Dramaturgie : Claude MATHIEU-VASSILIEV Assistante à la mise en scène : Nathalie CAU Acteurs de la Comédie française : Christian CLOAREC, Igor TYCZKA, Thierry HANCISSE, Catherine SALVIAT, Loïc CORBERY, Bakary SANGARE, Madeleine MARION, Pierre VIAL, Anne KESSLER, Grégory GADEBOIS Acteurs élèves stagiaires de l’école Florant : Cindy GIRARD, Cédric LEPROUST, Manuel de PONCHEVILLE, Romuald SZKLARTCHICK, Benjamin TANGUY
Companies :
Don't Be Shy Productions, Arte France
Plot synopsis
Written at the age of 24, On the High Road by Chekhov is a dramatic essay in one act that reflects a miserable daily life in a limitless territory, Siberia…
Beyond a captivating journey in this closed rehearsal space, as close as possible to Chekhov’s text, between its lines, behind its stage directions and punctuation, in this one-night stopover where pilgrims, ex-convicts and moujiks will coexist… It is also a journey into the author’s rather unknown youth; that of the doctor, the “reporter” and the apprentice photographer who, among other incessant immersions in human misery, travels more than ten thousand kilometers to study “as a voluntary internee” the conditions of detention in the penal colony of the island of Sakhalin, north of Japan, his “Mania Sakhalinosa” he explains…
Through this very holy Russia, as jovial as it is miserable, this film therefore retraces the main road of all these “voluntary internees”, both author and actors, director and finally spectators who, from table to table, from scene to scene, lead to the incarnation of a text and make the immortal work… in the depths of this Slavic soul which consumes the moment with eternity before it.
Gorky wrote to Chekhov: “By awakening the disgust of this sleeping, dying life, you accomplish an enormous work with your little stories... Your tales are elegantly cut bottles, filled with all the aromas of life."
And if Tolstoy denied Chekhov any talent as a playwright, he considered him a remarkable storyteller, writing in turn: "the illusion of truth is complete in Chekhov. It seems that he throws words into the air haphazardly, but like an impressionist painter, he obtains marvelous results with his brushstrokes; his texts produce the effect of a stereoscope."
Allusion made to this optical device from 1838, the ancestor of a relief cinema only just explored today... So thank you to all those through whom the relief arrives, and above all thank you to this team of On the main road for this relief with which it enlightens us.
