between Angel Rojas and Car­los Rodriguez, the two chore­o­g­ra­phers of the show. I would have to mar­ry both and I do think Yvonne Rojas-Rodriguez is a very nice name. Or does Yvonne Rodriguez-Rojas sound bet­ter ? I’m so tired of being a Nguyen. It’s so plain. But my next fam­i­ly name is not this month’s top­ic. Instead, I would like to write about the mes­sage that is con­veyed by the show.

By now, you should know how French pro­duc­ers launch a big musi­cal. Six months to one year before the show opens, a sin­gle is released, so the audi­ences are famil­iar with one song from the musi­cal. Usu­al­ly, pro­duc­ers choose to release the love song, prefer­ably with the word “love” in the title, and prefer­ably deal­ing with love, true love, pure love. A true mes­sage of hope.
Romeo & Juli­ette had “Love is the most beau­ti­ful thing”. The Ten Com­mand­ments had “It’s so strong… It’s so every­thing… Love… It will be us…” (uh, does that make sense in Eng­lish ? Well, in French nei­ther). L’ombre d’un géant had some­thing like “bla bla bla so we can love stronger”. Les Demoi­selles de Rochefort had “I love you, I love you, I love you since always” and as for Glad­i­a­teur, I can’t remem­ber, but what kind of love song can you expect from a show that fea­tures a chore­o­graphed male rape ?

Well, Don Juan goes much fur­ther. The main song is about love but doesn’t have the word love in it. It’s called “Change” and it has noth­ing to do with a Lisa Stan­field song. It’s much more philo­soph­i­cal. It goes some­thing like “Change, so love can arrive… Change so pas­sion can free us, so our sto­ry will be writ­ten in books… So love can spread from the Shang­hai forests to Ire­land”. How rel­e­vant is that ? There’s prob­a­bly not much love in Shang­hai forests, well, maybe there’s not even a sin­gle tree, let alone a for­est, in Shang­hai. But who cares about flo­ra, ecol­o­gy and geog­ra­phy ? This song says that you need to change so love can arrive. I have always thought that it worked the oth­er way, more like an Andrew Lloyd Web­ber song : “Love changes every­thing… Love will nev­er let you be the same…” or “I’ve been changed, yes real­ly changed… In these past few days when I see myself… I seem like some­one else…”. Duh !

For years, those stu­pid Lloyd Web­ber songs have taught me that love would change me. And now, this Felix Gray song tells me that *I* have to change if I want love to come into my life ! Maybe that’s why I’m still sin­gle. And I real­ly need to thank this musi­cal for such a rev­e­la­tion. Maybe I should con­sid­er chang­ing so love can arrive. Maybe I should be nicer. Maybe I should be less lazy and should have accept­ed to inter­view Angel Rojas and Car­los Rodriguez for this month’s issue, instead of com­fort­ably let­ting some­one else do it. I could have found not one but two loves. Don Juan – the musi­cal – tells me to change, to act, to do some­thing instead of just wait­ing. For that rea­son alone, for that life-chang­ing mes­sage, Don Juan is def­i­nite­ly worth see­ing. And for the dancers too.

I might not be around in the next cou­ple of months. I might be in Shang­hai. Doing my best to spread love in the forests.