{"id":8201,"date":"2017-07-22T10:10:33","date_gmt":"2017-07-22T09:10:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8201"},"modified":"2017-07-22T10:10:43","modified_gmt":"2017-07-22T09:10:43","slug":"manchester-international-festival-returning-to-reims-reviewed-by-imogen-durant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8201","title":{"rendered":"Manchester International Festival: Returning to Reims<\/em>, reviewed by Imogen Durant"},"content":{"rendered":"
Returning to Reims<\/em>, dir. Thomas Ostermeier; HOME, July 11 2017.<\/h5>\n

Thomas Ostemeier brings a work of creative non-fiction by Didier Eribon to life in this thought-provoking performance. A personal memoir with a political focus, the 2009 book by the French sociologist which gives this performance its title offers a penetrating examination of the social forces governing Western society. In Ostermier\u2019s production, extracts from Eribon\u2019s work are delivered by a captivating Nina Hoss. The Homeland<\/em> star plays an actress involved in the production of a film based on Eribon\u2019s memoir. As she reads the extracts, the multi-media film that will accompany Hoss\u2019 voice recording is projected behind her. Both black and white and colour footage appear alongside photographs, video-journalism, and clips from a music video, all of which have been carefully selected to comment on Erbion\u2019s text. Descriptions of the journey to reconnect with his family after his father\u2019s death, for example, are complimented by footage of the writer himself on a moving train, while the discussion of the urban ghettos on the margins of European cities are vividly enhanced by stark footage showing the desolation in these areas.<\/p>\n

The film is also used as a tool to highlight the ongoing and perhaps even increasing pertinence of Eribon\u2019s ideas. Clips of Front National supporters campaigning for Marine Le Pen in advance of the 2017 French presidential election appear alongside a discussion about the demise of the Left and the rise of far-right nationalism. The widespread relevance of Eribon\u2019s text is also demonstrated by the film\u2019s use of political footage from Britain. Clips of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Margaret Thatcher each highlight the applicability of Eribon\u2019s thesis to the British context, directly appealing to the audience at Manchester International Festival. <\/p>\n

The production\u2019s most effective use of the film, however, is in the moments where Hoss directly interacts with it, questioning the choice of footage and its relevance to Eribon\u2019s work. It is in these moments, where Hoss deviates from her engaging vocal performance of Eribon\u2019s text, that her character is most animated and her performance most compelling. Her thoughtful, sharp and often passionate character is neatly contrasted with the two male characters who frequently work as a comedy duo, holding up Hoss\u2019 performance, if unable to match it. <\/p>\n

Hoss\u2019 ability to draw the audience in is essential to the success of the play\u2019s final section. After critiquing the film-maker\u2019s bleak choice of ending, Hoss narrates the story of her own father, Willi Hoss, a German radical thinker who joined the Communist party at the age of 16 and later went on to co-found the German Green Party. While this section risks appearing somewhat tangential to the already multi-layered narrative, the ease with which Hoss connects the questions and issues that governed her father\u2019s life to those raised by Eribon\u2019s memoir ensures that it supports rather than distracts from the play\u2019s focus. In fact, it is in this final section that one of Eribon\u2019s central themes is fully developed. The inextricability of the political from the personal is an idea which underpins much of Hoss\u2019 performance. Describing the moment in which he decided to identify himself as being gay, as the point at which he became a \u2018class traitor\u2019, Eribon suggests that his sexuality offered him a means of escaping from the restrictions of his working-class background. But can we ever truly escape from the rigid hierarchies imposed by class structures? Or are we always and inevitably in a state of returning? Willi Hoss\u2019 narrative picks up and expands on these questions by presenting an alternative trajectory to that which is offered by Eribon. Having been expelled from the Communist party, Willi Hoss was forced to re-form his political identity, ultimately founding a charitable project which worked with Amazonian tribes. Whilst Ostermeier\u2019s production places too great a focus on Willi Hoss\u2019 philanthropy, and as a result weakens towards the end, the thematic connections between the two main narratives strands are strongly established. The intersections between Eribon\u2019s and Hoss\u2019 stories highlight the interconnectivity of the political and the personal, and raise important questions about whether and how we can resist the processes of class-based domination. <\/p>\n

In many ways, however, this production is as much about the art of storytelling and the role of discourse in politics as it is about class struggle and the future of European politics. Translating the written text into a stage production, Ostermeir and Hoss inject new life into Eribon\u2019s work. In doing so, they reveal the power that a change of artistic medium can have on a work, rejuvenating its ideas and making it accessible to new audiences. <\/p>\n

Imogen Durant<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Returning to Reims, dir. Thomas Ostermeier; HOME, July 11 2017. Thomas Ostemeier brings a work of creative non-fiction by Didier Eribon to life in this thought-provoking performance. A personal memoir with a political focus, the 2009 book by the French sociologist which gives this performance its title offers a penetrating examination of the social forces […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[283,17],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nManchester International Festival: Returning to Reims, reviewed by Imogen Durant - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8201\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Manchester International Festival: Returning to Reims, reviewed by Imogen Durant - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Returning to Reims, dir. 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