Nikolai Gogol’s short story "Diary of a Madman", first published in 1835 in Petersburg, is a stunning work of nineteenth-century literature. In many ways, it anticipates modernism in literature almost a century ahead. The central character in “Diary of a Madman” is an ordinary person caged in a little flat in the heart of a modern metropolis, as so many of Gogol’s characters from “Petersburg Tales.” This European-looking city is a glamorous façade and a symbol of social hierarchy that defines the nineteenth-century Russian Empire. 

Aksenty Ivanovich Poprishchin has no interest in the administrative office where he serves, no money or titles to conquer the heart of the noble young lady he admires, no friends to share his thoughts (even dogs in Gogol’s plot have the privilege of corresponding by letters with each other), yet he has a soul that cries for reasoning and understanding, love and compassion. Poprishchin entrusts his thoughts to a diary that documents the descent of his mind into darkness. As it turns out, the madman’s observations about the state of the world and the characters around him are convincing and penetrating, however distorted. In Gogol’s imagination the humorous and the fantastical, the comical and the tragic go hand in hand. His fragmented, feverish, absurdist prose in “The Diary of a Madman” is simply brilliant.

Orianne Moretti, a stage director, opera singer, and historian, brings her own adaptation of Gogol’s text to the stage, conveying its pulsating energy by means of voice, dance, and music. These three components fall together organically in a one-hour play that reveals Poprishchin’s multi-sensory world in verbal and dancing monologues bridged by piano interludes drawn from the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and Jean-Philippe Rameau. 

Gogol was and remains a recognized playwright whose plays Government Inspector and Marriage persist on theatre bills throughout the world. In 2022, "The Government Inspector" was staged as a danced comedy by Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite and writer Jonathon Young for their company Kidd Pivot. "Le rappel des oiseaux" (The Calling of the Birds), however, works across multiple media: it traces Poprishchin’s wandering mind through dance, so delicately and intelligently choreographed by Bruno Bouché, and through verbal monologues drawn from Gogol’s text. Yet the play was created for a dancer — a remarkable dancer, indeed.

Poprichshin dances? And why not: dance is a movement of the soul, first and foremost. It is a revelation to see Mathieu Ganio, étoile of Paris Opera Ballet, a danseur noble in the hierarchy of classical dance, in the role of Poprishchin. His appearance in a dramatic role is not gratuitous: mastering the stage voice is every bit as demanding as the high technique of dance today. Above technique, as is true for any form of art, there is a higher category of artistry, namely that of creating a convincing, living character. Ganio’s venture onto this demanding path is admirable in every way. 

Classical dance, in which Ganio has reached the highest accolades, requires projection of the body onto a grand stage, accentuation of poses, clarity of musical accents. In traditional ballet, a bravura solo or a coda crowning a pas de deux often interrupts the flow of performance as dancers are called back to the stage for bows. Moretti offers a different setting for Ganio, one locked onto the character, requiring continuous presence and psychological transformation. The contrast between Ganio’s refined body of a dancer and Poprishchin’s awkwardness and meekness opens a perfect space for the theatrical imaginaire to do its work. During the play, I caught myself attending more to the inner illumination in the actor’s piercing eyes and to the richness of his intonations than to the movement of his body, which someone like me, versed in dance, would ordinarily do. Ganio seems ready to explore beyond his familiar territory. He interprets his Poprishchin as a vulnerable, innocent, even ridiculous man, yet one full of dignity. The ordinary Poprishchin, who wraps a bedsheet like a mantle around his body, becomes the king of his phantasmic kingdom. His madness sets him free from any obligations to the society around him.

One of the distinct achievements of the play is its quiet minimalism. The set comprises a bunk bed, a chair, a bedsheet, and a piano, which at times shields Poprishchin from his own phantoms. The piano part, performed live on stage by Guilhem Fabre, an excellent pianist, complements Poprishchin’s monologues. The lighting designed by Michel Cabrera deepens the sense of loss of this solitary figure struggling with the labyrinth of his mind. The scale of the performance is unpretentious, yet its frugality is purposeful. There, one finds a tragedy that does not cry out loud but remains somehow ordinary, like Poprishchin’s life. Yet it reaches far. 

Moretti together with Ganio, Fabre, and Bouché finds in Gogol’s story a source of empathy for a person humiliated and disempowered by his circumstances, for strangeness and even madness, if madness it is at all. This delicate approach to the precarious states of the human mind stands apart from the tradition of comical or socially grotesque interpretations of Gogol’s characters. It gently compels the audience to listen, watch, observe, and appreciate a theatre that needs no amplification in both figurative and technical terms. This gently scaled theatre operates on the frequency of human sensitivity, be it the register of the voice or the sound of a piano. The play’s visual, textual, and corporeal elements illuminate what is “ordinary” in Poprishchin’s destiny, above all his extreme loneliness in the world and his helpless cry for love. 

We want to express our gratitude to Elodie Kugelmann, Attachée de press, Correspondances Compagnie and to Larissa Pevear-Volokhonsky for their kind assistance.