Pelleas&Melisande&Pelleas - Leue – Frank Focketeyn | Rashif El Kaoui

Dimitri Leue ventures with great pleasure into the courtly art of seduction of Maurice Maeterlinck and pushes Frank Focketyn and Rashif El Kaoui into the harness of love. The courtiers, Pelléas and Golaud, search in a forest fruitlessly for the beautiful Melisande and find only each other in a superlative of love. They circle like rutting deer around each other and treat the audience to a range of feelings. Is there a bigger fool than someone in love? “Is it not too dark under this tree? Here we cannot see how happy we are.” Two master actors tumble light-footedly through this courtly love story, where threat is also never far away. Pelleas: You will never see me again. Melisande: I will always see you. I will always look out for you. Pelleas: I will be so far that you can never see me again. Melisande: For a moment I was your world. What am I now? Toen Maurice Maeterlinck won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1911, the jury mentioned that it was mainly for his plays. “Characterized by an abundance of imagination and poetic refinement.” Dimitri Leue retranslated the text of the Ghent native from French. The romantic sighing and the repetitive flirting with danger sound even sharper in Dutch. “I am not touching you. Maybe a little bit with my eyes. But my fingers are not looking along.” Pelleas&Melisande is such a wonderful fairy tale for adults about a forbidden love affair, jealousy, and melancholy. The text inspired quite a few composers: Debussy, Schönberg, Sibelius, and Fauré set this symbolist play to music. Antoon Offeciers adapts some of these compositions and gives them a jazzy sound and feel. The music is brought live by Antoon, Tim Vandenbergh, and Karel De Backer. Costumes are stitched together with silk thread by Lynn Wauters. Golaud: I am looking at your eyes. Do you sometimes close them? Melisande: Usually at night.