Last week, I saw Vie et mort de Pier Pao­lo Pasoli­ni, a play about the famous Ital­ian film direc­tor who got mur­dered by a hus­tler. I knew that two major cuties were fea­tured on stage : Sal­im Kechiouche and Cyril Romoli. I heard some nudi­ty was on dis­play and bin­go ! as soon as I entered the house, two actors were already naked on stage, lying on the floor while the audi­ence takes their seat. As the seat­ing is on a first-arrived, first-served basis, I faced a big dilem­ma : Should a sit on front row so I get a bet­ter view on Salim’s buns ? On the oth­er hand first rows can be dan­ger­ous. You nev­er know, with this trend for audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion… Last time, I saw a gay play (see my chron­i­cle on Les Justes Sto­ry), toi­let paper with hazel­nut paste was thrown at peo­ple on the first row. So I was cau­tious. What can you except of a play about a direc­tor whose shit-eat­ing scenes in Salo are now part of History ?

So I decid­ed to seat on the fourth row, which hap­pened to be a good choice in the end. The view was still very good and I avoid­ed a cer­tain amount of sput­ters. The play was quite inter­est­ing but for some rea­son, my mind (and my eyes) was more focused on Kechiouche and Romoli than the lead actor play­ing Pasoli­ni. Go fig­ure why. Both of them are on stage most of the time, even when they don’t speak and that’s a great idea.
As I see more musi­cals than straight plays, at some points I couldn’t help think­ing “hey, now, Pasoli­ni should burst into song”, “oooh, how roman­tic, what about a pas-de-deux here ?”. Did I tell you I’m obsessed with musi­cals ? I’m sure that play could be turned into a very inter­est­ing musi­cal, includ­ing a cho­rus line of Ital­ian hus­tlers and a song called “Cir­cle of shit” on the mak­ing of Salo. Hey, why not ? Peo­ple have been writ­ing musi­cals about oth­er Ital­ian genius­es such as Da Vin­ci, so why not Pasolini ?

Any­way, I left the the­atre quite sat­is­fied with my evening of the­atre and the friend I was with had the per­fect sen­tence to con­clude it : “Dar­ling, nev­er trust a hus­tler”, she said.

I’m now look­ing for­ward to see the Tai­wanese drum­mers in this year’s Paris Quarti­er d’Eté Fes­ti­val. I don’t know much about their show except these men are almost naked and make a lot of noise and sweat a lot. Which can be fun. At least for a while. Beat­ing a drum with huge sticks must be so phys­i­cal. That’s why these men have to wear g‑strings (prob­a­bly made out of Asian silk). Now, which appro­pri­ate song could they sing ? “You’re nev­er ful­ly dressed with­out a smile” ? Oh, being obsessed with musi­cals is prob­a­bly worst than being obsessed with men. Next month I’ll write about shop­ping for a change.