Premiere: September 27, 2024
Inspired by Roberto Bolaño’s novella “The Return”
Director: Naubertas Jasinskas
Playwright: Edgaras Gerasimovičius
Set Designer: Tadas Černiauskas
Composer: Agnė Matulevičiūtė
Sound Director: Edvinas Vasiljevas
Costume Designer: Liucija Kvašytė
Visual Artist: Martynas Norvaišas
Choreographer: Ieva Navickaitė
Lighting Designer Dainius Urbonis
Assistant Director Alius Veverskis
Cast:
Justina Vanžodytė, Džiugas Grinys, Samanta Pinaitytė, Ieva Navickaitė, Digna Kulionytė, Rimantas Pelakauskas
The play “The Return” – is a contemporary gothic tale about Michael and Claire, a young married couple on the verge of divorce, and their unbelievable story of returning to one another, which shatters the normal order of the world. Claire works in television and is pursuing a career in Paris, while Michael unsuccessfully tries to balance his job in Marseille with his wife’s ambitions to settle in the capital, but their relationship comes to an end due to Michael’s affair with Cécile Lambal—a girl who has barely come of age, with whom he maintains a casual relationship even after the divorce. Unexpectedly, at one of what had become routine parties, Michael dies and, having become a ghost, follows his own body on a journey through the fantastical labyrinths of death’s bureaucracy and chance, until they lead him to his ex-wife.
This work, which breaks social taboos, is what is described in the French literary tradition as *bizarre*—a strangeness that disrupts the obviousness of our ordinary daily lives. The play is based on the Gothic motif of a world turned upside down, suggesting that on Judgment Day, the wronged will take revenge on their oppressors. However, in the play, the line separating justice and punishment from sacrilegious pleasure is ghostly pale and constantly being redrawn. Here, our existential anxiety, shameful desires, and past mistakes are thrust into a blindingly bright, electric light.
The performance contains explicit language, smoke, bright flashes of light, and nudity.
