France soir  - October 2002
Allénor Rouffet

Musical show – A refined production in a concert of clever lighting. 

So sound the three knocks [announcing the beginning of a play] and let the performers sing. Le Petit Prince had it’s first night Tuesday evening at the Casino de Paris in a packed and enthralled hall. Before a background of minimalist scenery, Daniel Lavoie, the airman, and Jeff, le Petit Prince play out their meeting and their mutual attraction in a father/son relationship. Friendship becomes love, complete and heartbreaking. The production; simple, refined, the clever play of lighting in an unchanging representation of desert and rocks. All the colours of the rainbow reveal and create many places, many settings. The romance of the original text is not in any way refined. From the Petit Prince comes all the sensitiveness and the intelligence of the naïve, of the honest person or the pretence of it. What a splendid way to represent the characters on planets, suspended above the stage, exploring well-trained voices to depict conceit or ridiculousness. There’s no dancing, no useless gestures; the main thing remains the drama. Because they play as accomplished actors and sing true, the rose, the fox, the lamplighter and the boozer seem to come right out of the children’s imagination. 

Nevertheless, it’s a pity not have a single spotlight to exploit and transform the scenery. The minimalism of the simple scenery of cardboard, representing wells or flower bushes, is not good enough. The roses in the sand shoot up through hard ground, their stalks set on springs and with wilted petals, are a bit conducive to nodding off. If the idea of representing the friendly snake on the gilded limbs and outfit of an acrobat is brilliant, the fox himself brings on a laugh. He is reduced to the most simple format. The fox is a fox, the actor decked out in a hairy costume out of a clown’s trunk. Happily, his singing doesn’t suffer under the artificial muzzle of the animal. 

All the colours of the rainbow reveal and create many places, many settings. 

And on top of that, the music of Richard Cocciante. Not a single false note: the melody caresses the voices and the tone of the story which, in this adaptation is modern, is true to the pensive text. The second part, as it is extremely sentimental, numbs us a bit. The dream continues at a languid pace. All the same, a beautiful Petit Prince (and a talented Jeff) which deserves to be seen on stage.

Copyright © [ Daniel Lavoie: official website]