Raoul is a play/dance performance/circus thingummy by and with James Thiérrée. Yup, Festwochen, you guessed it. :)

Plot:
Raoul (James Thiérrée) lives alone, somewhere. And he’s been alone so long, he’s become agoraphobic. But then he’s visited by someone who looks suspiciously like himself and the walls of his hut fall down. Slowly, he makes his way back into the world, always looking for something – a way to move, a way to live, a way to fly.

I totally and completely loved Raoul. Thiérrée is a wonderful performer and he easily fills the stage with his Raoul. Though I expected something different from the description (something more along the lines of Cirkus Cirkör whose Romeo and Juliet was the first play I ever saw at the Festwochen, btw and which sparked my obsession with this festival), I wasn’t disappointed in the slightest.

Thiérrée spends practically the whole play alone on stage. I mean, he cleverly uses a body double to create the effect of being in two places at once (and even though I knew he was using a double, I sometimes didn’t get when the change happened, he was that good). And there are three (wonderful, wonderful) puppets that spend some time on stage and interact with him, but it is a one-man-show. And I can hardly imagine Thiérrée a part of an ensemble – he seems to need the whole stage to himself.

Speaking of the stage, the design was absufuckinglutely, incredibly beautiful. That’s how you use curtains. 30 Seconds to Mars should really contact Thiérrée. Seriously, all those curtains you can see jumbled in the above picture? In one gasp-inducing moment, with one big wooosh they all right themselves and are suddenly the background of the stage… and it looks awesome.

The story is in turns funny and touching and ulitmately completely heart-warming. I left the theatre with a huge, goofy grin on my face. I think it’s mostly the way Thiérrée interacts with the actually pretty minimalistic props he has. Like the picture frame (see above) or the way Raoul “talks” to his hut.

Oh, and btw, isn’t he totally sexy?

I don’t know what else to say, except that if James Thiérrée finds his way back to Vienna, I’m so going to be there.