L'Homme à tête de chou

A violent, sometimes painful dance crammed with love and politically incorrect sex symbols driven by the only fuel worth using:  desire.  The words, by Gainsbourg, are playful, brilliant, erotic, even lewd, with every syllable penetrating the ears and the senses exquisitely.  Original music fed as much by Ravel as Steve Reich, the Doors as Debussy is augmented by harpsichords, congas, guitars, trumpets, violins and ‘cellos.  Lastly, a voice, that of Bashung, warm, deep, penetrating, even heartbreaking, is ever-present.
By the light of a sardonic moonlit night, inevitably petrol blue, The Man with the Cabbage Head tells not only of the tumultuous life of the little tart Marilou, an enigmatic trainee hairdresser that a man “blinded by her rustic beauty” makes disappear under the lather. The piece also tells another beautiful story, of guilds and artistic closeness, that of Bashung and Gainsbourg, Gallotta and Bashung, that has resisted (in farcical style) the forces of death. On stage, it is understatedly sad. The only things there are bodies, apart from the wheelchair that will never again be sat in by the absent Bashung. Nothing else is needed. Nothing more than dramatic diagonals, frenetic running about, sliding steps, wide arm movements, the strength and dexterity of co-ordinated movement. “It’s a beautiful ending”, writes journalist Patrice Demailly. “Wonderful, amazing, disturbing dancers, filled with devastating energy”.
In twelve scenes, the fourteen performers, like wafts of perfume, make a flamboyant, black, tragic and intoxicating tribute to life. Despairing and cheeky, inconsolable and dashing, Serge Gainsbourg and Alain Bashung “bequeath their absence” as a gift on stage every night.

Source : Claude-Henri Buffard