In 2006, Coline Serreau had already offered us a feminine Arnolphe. One more woman at the school, not enough to whip a little cat, you might say! For years, Avignon had accustomed us to the deconstructionist… and economic whims of certain directors: from the potato sack turning into a Roman toga to the dream of nudity becoming reality with a Cid in a single camera brandishing his sword in front of Chimène in Eve's costume.
In 2021 Denzel Washington played Macbeth. The fact that Denzel, a great actor, is not quite a Scott prototype did not bother any thumb. No one suggested moving Cawdor to Harlem. And why had he not chosen Othello (which he should play in 2025)? That was not the question.
But the woke worm was already in the fruit. A scent of Absurdity, a whiff of rot emanated from this kingdom where he who seeks a horse will more surely find a donkey. Because, at the same time, perfidious critics and jealous competitors were indignant at the fact that Anna Netrebko, although having the right tone, did not have the right complexion to embody Aida. Double standards?
From then on, with a Butlerian fervor worthy of Pol Pot, theater and opera engaged in an opportunistic and appalling bidding war to massacre the classics of all kinds. Thus, after a Truffles without men we were given a Don Juan punk unbolted and disoriented in front of the statue of his mother as commander, of a Carmen killing Don José with a revolver shot, with a Hamlet woman who makes omelettes (you couldn't make it up), from a Magic Flute revisited by "sensitive proofreaders" who, among other betrayals, whitewashed a Monostatos who could no longer be a Moor. The cape, what am I saying, the peninsula is crossed with a Cyrano drag queens at the Comédie Française.
But this was still too little for the new Savonarola of Wokeism. In their "purifying" crusade, on the pyre of their vanity, they had to burn Shakespeare. And if possible with the sticky pseudo-scientific veneer of intersectionism.
Thus, as Emmanuelle Ducros recently reported in a delicious column on Europe 1, thanks to a tidy subsidy on the back of the British taxpayer who could have done without this burden, a group of "experts" from the London University of Roehampton took it upon themselves to analyze the work of the master of Stratford "intersectionally". And to conclude that, because of its too "white, masculine, heterosexual and cis-gender" character, it should never be performed again!
Let us note, however, that in this Stalinist trial of media-political objectivity brought against Shakespeare, our learned judges, obsessed by their dogmatic volition, seem to have ignored The Merchant of Venice, an undeniably feminist comedy before its time. Indeed, in this play, women are the strong and subtle characters. During the trial, Portia and Nerissa – disguised as men – save the unfortunate Antonio, ridicule lovers and suitors and nevertheless allow Shylock to be partially spared. No doubt, however, that with the help of a generous subsidy of a few dear fresh pounds, some eminent genrologists will exhume an unpublished version of the Merchant ofVenice where, of course, the Jew will be executed and the Doge will be wearing not a corno but a keffiyeh.