Adishatz/ Adieu
Project Arts Centre, Dublin
***
The multi-talented French stage artist Jonathan Capdevielle describes his show as a piece of "auto-fiction", a neat definition for a performance that becomes a partial self-portrait, conveyed through a capella singing and huge stage presence.
On a bare stage, smiling shyly in jeans and sweatshirt, at first he portrays his teenage self, pouring heart and soul into a medley of 1980s pop songs, as if singing into his bedroom mirror. Madonna features heavily, along with some French hits sung in translation, before a sudden switch into a more serious counter-tenor mode, highlighting the sweet purity of his voice. Throughout this 50-minute piece, he tries out new personae, at different moments finding ways to efface himself completely. Moving into drag as a Madonna look-alike, his blonde mane, lipstick and stilettos release a much more confident sexuality, with his voice dropping several octaves.
Beneath the pop-fantasy projections, memories are evoked, in a soundtrack of conversations from his past, with suggestions of painful, barely-surfacing childhood experiences. The freedom he finds in singing falters into inarticulacy in a phone conversation with his father; in another dialogue, he tries to care for a chronically ill relative. In a graphic recorded sequence, the buzz of a nightclub blow-out gives way to morning-after squalor. This too is part of who he is and what has formed him, along with the traditional folk-songs of his region in the Pyrenees, which make a surprise appearance.
From a sympathetic portrayal of adolescent confusions, the piece becomes an exploration of performance, using pop culture and transvestism to investigate at what point imitation, or role-playing, becomes a medium of expression in itself. That sounds like a self-reflexive question for an actors’ studio, but Capdevielle’s poignantly expressive performance opens it out. And, like the contradictory identities he has conjured up, it is left nicely unresolved.
Until Saturday
