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In the courtyard of the Musée Calvet, usually an art and archeology museum on rue Joseph Vernet, you can set up your chair or deckchair in front of a large stage on trestles. In continuous bass of the festival, the cicadas make a noise contest with the wind in the leaves and the sun is still beating down. The real show tonight for me starts before, in the audience. We find grandmothers in Geox sandals, hipsters with beards and teens in jogging. It is however quite rare in an event of the IN which does not always seem to succeed in interesting the teenagers of Avignon.
If all the young people of the surroundings are reunited with Snapchat open on the phone, it is because tonight, the one who interprets The Magnificent is none other than Sofiane Zermani, known to the general public as Fianso. Fianso established himself in the rap game in 2017 because with his three projects #I'm going to dry, his album Bandit Dirt and Goodfellas, it becomes three times platinum records in one year.
Alongside Fianso, the sublime Rebecca Marder of the Comédie-Française plays Daisy. The one who interprets Nick and who tells the story is Pascal Rénéric, used to national stages and a great collaborator of Vincent Macaigne. To accompany the three actors, the female string quartet Zaïde, Issam Krimi, pianist and producer of hip hop artists, trumpeter Shems Bendali and five students from Ensatt all accompanied by a rap instrument.
The story comes to life and, text in hand, Pascal Rénéric takes us to West Egg, Long Island in the 1920s to meet Jay Gatsby, the young millionaire with a troubled past who organizes parties in his luxurious villa. Francis' book In a story reworked by Alexandre Plank for this performance, we rediscover the love that Gatsby has for Daisy, which he never forgot when he left to fight and who she married a certain Tom Buchanan who openly cheats on her.
Fianso in Gatsby is the perfect combination. His a little silly side and his confidence as a rapper who is turned upside down by this work far from his comfort zone created perfectly this character that we can only love and about whom we want to know more. We applaud the performance of Rebecca Marder who is simply charming and natural in Daisy. Pascal Rénéric takes us under his wing to make us travel, the whole story told through Nick's eyes, we have the impression of being good friends.
But my favorite of this show is the general atmosphere! Sitting on his deckchair, we listen to the cicadas that punctuate the rap instrument and the musical ensemble that rock the story.
The most touching are the applause: all the teens who get up from their seats to cheer the rapper, draw Snapchat and Instagram and ask for autographs and selfies and the Avignon public delighted with the spectacle that has just unfolded. Le Magnifique is also a way of introducing teenagers to the theater and the less young to the world of rap and hip hop.
You can find the entire France Culture event below: