les Bodin’s « Grandeur nature » à l’Arena
By betting in 2015 to recreate in the great halls of France the show they played every summer in Touraine, the Bodins did not imagine that they were leaving for a tour of more than five years and 1.5 million spectators. In Bordeaux, Friday evening, the troupe plays for the 405and time, in front of an audience never satisfied with the escapades of Maria, the devastating octogenarian, and her big simpleton son.
100% French
This is the story of a French success. Who sent good the countryside, the return to the earth, it is said with piquancy and truculence. “It was a technical and economic bet”, emphasizes Claude Cyndecki, for Cheyenne Productions, which has been following them for more than twenty years. “We said to ourselves, ‘why not a tour, an indoor setting?’ It was a childhood dream. The decor, which still stands, was integrated in 2013, the first performance took place at the Zénith de Nantes in September 2015. It will soon be seven years old.
At the direction of the ballet of semi-trailers and boxes on wheels, we find Lionel Ledermann, the general manager since 2016. The assembly of the farmhouse and the stage was done in a day and a half. The music is powerful, the Bodin’s are on the road eight months a year from September to April. It’s rare enough to be underlined: it is a real theater set 30 meters wide placed at ground level with a 180-degree opening in an amphitheater so that each of the 4,000 spectators can enjoy and be at the First Lodges of Family Bickering.
“Hyper rural”
There remains the adjustments, a coat of paint on the roof with the pigs – with a real pig inside – and the adjustment of the smell machine. “Straw and dirt but there will be surprises”, already smiles the technical director. And checking out the tricks: there’s carrot exploding and mole blasting in the air.
Here, we come to seek the language of the countryside, the verve of our ancestors, always joyful. Lionel Ledermann confirms, not without pride: “On a super heterogeneous, super rural audience, which has even become younger. For some, it’s their first time in a theater. It’s super touching. »