Cole Porter, star of the golden age of Broadway, arrives in Paris in the form of a musical show in his honor. To revive the Roaring Twenties, so formative for the most Parisian of American composers and lyricists, the director Christophe Mirambeau and the company Les Frivolités Parisiennes have woven a portrait from his songs.
Paris is more for Cole Porter than a simple love story. ” Paris is for Cole Porter the place of freedom, underlines the French director Christophe Mirambeau. A very restricted freedom in the United States, especially since we will be entering into prohibitionist laws and since he was himself brought up in a very British-Victorian education. “
Arrived in France in 1917, this young and rich American heir divides his time between the Foreign Legion and his life as a playboy. ” Porter songs in the 2nd degree revealed his emotional, sentimental journey, continues Christophe Mirambeau. It also reveals his sometimes very biting irony, his fantasy and moods that he would never have expressed through his education and his kind of extremely casual elegance. “
With elegance, enthusiasm and nearly 200 period costumes – each more extravagant than the next – Christophe Mirambeau translates the Cole Porter spirit into a sober and sophisticated scenography, very graphic and never before agreed.
” I wanted an abstract setting, a sort of re-imagining of an avant-garde canvas from the 1920s. But there was no question of making a biopic or some kind of fake real musical that would tell the story of the life, what boredom! There are books, there are movies, there is Wikipedia at a pinch. No, I wanted to tell moods, tell colors, make the public want to throw themselves on Porter literature, on scores, records, appreciate and discover even more deeply the genius of this protean and very complex character. “
A multifaceted character
Le Châtelet therefore shows not one, but three Cole Porter on its set, brilliantly embodied by singer-actors from the company Les Frivolités Parisiennes. This young troop, specialist in lightness, is led by Benjamin El Arbi and Mathieu Franot.
” As there are three Cole Porters, we have five orchestrators with all their jokes, their feeling and their writing skills that are part of the company. “
” These three Cole Porter are three axes of his personality: there is one who is more intimate, the composer at home, there is one who is more lyrical, sentimental and there is one who is more outgoing. , on the excess of life. “
Full of life and nostalgia, glamorous, sparkling and deeply human at the same time, ” Cole Porter in Paris »Is told above all in music.
► ” Cole Porter in Paris “, to be discovered at the Théâtre du Châtelet until January 1, 2022.