Review: LA PETITE ANNONCE FAITE À MARIE at Théâtre Royal Du Parc
A Luminous Portrait of Memory
The curtain rises on a single light falling on a piano. A little girl appears, then dematerialises in front of us. Nebulae bloom across the stage in projections, and a heavenly backlight opens the space like a doorway to the cosmos. A figure advances slowly, and the audience stops breathing for a second.
From the first minute, LA PETITE ANNONCE FAITE À MARIE announces what it is. It’s intimate. It’s visual. It’s built from music, movement, and fragments of life that linger on.
This is a collective creation based on Thierry Debroux’s novel, and it talks about memory with a rare kind of delicacy. A son visits his mother. She forgets him. He comes back anyway. He tells stories, he rebuilds moments, he tries to stitch together what time keeps pulling apart. The show carries the shadow of Alzheimer’s, yet it never turns into a lecture.
Julie Delbart’s live piano becomes the spine of the evening. It’s there like a pulse, sometimes gentle, sometimes quietly insistent. Logan Lopez Gonzalez’s countertenor voice adds a haunting layer that feels close and somehow otherworldly, like a thought you can’t quite place, yet you recognise instantly.
Fabian Finkels sits at the centre of this journey. His voice is warm, intimate, and perfectly suited to the closeness this piece demands. At one point he says, “Je vous dis un secret. Le temps n’existe pas.” He says it quietly, like he’s letting you in on a secret. From that moment, everything that follows has a different weight.
Michèle Anne De Mey’s movement work gives the body its own language of memory. It feels organic, as if remembering is happening in the muscles before it reaches the mind. The show keeps returning to the idea that when words fail, presence remains. A gesture remains...A look remains....
And then there’s the visual universe. Allan Beurms’ video work and the projections are astonishing. They’re beautifully filmed and edited, and they don’t sit on top of the performance. They breathe with it. Images of the real Marie pass through the fiction, and they hit with a particular kind of recognition. You see grandparents and parents in those eyes. You see the stillness and the childlike smile of old age that looks beyond you, as if they’re watching something luminous you can’t quite reach.
The stage is full of poetic objects that feel simple and loaded at the same time: angel wings hanging from a coat rack, light that behaves like memory, appearing, fading, returning in a new shape, a doll in a cardboard box. Everything seems to fall into place with a strange precision, as if the show is building a giant jigsaw puzzle in front of you, piece by piece, breath by breath.
The fourth wall is completely broken, and it creates an immediate connection. It’s their story, but it becomes ours very quickly. The show evokes deep sadness, yet it doesn’t chase tears. For me, it does something more lasting. It makes you remember the beauty of people who are no longer here, and for a little more than an hour, it lets you feel close to them again. You smile back.
Even the music’s stylistic range, which could easily become distracting, stays inside the emotional line. It feels like a single breath from beginning to end. Song, dance, light, image, and silence blend so naturally that the form never feels artificial or mechanical.
LA PETITE ANNONCE FAITE À MARIE doesn’t shout about the big topics of the day. It speaks about a life...about two lives, and about the vital importance of keeping memories alive through connection, storytelling, and love. It’s a show from the heart about the heart.
Final rating: 9/10 (Strongly recommended for anyone who wants theatre that keeps memory alive with tenderness and beautiful craft).
Photo credits: Aude Vanlathem
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