REVIEW: The Festival d'Avignon Presents NOUS OU LE PARADOXE DU HÉRISSON By Muriel Imbach

What are the binds that tie us? That's the question posed by Muriel Imbach's delightful intergenerational work Nous ou Le Paradoxe du Hérisson, now performing at the Festival d'Avignon's Théâtre Benoît XII.

Five actors enter the stage bound together by a single rope. One carries a backpack, another a stool, another a plant, another a map, and another a pillow. As they wander through a forest of ropes dangling from the rafters, a tangled jungle gym of cords rises from the floor, leaving them trapped. A sixth figure arrives and proposes the obvious solution: untie yourselves. They do and the newcomer is drawn into the group as they begin negotiating their relationships to one another, their individual desires, and what gives their lives meaning. The result is not one of the Festival's most formally ambitious productions, but a winsome, child-friendly Godot.

As a child, I remember feeling vaguely embarrassed by the idea of adults performing for children. Isn't this beneath them? Is this really how they think we behave? I often felt patronized. Similar doubts resurfaced during the opening moments as the performers entered in single file, gazing about the space with exaggerated clownish wonder before gathering into a circle of repeated "Ça va?"s.

"Ça va?"
"Ça va. Ça va?"
"Ça va."

This cartoonish rendering of one of France's most ordinary social rituals immediately establishes the play's central conflict: how honest are the relationships that bind us? The performances then move beyond broad whimsy. Rather than playing down to their audience, the actors gradually transform their characters into an extension of the relationship between the adult performer and the vulnerable child within.

With the arrival of the newcomer, the group renegotiates its social order. Are we tired of the roles we've assumed? Must we all travel in the same direction? Are we a family? These questions lead to several genuinely affecting moments. One performer recounts their brother's gender transition and expresses a longing to tell him how proud they are to finally have a brother. In another, the actor carrying the map traces a family history stretching across sub-Saharan Africa, the Mediterranean, the Arabian Peninsula, and Europe. The map is not a destination but a reminder of where she comes from.

By the play's conclusion, the group divides as two members choose a different path from the others. It is a gentle ending, though no less melancholic for its restraint. After they depart, the suspended web of ropes slowly glows with LED lights, transforming the once-confining structure into something quietly beautiful.

In just an hour, Imbach crafts a work that addresses childhood anxieties with enough abstraction to engage adults and enough warmth to avoid patronizing younger audiences. Coline Bardin, Pierre-Isaïe Duc, Linna Ibrahim, Cédric Leproust, Fred Ozier, and Selvi Pürro create a generous ensemble that embraces clowning without ever resorting to easy caricature. Isa Boucharlat's deliberately gender-ambiguous costumes subtly reinforce the production's openness to non-heteronormative identities. Antoine Friderici's nostalgic lighting complements Neda Loncarevic's wonderfully playful rope installation, a set that never becomes an uncanny liminal space but instead remains recognizably a playground.

Change is frightening, but it is also necessary if we are to arrive somewhere new. We are allowed to cherish the people and places that give our lives meaning. We simply cannot bind them forever.

Photo Credit: Christophe Raynaud de Lage

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