A Christmas Tale

By

Arnaud Desplechin

Direction

Julie Deliquet / Collectif In Vitro

Performed by

Julie André, Stephen Butel, Éric Charon, Solène Cizeron, Olivier Faliez, Jean-Christophe Laurier, Agnès Ramy, Marie-Christine Orry, Thomas Rortais, David Seigneur/Richard Sandra, Hélène Viviès, Jean-Marie Winling

Stage adaptation of a film by Arnaud Desplechin

In a zany and provocative chorus, it is not one tale but several that converge, overlap then diverge around a family meeting up for Christmas.

Julie Deliquet immerses the audience in a world of families and transmission. Following on from her dazzling adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander at the Comédie-Française, she is now staging Arnaud Desplechin’s A Christmas Tale, featuring twelve actors from the In Vitro theatre group. The play takes place at the Vuillard’s house in Roubaix, where the whole family is coming for Christmas. Abel and Junon are an elderly couple, still very much in love despite the trials of life. Yet Junon urgently requires a bone marrow transplant and needs to find a donor from within the family. The children, their spouses, grandchildren and cousins all arrive. Then Henri – the youngest son previously banished from the family – turns up, carrying with him the full burden of family tensions.
Combining comedy and drama, the play deals with descendancy, blood ties and mourning, but also love. The script continually swings between rebuttals, verbal tug-of-wars and painful truths. The audience is seated on each side of the stage, placing them closer to the intimate confessions of the characters, where the story unfolds before the eyes of the accomplices watching the characters in the shadows, to the rhythm of the vinyl records played by the characters.

This event is staged in partnership with the and the