Us

Mahayana Landowne directs Us, Karen Malpede’s expressionistic drama in eleven scenes about families and the sexual connotations inherent in a variety of relationships. This intensely moving production opens with a brutal scatological and racial assault that details the dynamics of domestic abuse. The play then moves through memory scenes of homosexual rape of brother by brother, attempted illegal abortion, father-daughter incest, a girl’s fear of the atomic bomb during the Cold War and the impact on a small boy of the atrocities of the post-colonial war in Algeria. These children grow up to become lovers, fused by an inescapable desire for comfort and erotic release.