2023-11-25 17:55:19
Family – High season
Direction: Milo Rau. Performers: An Miller, Filip Peeters, Leonce Peeters and Louisa Peeters. Dramaturgy and research: Carmen Hornbostel. Municipal Theater of Girona, 24 November.
The viewer, voyeur, gossips about the interior of a house. Teenage daughters study English, mother showers and father cooks, any evening, like that nobody, just before he committed suicide. The true story of the Demeesters, who hanged themselves in Calais in 2007 for no apparent reasonserves the controversial Swiss director Milo Rau to build Family, a show that does not play at speculating the reasons for that indecipherable act, but instead makes the enigma and the lack of explanations its main virtue.
To address the banality of that night, one more if it weren’t for the collective ending -which the public knows from the beginning-, the NTGant director turns to a real family: that of the actors An Miller and Filip Peeters and their daughters, the young Leonce and Louisa. The game of reality and representation works very well for permeate the daily life of the last few hourswith a call to grandma, watching some home videos or a carefully prepared dinner that they take flight thanks to the silence of the four.
A family suicide played by a real family
The tension for the outcome it alters the meaning of the conversations and makes the looks of the performers disturbing. Rau shows them up close, with a screen that projects close-ups, and trusts that the viewer will identify with themimbued with very natural interpretations that create a dense atmosphere, as if it were the darkest Sunday afternoon anyone will ever experience.
Nothing that happens on stage is extraordinary. A Family there are no dramas, screams or big existential debates, but it is noticeable that questions about the meaning of life have been on the table. At least to Cals Peeters, who behind the glass walls of the scenography expose themselves as much as the real suicidal family.
The show, one of the highlights of this Temporada Alta, opens and closes with a list of what cheesy people call life’s little pleasures: the wind in your face, watching a movie curled up under the blanket or the Harry Potter books.
“If we must all die, why not die today?”one of the young women asks, while the parents go over whether they have turned off the electricity, water and gas, as if they were moving house and not the neighborhood forever.
The Demeesters said goodbye to the world with a note that said “We made a mistake, sorry” and a couple of instructions for whoever took care of the dog. As incomprehensible and futile as that.
#night #normal #family