FringeReview Worldwide 2025
À Fleur de Mots
Julien Cottereau, Fane Desrues
Genre: Clown, Comedy, Dance and Movement Theatre, Experimental, Improvised Theatre, International, Live Music, Mime, Movement, Physical Comedy, Physical Theatre, Poetry-Based Theatre, Surrealism, Theatrical Clown, World Music
Venue: Théâtre La Luna
Festival: FringeReview Worldwide
Low Down
Fane Desrues and Julien Cottereau bring to the stage a delicate performance that mixes music and mime, bringing to life the immaterial essence of our soul, moulding words and lyrics into hilarious and at times poetic scenes.
Review
Fane Desrues and Julien Cottereau come from different worlds. The former is a musician who studied piano and voice at the Paris conservatory, the latter is an acclaimed mime artist who worked at the Cirque du Soleil to then embark on a successful solo career. However, as the saying goes “opposites attract” and the pair is a couple in life and, in this play, on the stage as well.
On a minimally decorated stage, a piano and a stool, setting an intimate mood, they invite the public to a 1 hour performance that alternates improvised mime with piano-voice songs. However, before the audience enters the venue, everyone is asked to write a single word on a piece of paper. This simple gesture probably inspires, among other things, the title of the performance: À Fleur de Mots (in English “At the Surface of Words” or “On the Edge of Words”).
Paraphrasing Alan Watts, instead of striving for what “needs to be” the performance effortlessly celebrates the simple “being.” The pace moves flawlessly from the poetic music and songs of Fane Desrues to the improvised scenes of Julien Cottereau. These scenes are inspired by the words provided by the audience and in them Julien shows his incredible ability in the art of miming and voice sound effects.
Because of this, the structure of the play is never the same and the element of surprise is ever present. However, make no mistake, contrary to the shallowness of many improvisation exercises what Julien Cottereau creates are deep three-dimensional creations that seem at times even to astonish the artist himself and his companion.
The 2 performers both entertain and explore in a lighthearted manner the essence of our soul in a poetic manner. As words and music float effortlessly in the air this is an attempt to embody them into a more material state. In watching the play one is reminded of the quote by William Shakespeare “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
The dreamlike atmosphere is present throughout the performance, aided by the gentle light design that aims at creating a connection between the performers and the audience, making us enter into their world. The fourth wall between audience and artists first blurs and then disappears, although Julien and Fane never attempt to shatter it in an aggressive manner but simply at times tiptoe on the edge of the stage boundary maintaining the sacredness of their space.
Overall an enjoyable performance that would also resonate very well outside of Europe as it seems to contain, probably unbeknownst to the artists themselves, elements close to Asia and the Eastern world.
