As if the catastrophe of a year previously, when an exploding gas cylinder on the marketplace cost 24 people their lives, including 7 children, did not mean enough suffering for this small community, in one or other village that may be on the coast or in the mountains (exactly where and how is left to the spectator), Alfred the plumber keeps a young girl imprisoned in the vaults under the fountain on the square for 76 days, in order to abuse her sexually. Now, without actually wanting it, the seriously shocked villagers themselves become guilty parties; a sombre autumn and a bitterly cold winter cause the fragile structures of the village community to gradually collapse, until ultimately a new – possibly real, but probably also dubious – beginning heralds the spring, in the form of a collectively fathered baby. The master of ceremonies’ rules At the start of the performance, the Belgian artist Jan Lauwers, who introduces the story as if he were a master of ceremonies, sets the tone for this night of theatre: when he talks about the devastating gas explosion, he urges those in the audience who have only seen such images on the television, to visual the event: conversely, he requests those who actually have experienced anything like this deliberately not to imagine it: ‘This is only theatre’. These are the rules of the game and of the aesthetics with which Lauwers approaches his subjects – the illusionist pretence that what we see on stage is ‘reality’, the bare, unadulterated reality, is utterly alien to him. The dead do not vanish into thin air, but make comments on events, sometimes devilish, sometimes ironic, in the form of dance, spoken text and song. Whole scenes are exposed as artificial, without disrupting the narrative flow, let alone interrupting it. And in this respect, it is precisely in that little word ‘only’ (which, considering Lauwers’ perfect mastery of his tools, is also somewhat coy) that the true strength of this evening of theatre lies: fully in line with the notion of cathartic theatre, Lauwers succeeds in celebrating man with all his longings and fears, and also with his deepest abysses and imperfections. Marketplace 76 is about morality, without taking a moralising tone, and takes a particular position without condemning. This courage to remain ambivalent, this refusal to simplify, which goes with an unconditional love of mankind, makes this performance a sort of artwork, which compels the spectator to define his own position – and also to an uncommonly exciting piece of theatre.