Le Pays lointain

Le Pays lointain is the last piece that Lagarce wrote, and his final variation on a theme which was a lifelong preoccupation for him: the return of the prodigal son. In this play, past and present blend together in order to build up an outline of the last 20 years of Louis, the central character’s life. Louis tirelessly announces the news of his forthcoming, premature death. There is no mention of era nor place, just a list of eleven magnificent roles: the father, mother, Antoine the brother, Suzanne the sister and Catherine the sister-in-law, to name but a few. The play also constitutes a chronicle of the central character’s love life, during which a whole procession of silhouettes, ephemeral or otherwise, returns, one by one, to pay him a visit... Faced with Louis’ silence, their presence, represented by dotted lines on the play-text, makes us wonder to what extent they represent lines of flight, around the dreadful avowal that he may or may not bring himself to make. Everybody can have their say, whether they be long-gone or now returned, for Louis lets those close to him speak their minds, multiplying the various points of view: this “distant land” is also a crossroads for setting the record straight with Louis... Today, Clément Hervieu-Léger is the same age as Louis. His overflowing energy imbues Le Pays lointain with the dimension of a true contemporary classic, that of a work which “enables us to speak of our own generation as it is, independent of when the play was was written.”