REVIEW: The Festival d'Avignon Presents L'HORS PRÉSENCE... By Tiphaine Raffier

There comes a moment in every Festival d’Avignon when I yearn for convention. Not cliché, not formula, but convention. I want to be immersed in a story with characters who have names, grounded positions, and stakes within a central conflict. I want gripping dialogue, moments of tension, and moments of levity. Sometimes I find this and am disappointed. Sometimes, as was the case with Tiphaine Raffier’s L’Hors-Présence ou Chimères du Pays de Morsan, I am richly satisfied. Raffier’s L’Hors-Présence is a devastating, intimate portrait of a family in crisis that moves beyond a “ripped-from-the-headlines” presentation toward both an Ibsen-esque family study and a meditation on what it means for life to end while one is still living.

The conceit is simple. Laure, stricken with cancer and returned home under the care of her siblings, wants to die. However, because of her mental incapacitation, she can no longer legally consent to her own death. Her three siblings struggle with how to navigate this impossible situation. The eldest brother desperately wants to honor her wishes (Thomas Gonzalez). Her younger brother opposes them (Adrien Rouyard). Her sister reveals herself to be an opponent, rejecting Laure’s wishes when the moment arrives (Catherine Mestoussis). Alongside them are an artist friend who has made his name creating holes in buildings and artworks—bringing light where there was previously none (Teddy Chawa); a neighbor and friend of Laure’s who has watched the unfolding events through security cameras (Emma Bolcato); a former high school crush who arrives to play flute for her (Thierry Paret); and a nurse who desperately wants Laure to remain free of pain and to believe that her own work is not futile in the face of illness (Paula Luna).

While all of this could easily become polemical, the poetry of Raffier’s dialogue and plotting, combined with carefully placed mysteries and reversals, keeps the work from collapsing into mere argument. The themes are many: voyeurism, dignity, mortality. Yet one idea resonates above the others: the notion of being “off-sides.” Laure describes this position as having won, but having the goal disallowed. For a time, those who wanted to keep Laure alive succeeded. Yet that victory slowly slips away from them. The performer who plays Laure disappears after a letter addressed to her siblings is read. What remains of her is a speaker that emits static sound. The siblings who forced her continued life persist in their now one-sided conversations with her. Her only response is a wall-shaking heartbeat. Each beat becomes more dreaded as it arrives slower and slower.

Some works make their craft easy to recognize. With its photorealistic performances and design, both of which gradually move toward abstraction, as well as its commanding use of live video, there is nowhere for the artistry of L’Hors-Présence to hide. The cast’s ability to create fully realized characters who never dissolve into polemical positions or poetic abstractions, but instead remain psychologically grounded people, is astonishing. Each performer holds their own while contributing to a performance space defined by absolute ensemble generosity. Particular attention must be paid to Édith Mérieau’s Laure, whose portrayal captures pain, memory loss, and release without drifting into either the uncanny or the overly restrained.

Hugo Hamman’s sound design and Sylvain Jacques’s music create a soundscape that is at times intimate and at others searingly intense. Caroline Tavernier’s costumes beautifully articulate each character’s personal tastes. Hélène Jourdan’s graceful scenography creates a space that is simultaneously quotidian and dramatic. Finally, Christophe Fougou’s lighting design fully exploits the emotional possibilities of the play’s shifting worlds. Together, these elements form a unified dramatic vision in perfect conversation with the performers.

With so much anonymous pain moving through the world, it is a relief to care, and to be asked to care, for a character and a family. It is a relief to confront a difficult question and encounter an argument for a simple, if troubling, truth. It is a relief to sit in a theatre, feel moved, and find oneself surrounded by others who are moved as well. A return to convention is not a retreat when that convention is made remarkable. With L’Hors-Présence, Raffier achieves precisely that, and then some.

Photo Credit: Christophe Raynaud de Lage

More on IMPRO CLUB AVIGNON

Upcoming Shows

REUSSITE CRITIQUE EN ORCADIE

7/4 - 7/14/2026

Recevez l'actualité de Broadway sur WhatsApp

Recevez les dernières mises à jour, les nouvelles de dernière minute et une couverture exclusive directement dans l’application.