Bof.

It's the theatre festival in Saint Laurent this weekend. I scanned the programme and the only item that looked vaguely interesting was a one-man show called L'Utopie des Arbres.


You certainly wouldn't have known there was a festival going on. The streets were deserted of both traffic and pedestrians. This is largely because the bridge is currently covered in scaffolding and closed to all except foot traffic, so you can no longer get from one side of the village to the other by car, hence there’s no reason to drive along the main street. But when I got to the venue 20 minutes before the show was supposed to start, there was no-one about except three equally bewildered people from Fabrezan whom I happened to know. 

Eventually a woman showed up and told us we'd have to go back to the Mairie to buy tickets. Here three muddled looking women were confusedly shuffling books of tickets and envelopes around, filling everything in by hand. It wasn't exactly a masterpiece of organisation but we eventually all got tickets. This done, the standard 20-minute delay for events to start around here stretched out to half an hour. 

It was by no means the worst show I've ever seen. And I do respect someone who has to take the stage on their own for 70 minutes and somehow entertain an audience with only a broom, a pile of sawdust, and a monologue. But it was just a rambling bunch of stories that didn't really go anywhere. Most other people seemed to enjoy it though, so perhaps there was some French subtlety that I didn't get.

Back home now, listening to a Scops owl so loud it must be in the tree just outside the window.