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Four Millennial Plays from Belgium
Four millennial plays from the French side of the language divide in Belgium.
This anthology captures the tendencies of contemporary European playwright in the beginning of the new millennium, as interracial, intercontinental marriage, the privileges afforded to society's leaders, the resurgence of the Extreme Right, and creative ways of juggling love relationships are presented in a variety of accessible styles.
The Magnolia by Jacques de
Marie-Antoinette has two boyfriends, neither of whom knows that the other exists. She's Marie to Adrian, and Antoinette to Julian. This arrangement, though it suits her perfectly, can't last forever. Her vain efforts to keep her novel way of life running according to plan yield great hilarity. Marie-Antoinette finds she'll just have to eat cake.
The Sorcerers by Serge
Luc brings his bride Paula back from Nigeria to live in Brussels. His family, open-minded, urbane, and liberal as they are, cast a spell on her, bringing about her sickness and demise. This shocking drama provides an intimate, unvarnished look at black/white relationships in contemporary Europe subsequent to the colonial era.
Patriot's Cafe by Jean-Marie
A view into the lives of members of the Extreme Right in Wallonia. Forging an innovative, lyrical style, this play reveals the personal motives -- the quest for power, a longing for significance, the need to belong to something larger -- that cause ordinary people to succumb to the lure of totalitarian rhetoric.
This Is Not A Real Pipe by Pascal
A famous French statesman reminiscent of Dominique Strauss-Kahn finds himself alone with a cleaning lady in his New York hotel room. Various possible scenarios ensue, none of which may be the real "pipe." The gears of class, race and gender disparities grind away in this prismatic comedy-drama of epic proportions -- a signature tale for our times.
This anthology captures the tendencies of contemporary European playwright in the beginning of the new millennium, as interracial, intercontinental marriage, the privileges afforded to society's leaders, the resurgence of the Extreme Right, and creative ways of juggling love relationships are presented in a variety of accessible styles.
The Magnolia by Jacques de
Marie-Antoinette has two boyfriends, neither of whom knows that the other exists. She's Marie to Adrian, and Antoinette to Julian. This arrangement, though it suits her perfectly, can't last forever. Her vain efforts to keep her novel way of life running according to plan yield great hilarity. Marie-Antoinette finds she'll just have to eat cake.
The Sorcerers by Serge
Luc brings his bride Paula back from Nigeria to live in Brussels. His family, open-minded, urbane, and liberal as they are, cast a spell on her, bringing about her sickness and demise. This shocking drama provides an intimate, unvarnished look at black/white relationships in contemporary Europe subsequent to the colonial era.
Patriot's Cafe by Jean-Marie
A view into the lives of members of the Extreme Right in Wallonia. Forging an innovative, lyrical style, this play reveals the personal motives -- the quest for power, a longing for significance, the need to belong to something larger -- that cause ordinary people to succumb to the lure of totalitarian rhetoric.
This Is Not A Real Pipe by Pascal
A famous French statesman reminiscent of Dominique Strauss-Kahn finds himself alone with a cleaning lady in his New York hotel room. Various possible scenarios ensue, none of which may be the real "pipe." The gears of class, race and gender disparities grind away in this prismatic comedy-drama of epic proportions -- a signature tale for our times.
217 pages, Paperback
First published June 2, 2015
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March 9, 2025
This is Not a Real Pipe, by Pascal Vrebos: This play is based on a real controversy involving the French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was accused of raping a hotel maid while in the US, and whose reputation was destroyed. Vrebos fictionalizes this situation and runs it through multiple scenarios from different people's biases--somewhat like Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon. The play undercuts certainty about what actually happened between Jean-Jacques Hamilton and Mariama (the fictionalized versions of DSK and the maid) by staging multiple possible ways the encounter could have gone, some more basic and probable, and some more unlikely. While the variety of possibilities undercuts any clear sense of certainty, the play does nonetheless frame viewers'/readers' sense of what most likely happened by staging a violent rape first, which creates a primary impression that this is likely what happened. Between the scenarios of the encounter, JJH speaks to someone (implicitly a therapist, but it's not entirely clear), during which he tries to explain himself, justify his behavior and worldview, and shift blame to others. But his explanations and rationalizations are so erratic that they further contribute to breaking down any sense of certainty about what happened.
https://youtu.be/Pyg1lnuqHb4
The Sorcerers, by Serge Goriely: This play is about a relationship between a white Belgian man named Luc and a Black Nigerian woman named Paula, in which the relationship is plagued by a kind of passive, liberal racism that seems to manifest in a seemingly supernatural attack on Paula. The white Belgians in Luc's family and neighborhood constantly judge Paula and criticize everything about her, from her hair, to her makeup, to he clothing, to her parenting when they have a child together--all the while claiming that their critiques have nothing to do with her race or nationality. For her part, Paula repeatedly suffers from unexplained physical pains. She claims that there are supernatural forces attacking her (presumably connected to the judgement and critique she faces in Belgium), but Luc insists that it's a period of adjustment to Belgian food, then that it's due to her pregnancy, then that it's psychosomatic. He even ends up participating in the racism while gaslighting her that he isn't doing so, largely by claiming just to be telling her what others have said and how badly she reflects on him.
https://youtu.be/Z251gW-bZsM
Patriot's Café, by Jean-Marie Piemme: I had a hard time with this play, and I'm not sure if it comes down to the translation or what, but it seemed very disjointed. The play revolves around a right-wing cafe in which political violence, corruption, and interpersonal conflicts disrupt the characters' lives.
https://youtu.be/vIXp_8uagR8
The Magnolia, by Jacques De Decker: This play is somewhere between a French farce and a comedy of manners. It revolves around a woman, Marie-Antoinette, who has two separate relationships with two men: Adrian and Julian. She keeps these relationships secret from the other man, and dates each of them under one of her names, either Marie or Antoinette. Things are going along swimmingly for her, until the two men meet at the pool where they both play water polo. They become friends, and Julian (a scholar living in the city and longing for a garden) hires Adrian (a garden architect living in the country) to build him a garden. Each man describes his girlfriend to the other, and they become convinced that their respective girlfriends have to meet both the other man and his girlfriend--little realizing that she has met the other man and is the other man's girlfriend. When things come to a crisis point, Marie-Antoinette is apparently saved by a job transfer to Mexico, which gets her out of the increasingly difficult task of navigating the two men in her life.
https://youtu.be/qxLdUBMEPfg
https://youtu.be/Pyg1lnuqHb4
The Sorcerers, by Serge Goriely: This play is about a relationship between a white Belgian man named Luc and a Black Nigerian woman named Paula, in which the relationship is plagued by a kind of passive, liberal racism that seems to manifest in a seemingly supernatural attack on Paula. The white Belgians in Luc's family and neighborhood constantly judge Paula and criticize everything about her, from her hair, to her makeup, to he clothing, to her parenting when they have a child together--all the while claiming that their critiques have nothing to do with her race or nationality. For her part, Paula repeatedly suffers from unexplained physical pains. She claims that there are supernatural forces attacking her (presumably connected to the judgement and critique she faces in Belgium), but Luc insists that it's a period of adjustment to Belgian food, then that it's due to her pregnancy, then that it's psychosomatic. He even ends up participating in the racism while gaslighting her that he isn't doing so, largely by claiming just to be telling her what others have said and how badly she reflects on him.
https://youtu.be/Z251gW-bZsM
Patriot's Café, by Jean-Marie Piemme: I had a hard time with this play, and I'm not sure if it comes down to the translation or what, but it seemed very disjointed. The play revolves around a right-wing cafe in which political violence, corruption, and interpersonal conflicts disrupt the characters' lives.
https://youtu.be/vIXp_8uagR8
The Magnolia, by Jacques De Decker: This play is somewhere between a French farce and a comedy of manners. It revolves around a woman, Marie-Antoinette, who has two separate relationships with two men: Adrian and Julian. She keeps these relationships secret from the other man, and dates each of them under one of her names, either Marie or Antoinette. Things are going along swimmingly for her, until the two men meet at the pool where they both play water polo. They become friends, and Julian (a scholar living in the city and longing for a garden) hires Adrian (a garden architect living in the country) to build him a garden. Each man describes his girlfriend to the other, and they become convinced that their respective girlfriends have to meet both the other man and his girlfriend--little realizing that she has met the other man and is the other man's girlfriend. When things come to a crisis point, Marie-Antoinette is apparently saved by a job transfer to Mexico, which gets her out of the increasingly difficult task of navigating the two men in her life.
https://youtu.be/qxLdUBMEPfg
Displaying 1 of 1 review