Theater Festival - Louise et Louis

There are pieces that entertain. And there are pieces that touch something deep, intimate, universal. This is one of the latter. The Compagnie Fauteuils et Strapontins presents a play by Gérard Levoyer, sensitively directed by Olivier Courbier - a show about family, old wounds and the truths we sometimes keep buried for a lifetime.

Louise and Louis have been divorced for twenty years. Time has passed, they've rebuilt their lives, and the scars of their separation seem to have faded. But appearances are deceiving - they always are, in family stories.

When they separated, their daughter Amélie chose to live with her father. A child's choice, fraught with meaning, that had widened the gulf between her two parents. Today, Amélie is a grown-up, married mother in her own right. She has maintained ties with each of them - even if her attachment to Louis remains the strongest, the most visceral, the most obvious.

But Louis is in a bad way. Very badly. And faced with the imminence of the end, something inside him can wait no longer. Before he leaves, he makes a revelation to his daughter - a secret that the years have not erased, that silence has only made heavier. A secret Louise holds the key to.

So we'll have to talk. Reopen doors we thought were closed. To confront what we've chosen to ignore. Because some secrets are harder than others to reveal - not because they're unmentionable, but because they change everything. Because they force us to face up to a version of our own history that we never wanted to see.

A play of rare accuracy, which speaks with modesty and precision of what families carry in silence - resentments, regrets, clumsy loves and truths that are always put off until tomorrow. A text that resonates long after the curtain goes down.