Quite a challenge for Brighton Festival : programming a show with a very limited audience capacity, without pre-booking option. The aim of the famouse British festival is to offer the Brighton audience, used to big scale shows, an intimate, unusal small scale performance. And on 13th and 14th May 2011, the four Gramoulinophone shows from French company 2 Rien Merci were a success, taking the 336 spectators (absolute capacity !) to their peculiar world...
One of them, Jim Milnesou, describes the experience on the cultural reviews website Latest 7 : "You know quintessentially Parisian-themed cabaret/theatre in the round must be good when the grass of the Pavilion Gardens is littered with quintessentially Parisian people queuing to get in. 2 Rien Merci brought the scuffed charms of Montmartre to the Brighton park, even going to the effort of producing a fine simulated drizzle sprayed from the top of their battered tent. Inside, fairground weirdness propelled a show equal parts innocent street theatre and Lynchian oddness. An hour-long show is probably the most you could take, but the three performing gentlemen certainly make best use of the intimate setting…"