On this Wednesday afternoon, the faithful (from the theater) flock to a rather special mass in the nave of the Saint-Victor abbey, which overlooks the Old Port in Marseille, as part of the shows offered outside the walls. by the Théâtre du Gymnase.

No cassock or pulpit, but a simple pulpit and the majestic setting of the abbey choir are enough for Ariane Ascaride to put on the preacher's habit with amazing ease.

"It's quite pleasing for me" because "it is quite rare for a woman to be in this place", confides the actress to AFP, after reading, stressing that, moreover, "in the texts de Pagnol, most of the time, women never have bits of bravery ".

However, "it is an absolutely demonic symbolic place of power", she confesses: "I had not measured it at that point".

A power which is very much due to the oratory displayed in these sermons, which Marcel Pagnol considered very close to the dramatic art even if, he underlined in an interview in 1965, "it is however not quite the same thing because the orator does not have a line that allows him to gain momentum ":" He is not an actor and I have often turned very good actors in these sermons, which were very bad " .

In this case, the verve of Ariane Ascaride, who finds for the occasion his Marseille accent, without which it would be difficult to give the same scope to Pagnol's phrasing, has nothing to envy that of Fernand Sardou, who played the priest of Cucugnan in the eponymous film by Marcel Pagnol, adapted from "Letters from my mill" by Alphonse Daudet.

Seeing her mimic the lapping of the bubbling cauldrons in which the damned of Cucugnan are cooking, a parish "which is not fundamentally irreligious but whose faith is not a militant activity", one would almost believe one could see the flames of hell.

This is because it takes a sacred force of persuasion for the venerable priest to bring his lost flock back to the right path of confession.

Even if it means becoming a "missionary", as in the sermon of the "Grand Fontainier", this time taken from the film "Manon des Sources".

"In this region, when people hear Marcel Pagnol, they hear something which structures them", the writer having managed, according to the actress, to capture "the expression of the language of this country".

He is "extremely popular" here and "a part of the life of the people".

© 2021 AFP