At the Avignon Festival, Clara Hédouin takes to the open fields with “Prelude to Pan”

Review In a traveling show, the director adapts Jean Giono's "Pan's Prelude" and interweaves it with contemporary testimonies from farmers. A powerful song of the earth, which also warns of a nature undermined by global warming.

“Pan’s Prelude,” after Jean Giono, directed by Clara Hédouin — “Prelude to Pan”, after Jean Giono, directed by Clara Hédouin CHRISTOPHE RAYNAUD DE LAGE / CHRISTOPHE RAYNAUD DE LAGE

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It's late afternoon. The sun is still beating down hard on the Plaine de l'Abbaye in Villeneuve-lez-Avignon. The Gard city, separated from Avignon by only a bridge, is hosting, among other events, Clara Hédouin's show, "Prélude de Pan." As we settle down on small wooden benches below the Philippe Le Bel Tower, the sound system blares loudly. But the French pop hits that follow one after the other, from Claude François to Stone et Charden, from Hervé Vilard to Christophe, struggle to drown out the haunting song of Les Cigales. The journey is about to begin.

As she did with the long-running show "Que ma joie demeure" (Que my joy remains), director Clara Hédouin, sensitive to the powerful lyricism of Jean Giono, takes the author's words and carries them high, in a superb ambulatory show. In five stops, and as many scenes, three actors, Pierre Giafferi, Clara Mayer, Hatice Ozer alternating with Loup Balthazar deliver their Prelude. They embody this 1930 short story, a singular tale...