![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() It is a prime example of how a classic can be reimagined without being subverted. Valérie Dashwood plays the stepdaughter as a tormented figure who yearns for her degradation to be fully known and Alain Libolt makes Pirandello’s director a figure of suavely punctured omnipotence. Hugues Quester lends the homburg-hatted father a rasping ferocity, as if his guilt can only be assuaged through enactment. The stage also features a portable rostrum, on which characters leap with athletic agility – the director to show off the father out of anxiety to tell his story. A 'tenuous light' surrounds themthe 'faint breath of their fantastic reality. Yves Collet’s set and lighting make astute use of billowing screens and shadow play. It’s a play of endless Chinese boxes, but the wittiest feature of this production is that it becomes an attack on directorial ego while being exceptionally well-directed. The six characters are an unusually angry bunch, demanding their story be told as if to give it completion. While Pirandello’s point about theatre’s falsification of reality is exactly caught, the production also demonstrates the therapeutic necessity of drama. It is a point reinforced when the originals recapture the tawdry squalor of the moment when the father is caught with his pants down with his semi-naked stepdaughter. They shadow the six characters, copying their every action but, when they re-create the brothel scene, it is painfully stagey. There is something comically absurd about the actors’ initial attempts to mimic reality. What comes across most vividly in Demarcy-Mota’s production is the essential paradox of theatre. ![]()
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