Théâtre Montansier - Le Diner

Entertainment/recreation

Two couples meet at a chic Amsterdam restaurant. Paul and his wife Claire go backwards. Paul's brother Serge, popular, admired and future Prime Minister of the Netherlands, has chosen the day, time and place.

Serge wants to talk about the children. A compromising video is playing on social networks. The children have done something serious. Faced with the unspeakable, what do you save? His convictions or his child? It's the kind of dilemma we'd like to avoid at all costs. But Herman Koch doesn't spare us. There's no way out. We have to make a decision. Can we remain dignified, tolerant, generous and open-minded when our own child deprives us of all these qualities at once by forcing us to cover up his crime? What happened to the values you instilled in your offspring, which seem to have failed to take root? Didn't the person who sired the monster behave in a way that encouraged the remorseless killer's vocation?

If your child had committed the unspeakable, would you protect him/her without limit?

When our offspring express their violence by dismembering insects, we reprimand them, but we know that this is a kind of ritual, a learning process that enables them to tame and curb their destructive impulses.

But what happens when you discover that your child has never stopped this little game and has taken it to extremes? When the impulse has become planning, and the victims are now human beings?

By Herman Koch, adapted by Jean-Benoît Patricot, directed by Catherine Schaub, lighting by Alexandre Milcent, music by Laurent Guillet with Bruno Solo, guitar by Édouard Demanche production 42 Maison de production, co-directed by Théâtre de l'Atelier.