Live at BAM: ‘Tabac Rouge’
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to ingest a large amount of hallucinogens before horsing around on wheeled office furniture? If not, watching James Thierrée’s “Tabac Rouge” — which played last week at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) — may give you some insight. Against a dark, moveable set, a cast of dusty characters jumped, twisted and writhed their way through a gloomy, nebulous plot centered on a king-like character played by Thierrée.
Thierrée, the drama’s center point, also directed, choreographed and designed the set, which featured a huge, rickety-looking scaffolding covered in grimy mirrored panels. The result of Thierrée’s wordless physical theater creation takes the mind-bent office chair romp concept and adds a crew of energetic mimes. In between pensive armchair-bound pipe-smoking sessions, Thierrée exploded into furious bouts of activity at a large desk, as well as angry gibberish tirades directed at his squirming minions. The minions rebel at one point, the king man dies and is revived and life seems to go on and on in cycles of rage and opiate calm.