Figaroscope8 October 2014
Dear Old Plume
THE ARTISTS ARE BACK BENEATH THE BIG TOP WITH "TEMPUS FUGIT? ", THEIR THIRTIETH ANNIVERSARY SHOW.
We love Plume. They started out thirty years ago, and since then they have carefully maintained and preserved the poetry of the 80s. Indeed that is the very idea behind this new show which, since it was first performed at the Fourvière festival two summer ago, has been a triumph wherever it has played. In "Tempus Fugit?" the Kudlak brothers, Cirque Plume’s founders, offer up "a ballad for the lost road. They have forgotten nothing of their predilection for music that entwines, their love of innocent fun or their wonder in childhood delight. They themselves can hardly believe what has happened to them. None the least Pierre Kudlak himself: from a dreary life working in a Franche-Comté factory he found himself first in street theatre and then the world of the circus. As apostles of a genre that snorts at tradition, he describes the art of the circus as "being like the eternal moment of jumping off a cliff. Where once we considered it as the destiny of the hard-nosed, the valorous or the courageous. They have carved out their empire with the twists and turns of the new circus, far from the drum-rolls and lion-tamers thrusting their heads into the maws of wild beasts. Bernard Kudlak, artistic director, avows that their greatest emotions can be found in the fragile beauty of the morning dew on country landscapes. He puts his shows together with pure harmony. An extra-ordinary clown holds this Tempus Fugit together, slightly overshadowing the rest of the show’s artists. It’s filled with good humour, sincerity, earthen colours and pretty jokes. Its a recipe for success. Nothing new to this particular empire.
Ariane BAVELIER