Au Monde at Theatre National

A large flat, spacious and luxurious, where the patriarch sits in pride of place, at a big table set with a white tablecloth or hunched into a deep armchair; there are few elements of scenery on the vast, bare stage. The old father, a captain of industry, is suffering from rapidly encroaching senility and wants his oldest son, a former soldier, to take over his business. Around him moves a family which finds it difficult to be united: the pregnant socialite, a star TV presenter, the adopted sister, a haunted brother-in-law who doesn't stop talking but who says nothing, the ghost of a dead child. Awful family secrets, probable cases of incest, a prowling serial-killer, dark happenings: the family story behind closed doors has an air of disillusioned pastiche, and going beyond the psychology of the characters, it creates a radical critique of capitalist society. Written in 2004, with its atmosphere of strangeness delicately positioned in an intimate setting, Au Monde was a precursor to most of Pommerat's work which was to follow. Here it appears as an echo to Philippe Boesman's new opera being shown at La Monnaie.