Louis is in the final stages of his “illness” and after a long absence, returns to his family in order to announce to them that he dying. However, there is neither space nor time for this sad announcement to be made, as the members of his family, in a jovial atmosphere, find the opportunity to “offload” their own emotional baggage, and so the impending death remains a secret between Louis and the audience.  

 

This is a play about the inability of a family to have honest communication between its members. A revealing drama about the image of the modern person. Through his text, Lagarce decodes the classic urban drama, enriching it with modern elements and posing questions about alienation, irrationality and lack of contact. With clear influences from Beckett and Camus, and with a focus on human nature, the feelings of anxiety, misery and death are intensified to their extremes.

 

The audience has before them the members of a family who, after many years apart, and during one short meeting, desperately try to recognize one another and become close once again. But they do not know each other anymore, they do not love each other, they are total strangers. A humorous, gentle and poetic work where the characters are constantly searching for the right words and failing miserably.

 

The work speaks of mortality, wasted chances, the significant and the insignificant. The silent presence of death underlines important questions about the daily life of people. What really stops us communicating with one another? What makes us happy and what makes us sad? Why do words not help us?

A play which makes us consider our mortal nature, a play which is about abandonment, love and guilt. A play which condemns the “Perfect” family unit.

 

Louis in his prime or Louis in the crowning moment of his decline, – the distinction between the two states of being is unclear – at the age of thirty four he is resigned to awaiting his imminent death. He is either abandoning life or life is abandoning him. The cause of death is also unclear: suicide, terminal illness or a living death on a symbolic level?

Louis, before surrendering to eternal silence, proceeds to the great return. The return that is the final farewell. The return to the earth, to family, to childhood years, to the years of maturation and escape. The farewell meeting is significantly revealing. The conventional communication between the members of this typical family is the façade behind which lies the lack of love, the selfishness, the loneliness and withering. Each of them, closed tightly within themselves, has given up to their own personal death. In comparison to the daily deaths in life, however great or small, Louis’ true death will be one of joy and redemption.

 

Jean-Luc Lagarce. Writer and director, born in Besançon where he studied philosophy and following that acting at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts. In 1997 he founded the amateur theatre company, Le Théâtre de la Roulotte. Along with other students, including Mireille Herbstmeyer, who ever since has worked at his side, he directed Beckett, Goldoni as well as his own plays. When, in 1981, his theatre company turned professional, the work Carthage, encore was broadcast by Lucien Attoun’s programme, Nouveau Répertoire dramatique, on the France Culture radio station. As of 1982 the play Le voyage de Madame Knipper vers la Prusse orientale is staged by the director Jean-Claude Fall at the Petit Odéon.  His career as a director begins with the directing of the 20 or so plays which alternate between classics (Crebillon Fils, Molière, George Feydeau, Eugène Ionesco..), adaptations of non-theatrical works as well as his own creations.  In 1992, Jean-Luc Lagarce stages the play, Les Solitaires Intempestifs and founds the homonymous publication house with his closest collaborator, François Berreur, aiming at the publication of contemporary plays. After his untimely death in 1995 from the AIDS virus, at the age of just 38, his oeuvre (twenty five plays, three readings, one libretto….) has met with greater and greater success with audiences and critics and has been translated into twenty five languages.

 

Translation: Andreas Staikos

Direction – Lighting – Music supervision: Enke Fezollari

Set design-Costumes: Christina Costea

Assistant Director: Stefania Vlachou

 

Performing: Eleonora Antoniadou, Nicol Dimitrakopoulou, Alexandra Paleologou, Ioannis Papazisis, Vaggelis Psomas

******