Vanity of vanities, everything is vanity. And this lady with camellias there could be the image. Like the symbolic skull on the desk of a Florentine notable, like a memento mori on the trestles, an imposing phallic sculpture stands in a corner of the stage. It comes from the movie Mechanical Orange, which announces the color. In the theater, this may mean "modern". Or, what would be better here, "morbid".

Like the novel, the incipit Alexandre Dumas son opens the show: the narrator tells the auction dispersion of the effects of Marguerite Gautier. The beautiful courtesan has just died, riddled with debts. His creditors are repaid. Vanity, always, one attends its exhumation to recognize the body. It's his. His features, once so fine and so beautiful, are disfigured by time. During this long introduction in voice over, a veil of red crepe covers the scene. It reveals, in the background, another sculpture. In reality, a mass of naked bodies that, little by little, break down in slow motion. The tempo impregnated by Arthur Nauzyciel will not speed up. The flesh is slowly rotting.

We then meet in the bourgeois living rooms of Tout-Paris, summed up in two red sofas on a scene in panoramic format of the same shade. Armand Duval, a brave bourgeois living in Paris, falls in love with Marguerite. A demi-mondaine assumed, whose luxury lifestyle is ensured by its wealthy lovers. In spite of his relative misfortune, Armand finally conquered his heart, and made him believe for a moment that it is love, not money, that rules the world. Alas, it is not like that in Dumas, let alone with Nauzyciel.

The director, at the head of the National Theater of Brittany since 2017, draws from the novel a new material. Not romantic or romantic, but social. It tells a society that enslaves the woman, by morality or money. Marguerite Gautier becomes the prisoner of the infernal wheels of the bourgeoisie and its system of thought. A fragile and unreflected lover in the many adaptations of the novel, she becomes here a heroine of Greek tragedy, radiating pain, well incarnated by the vibrant Marie-Sophie Ferdane and her desolate sighs.

But the actress is terribly alone. Armand Duval does not have his charisma. The satellite characters shine by their (voluntary) inconsistency. They continually spoil their intimacy, wandering around the scene, most often in absurd positions. When the father of Armand comes to forbid Marguerite to attend his son, which will cause the end of their love affair, he arrives in a dressing gown. In a scene of terrible reunions, which Nauzyciel imagines, the scene closes. Like the lid of a jewelry box, a low, red sky sits dangerously high above their heads.

This brothel color "porn chic" turns to the cesspool. The bodies of the suitors are beautiful dragging lasciviously, the chest often bare, there is no heat, no hugs. Sex, never named, is omnipresent when we talk about money. It is icy and sordid, like the statue. Only Armand and Marguerite, more dressed, seem inhabited by a true love. They talk to each other, sometimes face-to-face, sometimes facing the public. Often, everyone at one end of the stage. A kiss, kneeling, like a petition, comes very late.

Despite a nice music, regularly present, and a resort to video as chic as useless (we think of an advertisement for perfume), we are more gripped by the coldness of the show than by his passion. The three hours of shows do not attract embers. It is a choice, that Arthur Nauzyciel assumes until the end, even leaving some spectators on the aisle.