• While Drag Race France, a culture program of drag-queen competition, was launched on France Télévisions,

    20 Minutes

    took the opportunity to provide an overview of this ancient and little-known artistic practice.

  • History, political repercussions, big figures and little stories, this series of articles is an opportunity to get to know this universe better.

  • Today, we are spending the evening at the mythical Madame Arthur club in Paris.

It's a large red storefront at the foot of rue des Martyrs, in the 18th arrondissement of Paris.

A few steps from Pigalle and its neon lights, Madame Arthur has remained in its own juice.

Opened in 1946, the “first transvestite cabaret opened in Paris” has retained its aged walls and its rococo atmosphere.

This week, everyone is on their 31, and for good reason: the establishment is blowing out its 75 candles, and has invited all the creatures that have gravitated between its walls to the party.

In the performance hall, while the public presses under the large disco ball and silence falls, the piano resounds under the fingers of Charly Voodoo, a tall Pierrot covered in sequins in six-inch heels.

On stage, we find the usual singing creatures of Madame Arthur, from Bili L'arme à l'Œil to Odile de Mainville, via Martin Poppins or La Briochée.

For the occasion, Lola Dragoness, Monsieur K and Morian, who are pursuing other projects in parallel, had joined the show and put on their most beautiful high heels and sequined dresses.

On the program, only French songs, from Balavoine to a French version of

Bohemian Rhapsody

by

Queen

.

It makes you wonder if this anniversary isn't just a pretext to get together and sing together.

A historical place

When it opened after the war, Madame Arthur was a so-called transvestite cabaret, where men dressed as women to perform songs.

The name of the establishment is taken from a song by Yvette Guilbert in the 1920s, where she praises a woman whose “behind the face/promised a je-ne-sais-quoi!

», a nod not so subtle for the time.

In the 1950s, cross-dressing was prohibited, and many artists who came out of the cabaret in dress could end up being taken away by the police.

Very early on, the place welcomed magazine leaders like Bambi and Coccinelle, trans women who helped to move the lines.

For decades, the cabaret will be a refuge for various people from the LGBT community, offering a breath of fresh air from the outside world.

But in 2010, the establishment went out of business.

The cabaret is out of breath, neither Parisians nor tourists come, sometimes preferring to go a few hundred meters away, to the Moulin Rouge or to Michou, a transformist cabaret.

Until 2015, the silence is deafening and the dust weighs down the red curtains.

A few years earlier, in 2008, Fabrice Laffon, a musician, took over the concert hall Le Divan du monde, next door to Madame Arthur.

While the establishment was closed, the Laffon family decided to buy the cabaret in 2012 and physically connect the two establishments to create a second Divan du Monde dance hall.

In 2015, Madame Arthur reopened, under the impetus of the Divan du Monde team.

Several artists like Monsieur K, Charly Voodoo and Morian decided to create a whole new show formula, embracing the heritage of French song, from Michel Berger to Diam's.

The goal?

Seduce a young, trendy audience, which is not necessarily used to cabaret.

At first, it's a cold shower.

"We opened empty and it stayed empty for a year and a half," we hear behind the scenes.

It will take the arrival of Fanta Touré, programmer, for everything to speed up: the shows become thematic, the place begins to offer several shows in different places and at different times of the evening, a blind test 100% French music has held every weekend,

and Madame Arthur turns into a nightclub after midnight.

A new formula that seduces.

Legacy fights

For several years, the place has been transformed.

The Divan du Monde on one side, the former room of Madame Arthur on the other, on several floors and rooms that sometimes resemble a labyrinth.

And at the level of the passage between the two spaces, a wall covered with portraits of former magazine leaders, an initiative of the troupe.

"A way to keep this heritage with us" Bili told us the weapon to the eye, one of the artists.

Moreover, for this 75th anniversary, Bambi is in the front row, smiling.

In the room, we find a heterogeneous public, aficionados of French song or couples who have come to get into the slum.

In the heat of June, it's the last show before part of the troupe goes on tour at the Festival Off d'Avignon, or before everyone resumes their parallel projects, like at the La Bouche cabaret,

On stage, La Biche, a creature with orange make-up, explains that “since Bambi, we have tried to dream of an ideal world, of a society where everything would be nothing but love”.

To the sound of the song “Travesti” from Starmania, the room applauds, shouts, dances.

A moment of celebration allowed after two years of pandemic, where the Madame Arthur team offered shows in streaming, to remedy the lack of culture.

An inventiveness that has proven itself: we are here in a 2.0 cabaret, far from the rules of decorum.

“I want Jack Lang and Anne Hidalgo to get over it,” laughs La Briochée, as the jokes multiply on the far removed aspect of subsidized theater.

A committed and innovative show

With its 75th anniversary, Madame Arthur is also celebrating a victory: that of having been able to attract a new, younger audience, eager for committed shows and raw emotions.

While the speckled mirror reflects the laughter and the glasses filled with alcohol, on the side of the stage, the numbers follow one another with disarming ease.

If we take up classic French songs, we don't leave out Diam's, or even Jul and his Organized Band.

By interposed screen, Maud'Amour, one of the creatures of the troop, wishes a happy birthday to the cabaret, accompanied by Jean-Paul Gaultier, for whom she performs in London.

But above all, the show, as always with Madame Arthur, is political.

To the tune of Kings of the World, the musical Romeo and Juliet, we make fun of straight people, we talk about accepting ourselves as we want.

La Biche sneaks into the audience, and on a rewrite of the YMCA hit, sings “Me I love Didier!

in chorus with the whole room.

"There aren't many places where they could accept me as I am, a fat, trans woman," explained La Briochée.

A rainbow flag is unfurled in a shower of confetti, to cheers from the audience.

A college education, a dozen glittery creatures on stage and two hours of show later, Charly Voodoo pays a last tribute before the curtain closes.

“Bambi gave me the original score for the finale that she used to do, but I need her to sing it with us,” he asks, accomplice, to the legendary review leader.

The latter complies, and begins to sing, with the whole troupe.

A suspended moment, where the generations mingle in the same moment of celebration.

Madame Arthur is blowing out her candles, but her artistic proposal has never been so current.

As the curtain closes in a standing ovation, the creatures leave the stage to join the common people, sipping a glass of champagne.

In the loudspeakers, Dalida then France Gall.

So in the blue lights,

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