One of Paul Auster lies in the creation of labyrinths; its New York trilogy the work that made him famous, is undoubtedly the best demonstration of this. Needless to say, adapting this gigantic chessboard to the stage must have been quite a task, and we can only congratulate Igor Mendjisky, the inspired architect of this impossible mission. The audience had plenty to worry about, but will be reassured from the very first minutes.

First of all, we must bow to the director’s first excellent idea: replacing the narrator with a radio host (aptly played by Igor Mendjisky) from a program entitled “Histoires non conformes”. This host-narrator plays the role of Virgil, guiding the audience through the dark, sprawling forest of New York.

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Bedtime Stories

The second was the personification of Max Work, the detective from the imagination of Daniel Quinn, who writes popular detective stories under a pseudonym. It all begins with a ringing telephone. A certain Peter Stillman, who claims to be threatened with death by his own father, calls Quinn, whom he mistakes for a certain Paul Auster. Based on this misunderstanding, the play follows a series of twists and turns, taking the spectator through a maze where logic disintegrates, the better to mystify him. The three stories (City of Glass, Revenants and The Back room) fit together like Russian dolls.

In a mobile set that smells of 1950s-1960s New York – (an old telephone, a few chairs, a bench, a radio recording studio are sometimes enough to recreate an atmosphere), subdued lighting, a backdrop of buildings lit up in the night – yes, a set supported by a subtle scenography designed by Anne-Sophie Grac. We’re swept along by these three bedtime stories, in which the characters feel their own identities fading away and the real world dissolving, as in Alice in Wonderland. There’s something cinematic about it.

In the strange second part (still a detective story), the characters take on colorful names. Thus ” White would like Blue to tail someone called Black “. But why? Does White suspect Black of sleeping with his wife? In Auster, everything is much more complicated than simple adultery. And then there are actresses Ophélia Kolb and Rafaela Jirkovsky and actors Thibault Perrenoud, Lahcen Razzougui, Gabriel Dufay, Félicien Juttner and the remarkably unsettling Pascal Greggory as Stillman father and son and an editor.

The narrative spider’s web deployed by the trilogy ensnares the viewer in such a way that the story seems to act like a sweet, but oh so addictive, drug. Add to this a series of interpreted titles (including Take a Walk on the Wild Side) by Rafaela Jirkovsky, with her spellbinding voice. It is Igor Mendjisky’s feat, or rather Ockham’s razor, to have smoothed out Paul Auster’s plot, which could, between humor and anxiety, be summed up as follows: ” Who’s who when everyone else is someone else? ? “Answer at the Théâtre des Abbesses.

“ New York Trilogy “at the Théâtre des Abbesses (Paris) 18^e), until 30 November. Tel. : 01 43 74 22 77. www.theatredelaville-paris.com