Paris connections: storytelling and "In Paris" at the Berkeley Rep

This week we rehearsed for Sunday's Stagebridge international storytelling event (see sidebar for program details). We being some of the students from Introduction to the Art of Storytelling with Jeanne Haynes and Intermediate Storytelling with Kirk Waller. Most of our stories will run five minutes. Mine is all about something that happened to me on a Paris rooftop many years ago. You'll just have to come hear me, cuz I'm not giving it away.

So, it's Paris week for me, as tonight I saw "In Paris" at the Berkeley Rep, starring Mikhail Baryshnikov and Anna Sinyakina, and it brought back so many memories of the Russian community in Paris, of my time working at the Cinémathèque Française right after college, when I had to run wacky errands for the eccentric Mary Meerson, a Russian beauty and the former wife of set designer Lazar Meerson. In those days, Mary was married to the larger-than-life Henri Langlois, the 1936 founder of the Cinémathèque.  A film archivist, he had preserved mountains of original 35 mm films and managed to hide them from the Nazis during WWII, then worked the rest of his lifetime to preserve the prints for posterity. 

Mary Meerson (photo by Maldoror_2008)

Henri Langlois (Photo from the blog, "Pullquote.")

Once a gorgeous artist's muse and model, by the time I knew her, Mary had ballooned to about 400 lbs., perhaps from eating too much rich Russian food. She literally had to be carried from our office on the Rue de Courcelles or at the Trocadero site to her car and back again by her strong Belgian chauffeur, twice a day. But, that's another story ...

Tonight's play, adapted from a short story by Ivan Bunin, is set in an older Paris, after World War I. Baryshnikov plays a retired Russian general who fought in two wars and has flashbacks to its horrors. His young wife has left him long ago and, now living in Paris, he falls for a lanky, sensual waitress half his age. He's gorgeous and melancholy and gorgeous and sad and gorgeous and wild and gorgeous, just as one would expect (did you see him as Carrie's artist boyfriend in "Sex and the City" a few years ago? If so, you know what I mean). See some press photos here: http://www.berkeleyrep.org/press/photos-12ip.asp

The play is imbued with surreal motion and sound, and Mr. Baryshnikov has a lot to carry. His timing is precise, his gestures and debauched air nuanced. He's a ramrod-straight dancer-soldier with chiseled features. In one moving scene, he faces the audience as mirror to shave. The play, directed by Dmitry Krymov, is a bit slow going and certainly not for the average suburban audience. If you like surreal-quirky, as I do, though, you'll really enjoy the original staging, which uses film projections and enlarged antique postcards as movable props. Baryshnikov's dreamlike toreador dance is a delight. Cheers and a standing ovation  -  more in honor of the great dancer than of this play, I felt - followed tonight's debut performance.