Michael Gardner’s world premiere theatrical adaptation of Jean Cocteau’s Les Enfants Terribles will play a limited engagement at Off-Broadway’s East Village Basement September 10-October 4. Opening night is set for September 12.
Directed by Gardner, the cast will include Caroline (Lina) DeFazio, Victor Gao, Maysie Jane Kilgore, and Rutger Scott.
The play, based on the famed novella, follows Paul and Elisabeth, two emotionally sheltered teenage siblings, who seclude themselves in a spiritual fiction of their own creation. As they vie for dominance, the “enfants” play cruel games among themselves and upon their adoring companions, Gerard and Agatha.
In a statement Gardner says, “Jean Cocteau’s novella, Les Enfants Terribles, feels like one of those subversive secrets you discover at some point in your reading life. It guts and delights you and breaks all the rules in a way you thought was not allowed. Sexy and verboten, heartbreaking and wrong. It reminds you of a time in your youth when playtime was more real than reality. And playtime had just as many rules. The book cries out for theatricality, describing the children’s ‘room’ as the set of a stage drama upon which they all play. I’ve been longing to create a literalization of their ‘play’ for years. And the themes of cruelty, persecution and mythomania couldn’t be more timely.”
Hannah Kunce is the intimacy director, and Bethany Qian is the production stage manager.
Crawl Space Plays is producing.
Visit EnfantsPlay.com.