Press

In a gymnasium heated to boiling point by an implacable July sun, the reality of prison life rapidly gives way to a fiction energised with fragments of the real.

Le Monde 09.03.2020

Europe’s hottest theatre directors : Caroline Guiela Nguyen

THE GUARDIAN, 03.09.2018

This poignant saga makes plain the intimate pain wrought by colonial arrogance, culture clashes and exile.

THE NEW YORK TIMES, 08.01.2018

Un tempo, un lavoro così intelligente e umano lo avrebbe concepito un genio come Ariane Mnouchkine.

LA REPUBLICA, 07.11.2018

This is the way of things in this show, quite different from any other, […] ending with the following words: “This is how we tell stories in Vietnam: with many tears.“ Deprived of those tears for so long on the French stage, we are very happy to collect them today. 

LE MONDE, 11.07.2017

Caroline Guiela Nguyen welcomes us into her culture, her home and invites us to make it ours. She succeeds because her home is open, hybrid, a crossroads between over here and over there. She succeeds because she makes theatre an art of storytelling where each of us can find our own place.

FRANCE CULTURE 13.07.2017

At once shaken and fascinated, the audience rediscovers on stage – in a delicate presentation that is never showy, making great use of the ellipse – an often neglected slice of our colonial memory with its accompanying horrors of human sacrifice and wrecked lives…

TÉLÉRAMA, 11.07.2017

Wonderful productions, unforgettable shows – and SAIGON is one of those – give rise to joy and delight, but as their memory fades on the journey home, when we find ourselves alone again, then begins the delicate sadness linked to forgetting. Everything was perfect, we want to retain every moment and already it is beginning to disappear, memories pull apart.

MEDIAPART, 12.07.2017

The director is less interested in the why fors and more focussed on how things unfold, attentive to what goes unsaid and which is often so much stronger than the words that are awkwardly expressed. In this lies the beauty of her art, sensitive, sublime and showing a most delicate touch.

LES ÉCHOS, 28.07.2019

In Mon Grand amour like in SAIGON, everyday living spaces turn into echo chambers reverberating with the noise of the world. Political violence is visible in the bodies on stage, and no matter how singular the trajectories on show, they somehow form one story. Perhaps because here and beyond, tears always taste the same.

TROIS COULEURS, 18.07.2019

 Mon rand amour, with great emotional force, subtly depicts critical moments in which lives are turned upside down and madness threatens. The three men at the centre of the drama are at risk of being submerged […] Between the different parts of the show, Caroline Guiela Nguyen creates correspondences that carry the transitions seamlessly from one story to another and this circulation, discreet and sensitive, plays a powerful part in distilling a quietly restrained emotion.

ATTRACTIONS VISUELLES, 24.07.2019

Succeeding in putting this degree of intimacy on stage is always a tall order, and Les Hommes Approximatifs show a rare talent in doing just that.

TÉLÉRAMA, 20.05.2015

Caroline Guiela Nguyen commands this very rare art of being able to express intimacy without recourse to excessive pathos or loud complaint and tears. The result is only more painful and touching for it.

MARIANNE, 10.05.2015

This young woman with a sureness of touch has invented a mode of theatre that with sensitivity and realism invites perspectives that render only more ambiguous the complexity of human nature.

LIBÉRATION, 4.05.2015

A show that trembles like a caress. Or like one of those songs sung in mountainous regions of Iran where the sound of the sorna flute is said to bring up the bodies of the drowned from the depths of rivers. Here it is the death of a father that triggers the resurgence of childhood spectres.

MÉDIAPART, 04.05.2015

What is so compelling here is the moving way that Caroline Guiela Nguyen has found to convoke childhood […] always on the verge of overflowing into the present. Also her way of evoking death  […] by putting on stage a fascinating play showing […] the ingenious plans and projects people come up with to reinject life into the world, over and over again.

LE MONDE, 10.04.2015

What is truly magnificent in Elle brûle, is the extent to which everything is implicit, merely suggested in the succession of tableaus that make up the show and flow into one another so fluidly that we feel immersed  […]. The talent of director Caroline Guiela Nguyen and the remarkable performances given by the actors are the reason. Elle brûle, which we cannot urge you strongly enough to go and see, holds up a mirror, with anxious grace or, perhaps, graceful anxiety.

LE MONDE, 27.11 .2013

A cruel tale orchestrated with maestro by a highly promising young director.  […] The actors are all perfect in this excellent production.

LES INROCKS, 20.11 .2013

This show, directed by Caroline Guiela Nguyen, demonstrates a company in full command of their art. It peels back the skin of reality and shows our present time in all its thickness.

LE NOUVEL OBS, 24.11 .2013

Now, more than ever, there is urgency to refire our imaginations. C.GUIELA NGUYEN

LE MONDE, 05.06 .2019

Besides, how do we call this particular emotion ? This mix of attachment and distance, which is neither that of the naïve onlooker who takes everything at face value nor the ironic gaze of one for whom everything is a source of amusement ?

LIBÉRATION, 16.01 .2019

When I’m working on a show, I try to make myself porous to stay open to all the faces present on stage. C.GUIELA NGUYEN

FIGARO MADAME, 30.11 .2018

It is the act of inventing that interests me. When I go into a police station or a help centre for children, those places become a huge source of ideas. C.GUIELA NGUYEN

PARIS MATCH, 29.01 .2018

We had to break the mould, put back into the representation of our lives its very matter, what makes it fragile and complex. This led us, in all the shows by Les Hommes Approximatifs, to bring together professional and amateur actors of all different ages and backgrounds. C.GUIELA NGUYEN

LE MONDE, 17.04 .2015