Theater critics may be masochistic creatures. On Saturday, the Spanish provocateur Angélica Liddell opened the Avignon Pageant in France, certainly one of Europe’s most prestigious theater occasions, with a no-holds-barred diatribe towards them. She quoted, and taunted, a number of writers who had been within the viewers.

The response from the rows of journalists in attendance, and the practically 2,000 attendees? A standing ovation.

Weird and grating because it was, Liddell’s “Dämon: El Funeral de Bergman” (“Demons: Bergman’s Funeral”) introduced a stage of electrical energy to the Avignon Pageant, which runs via July 21, that few have matched in recent times. Its most prized venue, the open-air Cour d’Honneur of Avignon’s Palais des Papes, or papal palace, tends to foil even essentially the most skilled artists. Not so Liddell and her visceral monologues.

She spent lengthy stretches of “Dämon: El Funeral de Bergman” alone on the huge, blood-red stage. Pacing forwards and backwards, she vociferated as if she had been possessed. At common intervals, she took her cue from the extreme, misanthropic writings of the Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, certainly one of her idols. “I’m Ingmar Bergman,” she declared at one level, earlier than returning to her favourite themes: dying, guilt, intercourse and excrement.

But the primary vocal photographs Liddell fired had been directed at critics, in a piece known as “Humiliations suffered.” Along with her again turned to the viewers, she started studying excerpts from unfavorable opinions of her work, beginning with an article by Armelle Héliot, the previous chief theater critic of the French newspaper Le Figaro. “The place are you, Armelle?,” Liddell yelled, earlier than transferring on to the subsequent identify.

As these round me realized what was taking place, mouths fell open. Many people thought again frantically on our previous opinions, questioning if we had been subsequent.

It was an incendiary breach of the unstated contract between artists and critics, with one author particularly the goal of an unjustifiable litany of insults. “I despise and hate you,” Liddell stated, asking reviewers to “face your personal vileness.”

To be truthful, Liddell appears to despise most of humanity, so we had been in good firm. But it was a wierd selection of goal, as a result of French critics have been amongst her largest advocates since her Avignon debut, in 2010.

Actually, Liddell embodies the rebellious, experimental aspect of the occasion, the place she constructed her cult following in Europe. “Dämon” marks her eighth manufacturing on the competition. From noodles thrown on the viewers in 2013’s “Ping Pang Qiu” to bare ladies masturbating with useless octopuses in 2016’s “¿Qué Haré Yo con Esta Espada?,” she is an element and parcel of Avignon folklore.

Her Cour d’Honneur debut solely cements that standing, and he or she makes intelligent use of this one-of-a-kind venue. The stage is almost empty, besides for a bathroom, a urinal and a bidet positioned towards the Gothic wall of the palace, as soon as residence to popes.

A mystic, non secular streak has at all times run via Liddell’s work, and right here the primary performer to seem is costumed like a pope. Casually, along with his arms held behind his again, he strolls across the stage, pausing to look at the bathroom.

Then, earlier than Liddell even utters a phrase, she stakes her declare to the Cour d’Honneur in idiosyncratic vogue. Her bottom to us, she pulls her costume up over a basin full of water, and proceeds to clean her genitals in plain sight. Subsequent, she throws the water towards the towering medieval wall behind her.

The remainder of the solid solely makes an look after Liddell’s marathon-like monologue. The most important tableau is a meditation of types on the indignities of ageing, involving, as typically with Liddell, important nudity. A dozen seniors sit in wheelchairs whereas vignettes occur round them — an older man singing bare, youthful ladies stripping off to sit down in numerous laps, Liddell briefly arousing the faux-pope.

“Dämon” in the end builds up, because the title suggests, to a theatrical reimagination of Bergman’s burial. The filmmaker wrote a script for his personal funeral, and Liddell faithfully recreates the easy wooden coffin and musical accompaniment that he wished: Bach. (The feminine mourners in black lingerie and the lads who pull down their pants are presumably a Liddell contact.)

After the ceremony was carried out, Liddell stayed alone onstage with the coffin. “Loneliness is nigh,” she stated, addressing Bergman. “Will you settle for me as your final spouse? As a result of I can’t dwell like this.” Impulsively, she appeared quieter, pertaining to her troubled relationship along with her mother and father and her sense of guilt over as soon as wishing them hurt.

She directed some remaining jabs at critics, however a vulnerability had crept in. “Pals and enemies, our days are numbered. Theater is time, and time kills,” Liddell stated, earlier than pausing.

At that second, on opening evening, raindrops began falling over Avignon. Liddell appeared as much as the sky and a few viewers members began clapping — nonetheless bewitched by her, regardless of all of it.

“It’s good to get a great kicking typically,” a fellow critic advised me after the standing ovation receded. Liddell might hate normie reviewers, however the extremes she pushes us to think about are by no means boring. As she places it on the finish of the present, in white letters projected over the venerable backdrop: “Be careful, bastard, and see you on the subsequent play.”

Dämon: El Funeral de Bergman

By July 5 at Avignon Pageant; festival-avignon.com.