He is back in Marseille, the city that saw him born and take his first steps in comedy. Solal Bouloudnine fulfills a “childhood dream” by playing these days Will you be There ? at the Théâtre des Bernardines, a room close to its old quarter. He is alone on stage. In white shorts and a tennis polo shirt, in the 1990s decor of a child’s room. Because to write this show, the actor drew on his memories, where a date marks a tipping point: August 2, 1992. That day, the composer and singer Michel Berger died of a heart attack at the age of 44 years old, after a game of tennis in his villa in Ramatuelle.
“I was 6 years, 11 months and 21 days”, Solal Bouloudnine countdown. By chance, with his mother, he is on vacation with cousins in a neighboring house. He still remembers “the fire sirens, the reporters, the tearful fans and the songs playing over the radio. On stage, he says his childhood ended that day. The young Solal realizes, at least, that everything has an end. From this anguish of death, which will never leave him, he makes the material of this show where he shakes up the chronology of the story to better ward off the end. In the manner of Back to the future, today’s Solal says to the child Solal, at the start of the play: “Play, play, live, try to be happy, it’s worth it!” »
A gallery of characters
If he draws on autofiction, Solal Bouloudnine is not the stand-up genre. “I prefer sketches and acting”, in the vein of Elie Kakou, Unknowns, or Patrick Bosso, who is to come and see him in Marseille. His gallery of characters, inspired by his relatives (his parents, his football coach, his butcher, his mistress, etc.), allows him to handle a beautiful palette of humor. Solal Bouloudnine fully embodies them, with wigs and costumes. Emotion surfaces between the laughter, on the themes of time passing, love, death, the difficulty sometimes of living, of getting started and getting out of loneliness.
The songs of Michel Berger (Personal message, The world is stone, Cezanne painted, etc.) and the video extracts are not just a soundtrack, far from it. The big and the small story intertwine. And emotion arises from these implicit exchanges. “Variety has a real power of consolation”, also says Solal Bouloudnine. With this show, he was able to measure the popularity of the singer among the youngest. “We have rarely heard louder than Will you be There ? about the wait, the breakup, everyone can identify with it”, advances the actor, before continuing: “I also have a lot of testimonials on Instagram, young spectators, sometimes 15-16 years old, who say that it is the first time that they have laughed at death. In the end, we laugh, we cry, like in a variety song.
*The show is played in Marseille until Saturday May 14 at the Théâtre des Bernardines, then the tour continues: dates can be found here.