With the Covid-19 pandemic finally going away(?) , Rio de Janeiro ´s closest equivalent to Broadway or London´s East End theatre district, the Gavea shopping center with its four theaters is once again glowing and thriving.
As comedy is supposedly the best medicine to combat the often-harsh realities of daily life, this theater lover highly enjoyed recently a mirthful evening of the Jacques Mougenot comedy “O Caso” (The Case).
I write about it today because after the 30 April this hilarious farce (whose full title is “The Case of Martin Piche in French) featuring the talents of Otavio Muller, as the reluctant patient, and Leticia Isnard, as the probing psychiatrist, will be going to Brazil’s theatrical capital, Sao Paulo.
At my request JSPontes Comunicacao kindly sent me the text in Portuguese (translated from French by Marilu de Seixas Correa) because catching every word even for a long-time gringo resident in Brazil is not always as easy as reading it.
My discovery was director Fernando Philbert was as much a star as the actors Muller-Isnard because the clever text wouldn´t become as hilarious as the public found it to be if not for the hard-working and imaginative director and able pair.
A reluctant patient makes his first-–and last? —visit to the psychiatrist´s couch complaining that for the last three years or so he finds not only his daily life “chato”—or boring—but all the people and events around him equally boring.
As usual the Brazilians have their equivalent to this important –commonplace? —problem.
In 1993, Carioca playwright and Academic Guilherme Figueiredo (Campinas,1915-Rio de Janeiro, 1997) brother of the then President, “chato” General called Joao Figueiredo) wrote “General Treatise of Bores.”
Figueiredo´s main theme was “Every individual has the bore which he or she deserves. It is impossible to bore a bore, two bores of the same species don’t bore each other.”
And the Brazilian´s treatise well applies to the comedy with the French comedian-playwright´s wry ending.
After resorting to all kinds of attempts—traditional and supernatural– to decipher the dilemma of “Arnaldo,” the psychiatrist-patient relationship takes a sharp U-turn which I would love to reveal but it would spoil the evening´s fun.
And no reader—the happy end is NOT a love affair between the pair!
PS—The comedy follows up the success of Mougenot´s “Scandal of Philippe Dussaert” about a painter and falsifier-copyist who dreamt of having his artworks recognized which won Brazilian actor Marcos Caruso the 2017 Shell theatrical award.