An ethereal voice booms from above, echoing down over Paris’s Cirque d’Hiver: “Redcar, come to me baby.” Stationed in the middle of a ring-shaped stage, Christine and the Queens – real name Héloïse Letissier – is performing in a 19th-century circus lined with gilded horses and plush velvet curtains, on a stage originally designed for acrobats and clowns. In place of a trapeze, a blue wire moon dangles from an invisible rope, carefully operated by a black-clad figure in a plague mask. A tangled junk-yard of kitschy Christmas lights, helium birthday balloons, traffic cones, red warning tape, and medieval tapestries spill down the steep, graduated steps. Placed next to the minimal neon lights and slick, meticulous choreography that characterised the French artist’s earlier tours – for 2016’s English language debut Chaleur Humaine and 2018’s Chris – this peculiar, slightly ramshackle production feels like a rejection of everything Letissier has done to this point. Accordingly, a bright red billboard outside the venue bears a statement of intent: pop music is dead, long live theatre.
A showcase for Letissier’s new album Redcar Les Adorables Étoiles, the setlist is dominated by new material, which itself feels like a backdrop to tonight’s highly theatrical, concept-heavy staging. Single-handedly holding court in this one-performer show, Letissier has an intensity throughout that veers from anger to comedy; he bickers with stage props and briefly pauses the show to welcome a stunned punter back to their seat. Redcar Les Adorables Étoiles in recorded form feels like a slightly obtuse knight’s tale, but performed it feels more like watching strange, postmodern Shakespeare, Letissier a confused, lost figure stuck between playing the jester and disconnecting from his audience completely.
