L’Europe, c’est moi

I meet Bernard-Henri Lévy in a colossally luxurious hotel on a tree-lined avenue just behind the Elysée Palace. The French philosopher is half-reclining on a sofa, with one ankle tucked under his thigh, beneath an ornamental bookcase bearing a bust of Voltaire. He wants to discuss his new play, Last Exit Before Brexit, which will receive its world premiere at Cadogan Hall, London, on 4 June, under the auspices of the Hexagon Society. The play takes the form of a 100-minute monologue. What’s it about?

‘A group of anti-Brexit intellectuals decide to organise a last-chance event in the symbolic city of Sarajevo. They ask me to deliver the keynote speech. And I, or the character of the play, is enclosed between the four walls of his hotel room, trying to prepare his speech, but the text escapes through his fingers, it disaggregates itself, it flies away. Why? Because the very object of his speech, Europe, is a ghost of itself. And this is unacceptable. This is unbearable. The play is a call for the resurrection of Europe, a call for Europe to gather back its spirit. It’s a call for Remain.’

Londoners will love it, I tell him, because most of them voted against Brexit. This dismays him. He’d prefer to perform to a pro-Brexit crowd in the hope of changing their minds.

‘I want them to react, to be shocked, to scream!’ In that case he should take his message beyond the M25 and into the Brexit heartlands. ‘I hope I will be invited to perform it outside London. Perhaps you can say that in your article. I’m available.’ Who does he blame for Brexit? Britain or the EU?

‘Both. This is what my play says.’ He castigates the European institutions for building an ‘empty machine’ and a bureaucracy which he calls ‘a disgrace’.