IT’S ONLY THE END OF THE WORLDTUTA THEATRE CHICAGO
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This isn’t family dysfunction as it’s often depicted onstage, through startling revelations and acrimony a la Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County. There’s never any suggestion that Louis’ family rejects him for being gay or that his sexual identity is what caused him to turn his back on them years earlier. In fact Lagarce doesn’t really focus on plot—he’s more interested in how families use language to express both longing and revulsion. In this wordy script, nearly Woolf-ian in its use of interior monologue, the characters seem to address themselves even when talking to others, as if seeking reassurance that the way they perceive things is the way they really are. In the prologue, when Louis reveals to the audience his planned visit and its purpose, he asks the audience, “Have I not always been—for them and for others—have I not always been a calm and collected man?”
Perhaps, but also maddeningly detached. Even his placid mother says to him, “You’ll mumble two or three words in reply or else you’ll just smile, which is more or less the same thing.” His family members make up for how little Louis has to say with torrents of words, many revealing their resentment of his lack of attention. His sister, Suzanne, who was still a child when he left, upbraids him for sending them nothing but “little notes, occasional phrases, one or two throwaway phrases” on postcards. His sister-in-law gently but pointedly asks if he even knows how his brother, Anthony, earns his living. He works in a toolmaking factory, she says, though she acknowledges that she isn’t exactly clear on what he does: “He fabricates tools. I mean I assume that’s what he does. It stands to reason, doesn’t it?”
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