« ...The Halqa, the audience in a circle surrounding a character at the same time story-telling, half mad, jester, musician, comedian. Simon Elbaz, the « mad story-teller » takes up this pre-theatrical maghrebian tradition and gives a very personal one man show. »

Libération


  

«...Simon Elbaz has made it the central piece of a show which is at the same time musical and theatrical. It combines three languages: french (preominant), arabic and hebrew. This allows the author-actor unusual play of words and tongues. »

La Voix du Nord

  
  

A universal message
« ...Played before a multi-cultural public, this play half-comic, half-tragic is indisputably original as far as that the message is given in three languages (french, arabic,and
hebrew) but the laughter is universal and breaks down cultural barriers. Tolerance, respect of the others, hers are sensitive themes, treated in an intelligent way by only one actor but many characters. »

Le Dauphiné Libéré

 
  

A Tale Of Extraordinary madness
« ...Following the Halqa tradition, this moroccan jew mad on the theatre has produced a character, the jester of Mellah adopted by the three communities, jew, moslem and christian. His one-man show Mchouga-Maboul, at Casa, Meknes and Khouribga which he has conceived like a Halqa, the audience encircling minstrel who wanders from souk to souk, village to village and who is the last to laugh at his own words. Who has said that the oral tradition was dead and buried? The hero of this Halqa is triple: polyglot who has embraced three religions; speaking in french, joking in hebrew, singing in arabic. The order is of no importance, as he is the three at the same time, in the same show and in the three languages. The three communities in a united public. »

Almaghrib

   
  

A mad from the desert
« ...Mchouga-Maboul speaks in french, hebrew, arabic as many languages as was used by the communities under the French Protectorate. Mchouga-maboul tells the tale of a village on the eve of independence. Dancing, playing the lute or singing melopoeia, he sways the members of the audience between hilary (provoked by a stinging jewish humour) and the despair of blindness. By the means of languages or dance, he passes from one to the other like a dancing dervish. He has confronted his stage experience with the halqa and this gives a rather uncommon one-man show. »

Libération - Lyon

     

«...Simon Elbaz has found his clown, Mchouga, the character which he plays, has finished by catching up with him. Beyond the world, the driving language of Simon Elbaz is the universal language of the body. Mchouga-Maboul, a spicy piece,to be tasted »

Actualité Juive

    

   

   
 
  
«...Simon Elbaz acting Mchouga, the legendary beggar, clown, jester is outstanding and unexpected.Adopted by the three communities of Maghreb: arab, jew and european. »

Le Nouvel Observateur

    
  

« ...Playing on words, tragedy, comedy, songs, nursery rhymes, poems, dances. Only the joker: Simon Elbaz. Not to go to see it you must be joking. »

L'Arche

    
  

Between Orient and Occident
«...You can only be seduced by this jewish humour which he leads through all the breaches of a shattered community because of exile. With an out of the ordinary talent, Simon Elbaz offers us a show punctuated by moments both hilarious and taciturn.»

La voix sépharabe du Québec

    
  

Morocan memory
« ...Simon Elbaz with a generous talent, offers us a character worthy of the «Valeureux » of Albert Cohen. Simon Elbaz has gone seeking to the bottom of the moroccan memory, a legendary character, a strange fellow at the crossroads of three cultures: french, arab, jew: three tongues, three religions...Simon Elbaz draws from the oral tradition to create a« one-man show» (as it is thus decidedly that you can call a show with one man alone) which does not suffer from any slack period. Mchouga is a kind of free man, who can do as he wishes, who can knock around wherever he pleases. This is the man who can address God or the devil. From laughter, thick and fast, Simon Elbaz topples his audience over into emotion. The show is fresh, tender touching the heart. »

Le Midi Libre

    
  

« ...French, jewish, arabic, three languages which he declines on the world of memory, «if I forget you,warns Simon Maboul, may my tongue stick to my palate». Simon has brought to life again the Jinns of his village who are living underground. He, all alone, has remade the world of jugglers and acrobats. He has taken his lute, placed on it his warm voice and words of fun and laughter. In three versions, all original: hebrew, arabic, french: christian, jew, moslem. Poet rather than prophet, he goes indifferently from mosque to synagogue. Beware to those who would shut him up in some or other chapel!Blind and mad, but neither stupid nor sectarian. The moroccan writer Edmond Amran El Maleh speaks marvellously of the character created by Simon Elbaz, of thislaughter which «thwarts the shutting in of tragedy». Beyond the accidental, he is the folk costume, the power of unveiling, the permanence of a human sign. »

Mille et Un Soleils, Stock