Fils manqués?: Virtuoso clowning unveiled

Can an actor who has lost his father ever be anything other than a clown? To answer this question, a masterful clown duo performs a cyclical tale of injustice. Their personal quests to find their absent fathers intertwine in an agile tragicomic pas de deux that walks the fine line between tears of laughter and sorrow.

For several years now, René Bazinet and David-Alexandre Després have been displaying their red noses on some of the world’s leading circus stages. Now they’re back home, confined to a strange and fantastical prison littered with makeshift props and costumes. In this forced intimacy, the red noses come off and the healing process can begin, as they confront the pain of abandonment, the desire for revenge, and the need for forgiveness.

Playwright and director J-F Nadeau explores the link between failure as a father and our shifting definitions of masculinity, with a nod to Guy Corneau’s famous pop-psych book, Père manquant, fils manqué (“Absent Fathers, Lost Sons”). At the crossroads of mime and theatre of the absurd, the script is tailor-made for two masters of metamorphosis who speak the universal language of the body with disconcerting fluency, offering a breathtaking moment of physical theatre.

• The show is in French with passages in English and German.