Apart from his surreal, and frequently subversive, novels - "L'écume des jours", "L'Arrache Cœur" and "J'irai cracher sur vos tombes" - Boris Vian's work remains largely ignored by the general public. Perhaps one of the main reasons for this is the sheer eclectic extent of it. For Vian, a legendary figure on the Saint-Germain club scene in the post-war years, was not only a talented musician, but also a published novelist, playwright, poet and jazz critic. He was also, of course, a prodigious songwriter who penned no less than 478 songs between 1943 and 1959!

In their new show, "Et Vian ! En avant la Zique", Laurent Pelly and Agathe Mélinand attempt to bring out these lesser-known aspects of Vian, giving a complete, if rather disorganised, overview of the author/poet/jazz musician's life. Ignoring Vian's strictly literary side, Pelly and Mélinand have assembled an appropriately surreal collage of sketches and songs, taking us on a trip through the humour and fantasies of a conscientious provocateur who was cut short in his prime. (Vian died at the age of 39).

The Butchers' Tango

"Et Vian! En avant la Zique" starts off as it means to go on, the figure of Vian emerging mysteriously from behind the curtain to announce: "Tonight, you the audience will be our guinea pigs! Tonight, we the performers are here to whisk you off into another world!" . Pelly and Mélinand certainly keep this promise, plunging the audience straight into an apparently plotless, senseless world where, for the first fifteen minutes, only the most committed Vian fans will pick up the obscurest of references. Things get a little easier after this as the visual side takes over, a troupe of ten actors, singers and dancers bounding exuberantly onto the stage, dressed in boldly coloured, stripy costumes. The troupe then proceed to launch into a joyous rendition of a satirical Vian number which recalls La Villette's former life as an abattoir : "C'est le tango des bouchers de la Villette.../... faut qu'ça saigne, faut qu'les gens ayent à bouffer, faut qu'les gros puissent se goinfrer, faut qu'les p'tits puiss'nt engraisser, faut qu'ça saigne, faut qu'les mandataires aux halles puissent s'en fourrer plein la dalle, du filet à huit cent balles.../... Tiens voilà du boudin!". ("It's the butchers' tango at La Villette.../... get the blood oozing, boys, people have got to eat you know, all those fat lards sitting at home stuffing their faces, got to feed the little ones up you know, get the blood oozing boys, the customers have got to feed their faces, they'll be in soon looking for a cheap cut of steak .../... Get the blood sausage out now!".

One of the most energetic performers in this exuberant troupe is Belle du Berry, better known to French music fans as lead singer of the group Paris Combo. Excelling in her first real stage role, Belle du Berry is totally at home with Vian's material, appreciating the writer's subtle irony and witty puns. "Vian's material is very much of its era," Belle explains, "You can feel him trying to get round the big censorship issues of the day". But the singer admits to being dismayed by Vian's stereotyped vision of the opposite sex, ""His female characters are either uninteresting background figures, or some archetypal kind of Woman, some distant, unattainable figure perched on her pedestal! And there doesn't seem to be much between these two extremes. Maybe Vian had a bit of a hard time with women?". Interestingly enough, Pelly has operated an interesting gender reversal in his adaptation of Vian's life, transforming Vian's 1955 classic "Je bois" (recorded by Serge Reggiani, Les Charlots and Mouloudji) into a female drinking song, performed by a group of women staggering around on tipsy stilettos.

All That Jazz

"Et Vian ! En avant la zique!" also contains its fair share of jazz - and rightly so! Vian was a passionate jazz fan who made a name for himself as trumpet-player and resident bandleader at Le Tabou (the legendary Saint-Germain jazz club frequented by the likes of Juliette Greco, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir). Unfortunately, jazz appears to play a largely background role in the first half of Pelly and Mélinand's show, the band of eleven jazz musicians remaining hidden behind the curtain right up until the interval. But when the musicians do finally emerge they instantly get the house swinging with an impromptu jam session, breaking into a brilliant version of Vian's 1954 hit "La Cantate des boîtes".

The band's version of "Rock hoquet" (which Vian wrote in collaboration with Henri Salvador, who composed the music for more than 60 of his songs) also went down well with the audience. But the song which really got the public breaking out in rapturous applause was "J'suis snob... J'suis snob/J'm'appelle Patrick, mais on dit Bob/Je prends des places à l'Opéra/Pour chaque soir, mais j'y vais pas/Je ne fréquente que des baronnes/Au nom comme des trombones/J'suis snob... J'suis snob.../... Et quand je serai mort, j'veux un suaire de chez Dior ! ("I'm a snob... I'm a snob/My name's Patrick, but you can call me Bob/I book tickets for the Opera/Every night - but I never go /I hang out with barons /With names like trombones/I'm a snob... I'm a snob.../... And when I finally depart from this world, you'd better order my shroud from Christian Dior!").

Whip Me, Johnny, Whip Me!

The show hotted up after this with a rousing version of "Fais-moi mal Johnny", the first S&M rock song in French music history! The song, which was immortalised by French singer Magali Noël (and later re-recorded by Quebecois diva Pauline Julien), got a radical reworking at La Villette, being sung not by a woman but by a man … in underpants! Pelly and Mélinand's show also paid tribute to Vian's poetry and his film work, images of a bourgeois wedding gone hideously wrong projected onto the back of the stage throughout the show while the actors proclaimed a series of Vian's famous "proverbes pataphysiques". One of the highlights of the evening was when Florence Pelly took to the stage to perform "Strip-rock". Florence gave a magnificently surreal performance, peeling off layers of slips, tights and underwear … then whipping out a string of sausages, liver and kidney from her guts!

The grand finale of the show, however, was "Le Déserteur", Vian's legendary number about conscientious objectors: "Monsieur le Président/Je vous fais une lettre/Que vous lire peut-être/Si vous avez le temps/Je viens de recevoir/Mes papiers militaires/Pour partir à la guerre/Avant mercredi soir/Monsieur le Président/Je ne veux pas la faire/Je ne suis pas sur terre/Pour tuer les pauvres gens.../...". ("Dear Mr. President/I'm writing you this letter /Which you might read/ /If you have the time /I've just received my call-up papers/Telling me I must leave for the front/Before Wednesday night/But Mr President/I don't want to go/I haven't been put on earth /To kill people..."). This was one piece of Vian's work which didn't seem to need much rousing from the audience's collective memory!

French text: Pascale Hamon
English adaptation: Julie Street

"Et Vian ! En avant la zique!" runs until October 3rd 1999 at La Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris
Reservations : 0 803 075 075
Information : 0 803 306 306

Postscript : To mark the 40th anniversary of Boris Vian's death a special tribute album is due to be released in September '99. The compilation (released on Musidisc/Production Jacques Canetti) features 40 Vian songs recorded by the likes of Catherine Ringer (Rita Mitsouko), Juliette Gréco, Pierre Brasseur, Joan Baez, Serge Reggiani and Bernard Lavilliers.