The Footsbarn Travelling Theatre Company based in the centre of France, is celebrating Shakespeare and delivering their version of writer Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

The Footsbarn Travelling Theatre Company based in the centre of France, is celebrating Shakespeare and delivering their version of writer Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Far from the gilded sophistication of the 19th century four-tier theatres in Paris with their big curtains and brightly lit foyers, a circus ring is the stage for the Footsbarn Theatre Company's Shakespeare Celebrations and Cuckoo's Nest (Nid de Coucou) which is playing until the end of February.

Inside the Cirque Romanès, on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, Footsbarn's Paddy Hayter and his crew of actors, singers and musicians put on a variety show made up of extracts from a selection of Shakespeare's best known plays (Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer's Night Dream, Macbeth, King Lear, Richard III, A Winter's Tale) reminiscient of high school fun and gags.

Overall they present a mixture of nostalgic, tried and trusted Footsbarn-style for adults and a child-friendly discovery of Shakespeare, in French English and other languages.

Until 27 February 2017.

Mythical Orpheus and Eurydice are the only more or less classically performed characters in Orfeo: Je suis mort en Arcadie (Orfeo: I am dead/died in Arcadia), the latest opera-theatre piece from La Vie Brève (Short Life) Company based in Valence in southern France and directed by Samuel Achache and Jeanne Candel.

Mythical Orpheus and Eurydice are the only more or less classically performed characters in Orfeo: Je suis mort en Arcadie (Orfeo: I am dead/died in Arcadia), the latest opera-theatre piece from La Vie Brève (Short Life) Company based in Valence in southern France and directed by Samuel Achache and Jeanne Candel.

Jan Peters who plays Orfeo in a collectively created production says, “Orpheus is voice, music. He has to be the central element… he only sings.”

The story of the two lovers takes place in Arcadia, an ancient Greek paradise where a dozen actors and musicans stretch vocal and other chords and clown around.

Anne-Lise Heimburger squeaks and squawks and coos convincingly as Calliope, poet’s muse and Orpheus’ mother, Vladislav Galard as crazy Pan, in underwear and as a more straight Kharon, the ferryman and Léo-Antonin Lutinier in energetic clown mode as Cerebus, the three-headed guard-dog of Hades. Orpheus is the straight guy.

“He doesn’t need to be funny, the others are funny”, says Peters, “for Pan the tragedy is worse”.

They are true enough to the basic story however. Orpheus marries Eurydice, she dies from a snake-bite and goes to the underworld.

Orpheus charms the keepers of the underworld with his song and words and is allowed to take his bride back up to Arcadia, on one condition – that he doesn’t turn round to look at her until they reach the surface. Of course, he can’t resist, looks at her and looses her a second time.

La Vie Brève’s exploration of voice and the sounds of which it is capable is accompanied and punctuated by music, by string and wind instruments and percussion. Saxophonist and singer Lawrence Williams says, “we are exploring the relationship between theatre and music.”

Neither classical nor opera, Orfeo:je suis mort en Arcadie is a condensed cabaret of original composition of past stagecraft and present, with catches of baroque.

At Le Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord until 5 February 2017.

Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn is the subject of a small but fascinating exhibition at Paris's Jacquemart-André museum called Rembrandt in Confidence or Rembrandt Intime.

Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn is the subject of a small but fascinating exhibition at Paris's Jacquemart-André museum called Rembrandt in Confidence or Rembrandt Intime.

The cosy temporary exhibition rooms in the former mansion of the 19th-century art-loving couple, the Jacquemart-Andrés, offer detailed viewing of Rembrandt's paintings, drawings, etchings and other prints from his youth to his old age.

The exhibition, which includes some magnificent and intriguing pieces from other collections, both public and private, closes soon and most pieces will return home.

However, the three paintings in the Jacquemart-André, each of which bears witness to a different period of Rembrandt’s work, remain as part of the collection in the house where the couple lived.

The museum is following up with another temporary selection of works from another private collection usually housed in Spain.

Businesswoman Alicia Koplowitz is lending some of her paintings by artists, beginning with Rembrandt’s Spanish contemporary Francisco de Zurburan and ending with modern masters Pablo Picasso and Marc Rothko.

The exhibition runs from 3 March till July 2017.

A programme of 28 films in French, features and short-films are doing the rounds on the internet, in an online-event called My French Film Festival which started on 13 January 2017.

A programme of 28 films in French, features and short-films are doing the rounds on the internet, in an online-event called My French Film Festival which started on 13 January 2017.

For its 7th year, UniFrance, the French film promotion and export office, has organised its programme of French-language films around six themes :

1. Coming of Age

 Peur de Rien (The Parisienne) by Danielle Arbid

Le Nouveau de Rudi Rosenberg

Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story) by Eva Husson

Les Démons (The Demons) by Philippe Lesage

1992 by Anthony Doncque

Viaduc by Patrice Laliberté

2. We are Family

 Marguerite and Julien by Valérie Donzelli

Les Ogres (The Ogres) by Léa Fehner

 Préjudice by Antoine Cuypers

 Dans les eaux profondes (In Deep Waters) by Sarah Van Den Boom

  La Rentrée des classes (Back to School) by Vincent Patar and Stéphane Aubier

3. Love and Friendship

 Ce sentiment de l'été by Mikhaël Hers

La Bande à Juliette (Juliette's Gang by Aurélien Peyre

 La Convention de Genève (The Geneva Convention) by Benoît Martin

  Le Dernier des Céfrans (The last of the Frogs) by Pierre-Emmanuel Urcun

  D'ombres et d'ailes (Shadows and Wings)  by Eleonora Marinoni and Elice Meng

4. Psycho

Irréprochable by Sebastien Marnier

 Je ne suis pas un salaud by Emmanuel Finkiel

  Irréprochable (Irreproachable ) by Sébastien Marnier

Moka by Frédéric Mermoud

  Violence en réunion (Meeting Violence) by Karim Boukercha

5. A Woman's Life

 Je suis à vous tout de suite (I'll be right with you) by Baya Kasmi

Cléo de 5 à 7 (Cléo from 5 to 7) by Agnès Varda

  La Chair et les volcans (Flesh and Volcanoes) by Clémence Demesme

Un grand silence (A big silence) by Julie Gourdain

  Maman(s) Mummy(ies) by Maïmouna Doucouré

  4XD - Françoise Dorléac by Philippe Labro

6. Midnight Screenings

À la recherche de l'ultra-sex (Looking for the ultra-sex) by Nicolas Charlet and Bruno Lavaine

 Une formalité (A formality) by Pierre-Marc Drouin and Simon Lamarre-Ledoux

Le Plombier -The Plumber) by Méryl Fortunat-Rossi and Xavier Seron

20 films are in competition and could recieve one of the three prizes each awarded by a different jury when the festival wraps up on February 13 2017.

The international filmmaker's jury is led this year by Argentinian Pablo Trapero, alongside French director Bertrand Bonello, Fabrice de Welz from Belgium, Israeli Shlomi Elkabatz and Rebecca Zlotowski also from France.

Festival spectators can vote online and award the Lacoste Public prize, and foreign journalists pick a film for the international press award.

For the full programme check www. myfrenchfilmfestival.com

Shows tailored for children are popular in France in general. At the end of the year, they simply mushroom. Fairy tales where the magical creatures are under and over toadstools, and one where the fairy, a lilac fairy is flying on a trapeze in an 18th century ballroom for horses: Peau d’Ane (Donkey Skin) at the Grand Stables of Chantilly Chateau.

Shows tailored for children are popular in France in general. At the end of the year, they simply mushroom. Fairy tales where the magical creatures are under and over toadstools, and one where the fairy, a lilac fairy is flying on a trapeze in an 18th century ballroom for horses: Peau d’Ane (Donkey Skin) at the Grand Stables of Chantilly Chateau.

 

Peau d’Ane is about a princess whose lovely mother dies and whose father, the king, wants to marry his own daughter, because to him she’s the loveliest and that’s what he deserves. The subject has always been controversial and over and above social morals, it’s a story in which the potential victim outwits the predator. A fairy comes to her assistance of course, but she has to undergo hardship before she finds happiness and a charming prince.

The Bienaimé family and their team of polished riders, who look after the magnificent Grand Stables and horses in Chantilly, chose this story for their staging on horseback of the well-loved fairy tale.

As well as the donkey skin costume worn by the princess (Mathilde Pouteau), a real-live donkey, Seraphin, performs in the ring.

The imposing château of Chantilly which houses one of the very interesting and beautiful painting collections in France, is surrounded by a park designed originally by Le Nôtre. It has a moat full of heavy carp and an enclosure of less European kangaroos and wallabies.