Littoral

Burying a father is never a painless affair but in Wajdi Mouawad’s “Littoral”, the task takes on epic proportions, intersecting family secrets and civil war to lend universal dimensions to a personal tragedy. The play, written in 1991, and its new production, recounts a homecoming of sorts, for its protagonist as well as for this Montreal-based, Lebanese playwright and director; Mouawad returns to this early piece, 15 years after writing it as an unemployed theater post-grad, rehearsing simultaneously, in his living room, with props borrowed from the kitchen. “Littoral” is the first work of the tetralogy composed also of “Incendies”, “Forêts” and “Ciels”, and exploits themes common to all of these: missing parents, lost family histories, war and (re)constructed identities, but from a lightly juvenile point of view that translates into physical humor and poetic flights that can teeter between funny and crude or slow down the action, but beg an irresistible sympathy.

The story centers on a rather immature Wilfrid, who juts out his lower lip and stamps his foot when he is contradicted, and his gradual weaning from two powerful father figures. For the genitor he never knew, he must first piece together the story of his parents’ relationship before he can finally bury the man who abandoned him as an infant. In the absence of his biological father, Wilfrid has also created an imaginary hero to save him from his personal bogeymen: the Chevalier Guiromelan, with whom he must at last also part company to finally integrate the adult world. This voyage of self-discovery leads all three men/phantoms to the father’s birthplace and a rude confrontation with greater problems yet: the strife and upheaval caused by civil war there. The grieving Wilfrid finds comfort on the way in the other adult children he meets, also seeking catharsis with dead parents; when his quest to bury his father is shouldered by all, it brings closure to the sufferings of many more than he could ever have imagined.


Despite certain challenges with which the young writer evidently struggled (primarily, how to finally dispose of the father’s corpse on stage), this new production is easily carried by its multicultural cast which exuded an infectious energy on a recent night, led by the opposing comic touches brought by Patrick Le Mauff as the self-effacing father and Jean Alibert as the combative Guiromelan. The simple yet inventive set of wooden walls draped in black plastic can be body bags and coffin liners, but, turned over, becomes sand dunes and the seaside horizon of the play’s title. Mouawad also makes striking use of a painter's palette to underscore in dripping strokes of white, red and blue the play's themes of death, sacrifice and redemption. “Littoral” is a place of new beginnings and a return to old ones as well, and in this way an interesting complement to last season’s autobiographic “Seuls”, which Mouawad wrote, directed and acted. After presiding over the 2009 Festival d’Avignon, Mouawad’s writing brings a welcome current of multicultural self-exploration to French theater.

To Feb. 21, Wed, Thurs, 7:30 pm, Fri, Sat, 8:30 pm, Sun, 4 pm, Théâtre 71, 3 place du 11 Novembre, Malkoff (92), M° Malakoff-Plateau de Vanves, 11€ -23€, tel: 01.55.48.91.00.

Photo Credit: Jean-Louis Fernandez