Writer: Laura De Ryver
Director: Sara Reimers
What better way to brush up on your French than attending Laura De Ryver’s very funny language lesson? Providing the French equivalent to every dirty word you can think of, De Ryver’s 60-minute play is also an examination of the sexism that exists within the French language. This adult education class is perfect end-of-the-night fringe entertainment.
De Ryver plays Miss Takes armed with a handbag full of Belgian beer, a PowerPoint presentation and unresolved anger about her ex Jean Pierre. To begin with, she wants to correct a few mistakes about what we British think the French say. No one in France says sacre bleu anyone, she tells us in clipped teacherly tones. The word that everyone uses is putain, and depending on the circumstances the swear word has a variety of meanings ranging from an exclamation of anger to a sigh of relief.
In the same way, the British like to believe that there is something sexy in the phrase oh lala, but Miss Takes ensures us that it is used as a way to express disappointment, and more las can be added to emphasise the severity of the disappointment. With these errors rectified Miss Takes now moves to parts of the body, and it’s a surprise to learn that many of the words used for parts of the female anatomy are masculine words, and it shows how language also controls women.
These points are all well made by De Ryver, and using the classroom framework is a nice conceit to present these ideas. What doesn’t work so well is Miss Takes’s back story, and her disastrous relationship with Jean Pierre. It may explain Miss Takes’s simmering anger and her drinking problem but these digressions aren’t as interesting as the facts about French, and language in general.
But as late night comedy and with plenty of audience participation French 101 hits the spot. It would be an awful shame if we didn’t see this show again. Quel dommage, indeed.
Runs until 3 August 2022
