Gustave et Antoine

*Gustave and Antoine* is a play akin to a surrealist fairy tale – a cruel tale combining black humour and tragedy. Antoine, a young boy, decides to swap his identity for that of Gustave, an abandoned dog. Whilst Antoine savours the freedom of his new life, Gustave returns to the boy’s family home. This change brings the family’s repressed desires to the surface: the mother discovers an incestuous desire, and the father, a cosmetic surgeon, becomes his son’s tormentor by repeatedly altering his face. For his part, Antoine experiences the violence inherent in his life as a ‘street-wise dog’. The play explores the difficulty a child faces in navigating an adult world that offers only sanitised role models for growth. How can we find paths to maturity that are not the ones immediately thrust upon us – those of a society where concern for appearances reigns supreme? Whilst Gustave endures the anxieties of family life, Antoine gradually frees himself from all social conventions and sets out to embrace his own otherness.