Inspired by Roberto Bolaño’s novella “The Return”

The Return is a contemporary gothic tale of Michael and Claire, a young married couple separated, and their unlikely return to each other, disrupting the world order. Claire works in television and pursues a career in Paris, while Michael tries unsuccessfully to reconcile his job in Marseille and his wife’s ambition to settle in the capital, but their relationship is brought to a head by Michael’s affair with Cécile Lambal, a girl who has just come of age and with whom he continues to have a frivolous relationship even after the divorce. Suddenly, Michael dies at one of the parties that have become a regular occurrence and follows his body as a ghost on a journey through the fantastic labyrinths of death bureaucracy and coincidence, until they lead him to his ex-wife.

This taboo-breaking work is what the French literary tradition describes as a bizzarerie – a strangeness that disturbs the obviousness of our ordinary everyday life. The play is based on the Gothic motif of the upside-down world, which suggests that on the day of the Last Judgement, the wronged will take revenge on their abusers. But in the play, the line between justice and punishment and blasphemous pleasure is ghostly pale and constantly redrawn. Here, our existential angst, shameful desires and past mistakes are brought out into a blindingly bright, electric light.

The play is based on the short story of the same name by Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño.

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Performance in Lithuanian. with English surtitles (best seen on balcony I, row 4-5)

The play uses uncensored language, smoke and bright flashes of light, naked bodies

Running time: 1 hour. 20 minutes (without break)