An evening at the theatre

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Our nearest town, Lavelanet, is a big one for the area - 7000 + inhabitants. It’s fallen on hard times as the textile industry that kept it busy and prosperous is in ever more terminal decline. Shops have closed, hotels are boarded up. But the council works hard to keep things positive. There are festivals - the yearly Jazz’velanet which livens up November and various other points of the year, la Fête de la Noisette, Festiv’Art, Printemps des Poètes …… and events of all kinds every month. Cultural events are often centred on the municipality-run cinema, which doubles as a theatre and performance space of all kinds.

That’s where we went yesterday, to see Andre Halimi’s ‘Lettres de Délation’. This tells the story, previously almost unknown to me, of those French who during the occupation in the Second World War, passed letters to the authorities denouncing neighbours, friends, even partners as Jews, Communists, Gaullists, Freemasons or homosexuals. It sounds a heavy evening, but even though the subject was a sobering one, it was a wonderful experience. François Bourcier is a well-known comedian (‘Comédien caméléon de l’Espace La Comédia), who did the lot. He became those letter writers: by turn an old man, a self-regarding priest, a gentlewoman, a concierge, a mother of young children, a lawyer and so many more. He became the supporting cast: the uncomprehending child whose mother was taken from him to Drancy then Auschwitz, the jack-booted soldier, the politician. With energy and dynamism he transformed himself by the second from rabble-rouser, to snivelling child to ingratiating self-justifier, with simple props that tumbled out of ancient suitcases suspended from on high. It was a fantastic tour de force that left behind an impression more powerful than any sober reading of those letters could have done. The last letter of all, from a shopkeeper complaining about the rising numbers of Jews in the neighbourhood, and which resembled so many of the letters that he’d already read, turned out to have been written in 2004………..


By the way, to all those of you who sent me kind messages following my last blog: thank you. I'm feeling much better now.

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