The boy who loved babies in the spotlight at the Essaïon theater!

With "The Boy Who Loved Babies", Mathias Charlier brings to life a tender text by Rachel Hausfater on fatherhood. The Essaïon theater welcomes the childhood bubbles of a story where emotions fall slightly flat.

Martin, a young lover, receives Aimé, his first child, as a blessing that dazzles him from the beginning to the end of the text. Already paralyzed with admiration for the brawling babies of the nurseries, he pours out his tenderness on the whole show, which enjoys it irregularly. This alone on stage sees Martin's interpreter speak to excess. He narrates and builds a story around his memories and does it perfectly, aided by impeccable diction. Very little mobile, the game agrees with a linear text and actions that we see coming, unfortunately. The show, starting with a touching addiction, does not have the essential keys to truly entertain, because it follows a straight line and does not undergo any diegetic or decisive scenic burst.  

An awkward facility in staging

The string of emotions of a father both abandoned by his girlfriend and flooded with sweetness by his young baby, is rendered a little naively by the staging. The soap bubble machine, overwhelming the scene more by its noise than by its jet, loses its effect. Balloons, a rocking chair: Anne Barthel's staging suits the universe of the play, but the result remains too simplistic. The nuance is not there. Everything comes together but the elements of scenery are too scattered to make the scene alive. For only poetic success, we will keep the cushions with long threads of fabric, which Martin likes to style thinking of his love of youth.  

We get tired of this boy

Despite a chiseled writing and a diction that accompanies it perfectly, the show weakens as the minutes go by. The exacerbated adoration wears the spectator, who sees a succession of praises to newborns. What is touching at first quickly becomes monotonous, even boring, despite the great performance of Mathias Charlier. Indigent staging, soft rhythm and play that sometimes gets lost in the overplay, we do not enjoy enough of Hausfater's words. Further adaptation would certainly make this boy more entertaining.   Practical Information " The boy who loved babies" at the Essaïon theater 6 rue Pierre-au-Lard, 75004 Paris 01 42 78 46 42 From January 14 to March 5, 2016 Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 pm