Theatre: our review of Old Masters, the art of deconstructing

We thought for a moment that he wasn't going to last long on the beast, that he was going to fall off his mount because the pace was so fast. But Nicolas Bouchaud is an excellent rider. He rides the words of Thomas Bernhard like a Cossack. Old Masters is a comedy that cleans your ears and cleans your cortex. What is it about? From a certain Reger, an old misanthropic musicologist who, thanks to the kindness of a guard at the Museum of Art History in Vienna, comes every day to sit on the same bench. For hours, he contemplates a painting by Tintoretto, The Man with the White Beard. Of this painting, he knows all the details, that is to say all the defects. Reger is a widower. Of all. His wife died and perfection is not of this world.

The Atrabilary Man begins with a few headbutts: “We must listen to Bach and hear how he fails, listen to Beethoven and hear how he fails, listen to Mozart and hear how he fails. (Likewise, we love) a being because it is helpless and incomplete, because it is chaotic and imperfect. There is no perfect painting and there is no perfect book and there is no perfect piece of music (…)” His delivery has the makings of hypnotic trance and calls on the spectator, victim of his “musicological logorrhea”. His work of deconstruction between gall and common sense will not stop. Thus, he will slice up Greco, Klimt, Veronese and dice other things such as Austria, the Viennese toilets, the professors (yellow laughter in the room), the museums and its visitors...

Then, suddenly, he attacks Heidegger - the greatest philosopher of the 20th century despite his catastrophic political commitments - and this passage is undoubtedly the funniest in this game of bowling. Heidegger is good fuel for his bonfire. This philosopher “who has never been anything but comical (…), a weak pre-Alpine thinker, just made for German philosophical hot pot”. We are witnessing a funny undertaking of undermining but behind this work of demolition, the clearing: another history of art is taking shape. A story freed from official history. Thomas Bernhard teaches us to unlearn, to judge, to think for ourselves and Nicolas Bouchaud takes great pleasure – dressed for a moment in Austrian skin breeches! - to let us know.

The scene, which represents the Bordone Room of the Museum of Art History, is almost bare. In the background we can see two canvases without patterns. One will gradually come loose from the wall. The actor will use it as a blanket around which survivors of a shipwreck surround themselves. After an hour and a half of being alone on stage, we say to ourselves that it takes quite an elephant's memory to deliver Bernhard's pachydermic style. Nicolas Bouchaud will tell you that he lets himself be carried away by the flow of the sentences... And the spectator by a great liberating breath.

Old Masters, at Théâtre 14 (Paris 10th), as part of the Paris Autumn Festival, until December 23. Such. : 01 45 45 49 77. www.theatre14.fr