Les Marchands at Theatre National

It's a woman who is speaking. About her work at the arms factory, which she loves and which gives structure to her life. Her distress at the announcement that the factory is going to close, at the war which is, perhaps, nearly here. It's a woman speaking of her friend, who had never managed to get a job at the factory: without work, owing money, she lives lost amongst dead people who appear, sometimes without warning, in her vast apartment. It's a woman speaking, in a voice over, without the actors who illustrate her words ever speaking a word on stage. This is only the first of the many radical perspectives of this show, which confirmed Joël Pommerat's recognition by the general public. With the alternating blackout/light which reveals a new scene every time, with lighting of terrible beauty, with gestures and words repeated many times, with the gentle strength of the actors, with the completely offbeat musical interludes, Les Marchands illustrates the duality of Pommerat's work, which is at the same time both totally pared down and extremely sophisticated. And as usual with Pommerat, the coldness is only a facade: humour and humanity hover around every line.

But the great strength of these Merchants is the amazingly articulate commentary on the way that work, or its absence, shapes and unravels our lives. On the way in which each of us finds that we are the merchants of our age, of our life.